Christians are heirs of a
2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in
our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion
to the poor, oppressed and suffering.
While fully acknowledging the
imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and
communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians
who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash
heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s
sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those
believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to
tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in
the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.
After the barbarian tribes
overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible
but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was
Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th
and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first
excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical
Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce,
put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under
Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for
helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to
machines.
In Europe, Christians
challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to
establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which
made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women
stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil
rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming
the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every
human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.
This same devotion to human
dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the
dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring
compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a
myriad of other human rights causes – from providing clean water in
developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of
children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.
Like those who have gone
before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the
Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the
human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its
own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to
others can make a profound contribution to the public good.
Declaration
We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and
Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on
September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign
as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to
and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one
true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total
claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all
ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his
image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is
grounded in Holy Scripture, in
natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a
beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call
upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to
consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here
address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s
conscience in the sight of God.
While the whole scope of
Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor
and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled
that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and
the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of
marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce,
is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable
ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience
are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of
coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest
convictions.
Because the sanctity of human
life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and
the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles
of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian
faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we
affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human
being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing
inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal
union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and
historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be
the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty,
which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ,
and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the
divine image.
We are Christians who have
joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to
affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to
speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other,
and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural
or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is
our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us
not to fail in that duty.
Life
So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he
created them. Genesis 1:27
I have come that they may have
life, and have it to the full. John
10:10
Although public sentiment has
moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that
pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present
administration is led and staffed by those who want to make
abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to
provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses of
Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous
1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal
protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental
constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally
permissible some limited restrictions on abortion. The President
says that he wants to reduce the "need" for abortion—a commendable
goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and
widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding,
requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental
notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of
these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be
expected to do other than significantly increase the number of
elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are
snuffed out prior to birth. Our commitment to the sanctity of life
is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the
thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and
appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in
giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as "the
culture of death." We call on all officials in our country, elected
and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society,
including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.
A culture of death inevitably
cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the
belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are
discardable. As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening
of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. For example,
human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are
promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing
treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and
many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo-research to include
the taxpayer funding of so-called "therapeutic cloning." This would
result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be
killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell
lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly
powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and "voluntary"
euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled
persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes
Leben ("life unworthy of life") were first advanced in the 1920s
by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long
buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they
have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the
doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of
"liberty," "autonomy," and "choice."
We will be united and untiring
in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the
abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have
always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant
women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion,
even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion
that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to
the deliberate killing of their unborn children. Our message is, and
ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to
problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and
child alike.
A truly prophetic Christian
witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with
temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to
protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so
with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins
us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those
who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the
unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the
light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing
to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions,
the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development
and in every condition.
Our concern is not confined to
our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of
genocide and "ethnic cleansing," the failure to assist those who are
suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of
children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual
trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged,
racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers
of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the
spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as
flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human
person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion
industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and
human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must
be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all
circumstances.
Marriage
The man said, "This is now
bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman,
for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his
father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become
one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24
This is a profound mystery—but
I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you
also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must
respect her husband. Ephesians
5:32-33
In Scripture, the creation of
man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the
crowning achievement of God’s creation. In the transmission of life
and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are
given the great honor of being partners with God Himself. Marriage
then, is the first institution of human society—indeed it is the
institution on which all other human institutions have their
foundation. In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as "holy
matrimony" to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by
God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana
of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in
the highest esteem.
Vast human experience confirms
that marriage is the original and most important institution for
sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a
society. Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing
marriage culture, everyone benefits—the spouses themselves, their
children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where
the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every
sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately, we have witnessed
over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the
marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most telling—and
alarming—indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than fifty
years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. Our
society—and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors,
where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the
national average—is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse,
crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. Other indicators
are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly
high rate of divorce.
We confess with sadness that
Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed
to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the
true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the
culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that
undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all
Christians to do the same.
To strengthen families, we
must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among
our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of
faithful marital love. We must reform ill-advised policies that
contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage,
including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce. We must work
in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young
people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires,
and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful
spouses make.
The impulse to redefine
marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner
relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of
the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the
meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and
in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law.
Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it
would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound
understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a
healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and
destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other
adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about
procreation and the unique character and value of acts and
relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the
generation, promotion and protection of life. In spousal communion
and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of
their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for
and benefits of the marriage covenant.
We acknowledge that there are
those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct
and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards
other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so
disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound,
inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women
who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation
to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward.
We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they,
are sinners who have fallen short of God’s intention for our lives.
We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love
and forgiveness. We call on the entire
Christian community to resist
sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful
condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though
resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every
sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our
destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all
who wander from the path of virtue to "a more excellent way." As his
disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call
and wish to answer it.
We further acknowledge that
there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching
of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual
morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same-sex
and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly
marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made
possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that
the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is
includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife
biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no
mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the
personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely
centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits,
inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity
of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman
establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong
commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being—the
biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the
spiritual—on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized
by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh,
not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together
the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the
Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated
marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of
infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is
shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good
of procreation.
We understand that many of our
fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the
historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one
woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to
say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done
to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon
two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership
the status of being "married." It would not, after all, affect their
own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that
laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot
stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the
assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage
relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex
partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for
polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult
brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous
relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil
rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no
effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is
not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately
define and re-define to please those who are powerful and
influential.
No one has a civil right to
have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is
an objective reality—a covenantal union of husband and wife—that it
is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of
justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social
harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is
a matter of conscience is jeopardized. Second, the rights of parents
are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are
used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes
as "marriages" sexual partnerships that many parents believe are
intrinsically non-marital and immoral. Third, the common good of
civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical
pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound
understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage
culture in any society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from
having a thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the
critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to
rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to
re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false
proclamation about what marriage is.
And so it is out of love
(not "animus") and prudent concern for the common good
(not "prejudice"), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve
the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one
woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as
Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a
central part of God’s creation covenant. Indeed, the union of
husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And
so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for
the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to
make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the
inestimable treasure that is marriage.
Religious Liberty
The Spirit of the Sovereign
LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news
to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to
proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the
prisoners. Isaiah 61:1
Give to Caesar what is
Caesar's, and to God what is God's.
Matthew 22:21
The struggle for religious
liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is
not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious
liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is
most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to
follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians
appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place:
"Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear
and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for
compulsion is no attribute of God" (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4).
Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the
example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human
person created in the image of God—a dignity, as our founders
proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the
exercise of right reason.
Christians confess that God
alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is
the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be
compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should
persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the
dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their
deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals
applies to religious communities as well.
It is ironic that those who
today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also
a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to
have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized
and blessed by law—such persons claiming these "rights" are very
often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of
others to express their religious and moral commitments to the
sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal
union of husband and wife.
We see this, for example, in
the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore
to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated
hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses,
and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in
certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see
it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious
institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to
comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of
business. After the judicial imposition of "same-sex marriage" in
Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great
reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned
children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that
it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic
moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a
quasi-marital "civil unions" scheme, a Methodist institution was
stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of
religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to
be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and
some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for
preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New
hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice
here.
In recent decades a growing
body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious
values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting
in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an
ominous development, not only because of its threat to the
individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or
her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare
and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican
government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or
the ability to hire people of one’s own faith or conscientious moral
convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the
viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential
buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in
the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of.1
Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.
As Christians, we take
seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in
authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize
the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not,
unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them
to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of
law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet
laws that are unjust—and especially laws that purport to compel
citizens to do what is unjust—undermine the common good, rather than
serve it.
Going back to the earliest
days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their
proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered
to stop preaching. Their answer was, "Judge for yourselves whether
it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we
cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." Through the
centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not
only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent
defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the
one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a
Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian
perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and
Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings
because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is
God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can
claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to
bind in conscience. King’s willingness to go to jail, rather than
comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring.
Because we honor justice and
the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to
compel our institutions to participate in abortions,
embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any
other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to
force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as
marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth,
as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the
family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is
Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what
is God’s.
Drafting Committee
Robert George Professor,
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
Timothy George Professor,
Beeson Divinity School, Samford University
Chuck Colson Founder, the Chuck Colson
Center for Christian Worldview (Lansdowne, VA)
LIST OF RELIGIOUS
LEADERS SIGNATORIES
Dr. Daniel Akin
President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (Wake Forest,
NC)
Most Rev. Peter J. Akinola
Primate, Anglican Church of Nigeria (Abuja, Nigeria)
Randy Alcorn
Founder and Director, Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM) (Sandy,
OR)
Rt. Rev. David Anderson
President and CEO, American Anglican Council (Atlanta, GA)
Leith Anderson
President of National Association of Evangelicals (Washington, DC)
Bishop Sam Aquila
Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Fargo, ND
Carole K. Ardizzone
TV Show Host and Speaker, INSP Television (Charlotte, NC)
Kay Arthur
CEO and Co-founder, Precept Ministries International (Chattanooga,
TN)
Dr. Mark L. Bailey
President, Dallas Theological Seminary (Dallas, TX)
Most Rev. Robert J. Baker, S.T.D.
Bishop of Birmingham, Diocese of Birmingham in Alabama
Most Rev. Craig W. Bates
Archbishop, International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal
Church (Malverne, NY)
Gary Bauer
President, American Values; Chairman, Campaign for Working Families
(Washington D.C.)
Joel Belz
Founder, World Magazine (Asheville, NC)
Rev. Michael L. Beresford
(Charlotte, NC)
Ken Boa
President, Reflections Ministries (Atlanta, GA)
Jody Bottum
Editor of First Things (New York, NY)
Pastor Randy & Sarah Brannon
Senior Pastor, Grace Community Church (Madera, CA)
Brian Brown
Executive Director, National Organization for Marriage
Steve Brown
National radio broadcaster, Key Life (Maitland, FL)
Dr. Robert C. Cannada, Jr.
Chancellor and CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando, FL)
Galen Carey
Director of Government Affairs, National Association of Evangelicals
(Washington, DC)
Dr. Bryan Chapell
President, Covenant Theological Seminary (St. Louis, MO)
Scott Chapman
Senior Pastor, The Chapel (Libertyville, IL)
Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput
Archbishop, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, CO
Timothy A. Chichester
Catholic Family Association of America
Timothy Clinton
President, American Association of Christian Counselors (Forest, VA)
Chuck Colson
Founder, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview (Lansdowne,
VA)
Dr. Mark Coppenger
Managing Editor, Kairos Journal
Most Rev. Salvatore Joseph Cordileone
Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, CA
Dr. Gary Culpepper
Associate Professor, Providence College (Providence, RI)
Jim Daly
President and CEO, Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO)
Marjorie Dannenfelser
President, Susan B. Anthony List (Arlington, VA)
Rev. Daniel Delgado
Board of Directors, National Hispanic Christian Leadership
Conference & Pastor, Third Day Missions Church (Staten Island, NY)
Patrick Deneen
Tasakopoulos-Kounalakis, Associate Professor, Director, Tocqueville
Forum on the Roots of American Democracy, Georgetown University
(Washington D.C.)
Most Rev. Nicholas DiMarzio
Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn
Dr. James Dobson
Founder, Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO)
Dr. David Dockery
President, Union University (Jackson, TN)
Most Rev. Timothy Dolan
Archbishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of New York, NY
Dr. William Donohue
President, Catholic League (New York, NY)
Dr. James T. Draper, Jr.
President Emeritus, LifeWay (Nashville, TN)
Dinesh D'Souza
Writer & Speaker (Rancho Santa Fe, CA)
Dr. J. Ligon Duncan
Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church, & President, Alliance of
Confessing Evangelicals
Most Rev. Robert Wm. Duncan
Archbishop and Primate, Anglican Church in North America (Ambridge,
PA )
Dr. Michael Easley
President Emeritus, Moody Bible Institute Chicago, IL)
Dr. William Edgar
Professor, Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, PA)
Brett Elder
Executive Director, Stewardship Council (Grand Rapids, MI)
Rev. Joel Elowsky
Drew University ( Madison, NJ)
Stuart Epperson
Co-Founder and Chariman of the Board, Salem Communications
Corporation (Camarillo, CA)
His Grace, The Right Reverend Bishop Basil Essey
The Right Reverend Bishop of the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America
(Wichita, KS)
Rev. Jonathan Falwell
Senior Pastor, Thomas Road Baptist Church (Lynchburg, VA)
William J. Federer
President, Amerisearch, Inc. (St. Louis, MO)
Fr. Joseph D. Fessio
Founder and Editor, Ignatius Press (Ft. Collins, CO)
Carmen Fowler
President & Executive Editor, Presbyterian Lay Committee (Lenoir,
NC)
Maggie Gallagher
President, National Organization for Marriage (Manassas, VA)
Dr. Jim Garlow
Senior Pastor, Skyline Church (La Mesa, CA)
Steven Garofalo
Founder, National Apologetics Training Center (Charlotte, NC)
Dr. Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
(Princeton, NJ)
Dr. Timothy George
Dean and Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School at Samford
University (Birmingham, AL)
Thomas Gilson
Director of Strategic Processes, Campus Crusade for Christ
International (Norfolk, VA)
Dr. Jack Graham
Pastor, Prestonwood Baptist Church (Plano, TX)
Dr. Wayne Grudem
Research Professor of Theological and Biblical Studies, Phoenix
Seminary (Phoenix, AZ)
Dr. Cornell "Corkie" Haan
National Facilitator of Spiritual Unity, The Mission America
Coalition (Palm Desert, CA)
Fr. Chad Hatfield
Chancellor, CEO. And Archpriest, St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological
Seminary (Yonkers, NY)
Dr. Dennis Hollinger
President and Professor of Christian Ethics, Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA)
Dr. Jeanette Hsieh
Executive VP and Provost, Trinity International University
(Deerfield, IL)
Dr. John A. Huffman, Jr.
Senior Pastor, St. Andrews Presbyterian Church (Newport Beach, CA)
and Chairman of the Board, Christianity Today International (Carol
Stream, IL)
Rev. Ken Hutcherson
Pastor, Antioch Bible Church (Kirkland, WA)
Bishop Harry R. Jackson, Jr.
Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church (Beltsville, MD)
Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse
President, American Orthodox Institute and Editor,
OrthodoxyToday.org (Naples, FL)
Jerry Jenkins
Author (Black Forest, CO)
Camille Kampouris
Editorial Board, Kairos Journal
Emmanuel A. Kampouris
Publisher, Kairos Journal
Rev. Tim Keller
Senior Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (New York, NY)
Dr. Peter Kreeft
Professor of Philosophy, Boston College (MA) and at the Kings Collge
(NY)
Most Rev. Joseph E. Kurtz
Archbishop, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville, KY
Jim Kushiner
Editor, Touchstone (Chicago, IL)
Dr. Richard Land
President, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC
(Washington, DC)
Jim Law
Senior Associate Pastor, First Baptist Church (Woodstock, GA)
Dr. Matthew Levering
Associate Professor of Theology, Ave Maria University (Naples, FL)
Dr. Peter Lillback
President, The Providence Forum (West Conshohocken, PA)
Dr. Duane Litfin
President, Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL)
Rev. Herb Lusk
Pastor, Greater Exodus Baptist Church (Philadelphia, PA)
His Eminence Adam Cardinal Maida
Archbishop Emeritus, Roman Catholic Diocese of Detroit, MI
Most Rev. Richard J. Malone
Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, ME
Rev. Francis Martin
Professor of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Heart Major Seminary (Detroit,
MI)
Dr. Joseph Mattera
Bishop & Senior Pastor, Resurrection Church (Brooklyn, NY)
Phil Maxwell
Pastor, Gateway Church (Bridgewater, NJ)
Josh McDowell
Founder, Josh McDowell Ministries (Plano, TX)
Alex McFarland
President, Southern Evangelical Seminary (Charlotte, NC)
Most Rev. George Dallas McKinney
Bishop, & Founder and Pastor, St. Stephen's Church of God in Christ
(San Diego, CA)
Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns
Missionary Bishop, Convocation of Anglicans of North America
(Herndon, VA)
Dr. C. Ben Mitchell
Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy, Union University (Jackson, TN)
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY)
Dr. Russell D. Moore
Senior VP for Academic Administration & Dean of the School of
Theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY)
Bishop Robert C. Morlino
Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Madison, WI
Richard J. Mouw
President, Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA)
Most Rev. John J. Myers
Archbishop, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, NJ
Most Rev. Joseph F. Naumann
Archbishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City, KS
David Neff
Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today (Carol Stream, IL)
Tom Nelson
Senior Pastor, Christ Community Evangelical Free Church (Leawood,
KS)
Niel Nielson
President, Covenant College (Lookout Mt., GA)
Most Rev. John Nienstedt
Archbishop, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and
Minneapolis, MN
Michael Novak
Author, Philosopher, & Theologian
Dr. Tom Oden
Theologian, United Methodist Minister and Professor, Drew University
(Madison, NJ)
Marvin Olasky
Editor-in-Chief, World Magazine and provost, The Kings College (New
York City, NY)
Rev. Neftali "Charles" Olmeda
Pennsylvania Chapter Director, National Hispanic Christian
Leadership Conference (Allentown, PA)
Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted
Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, AZ
Rev. William Owens
Chairman, Coalition of African-American Pastors (Memphis, TN)
Dr. J.I. Packer
Board of GovernorsÕ Professor of Theology, Regent College (Canada)
Metr. Jonah Paffhausen
Primate, Orthodox Church in America (Syosset, NY)
Tony Perkins
President, Family Research Council (Washington, D.C.)
Eric M. Pillmore
CEO, Pillmore Consulting LLC (Doylestown, PA)
Dr. Everett Piper
President, Oklahoma Wesleyan University (Bartlesville, OK)
Todd Pitner
President, Rev Increase
Dr. Cornelius Plantinga
President, Calvin Theological Seminary (Grand Rapids, MI)
Dr. David Platt
Pastor, Church at Brook Hills (Birmingham AL)
Rev. Jim Pocock
Pastor, Trinitarian Congregational Church (Wayland, MA)
Fred Potter
Executive Director & CEO, Christian Legal Society (Springfield, VA)
Dennis Rainey
President, CEO, & Co-Founder, FamilyLife (Little Rock, AR)
Fr. Patrick Reardon
Pastor, All SaintsÕ Antiochian Orthodox Church (Chicago, IL)
Bob Reccord
Founder, Total Life Impact, Inc. (Suwanee, GA)
His Eminence Justin Cardinal Rigali
Archbishop, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, PA
James and Betty Robison
Founder and President, LIFE Outreach International (Fort Worth, TX)
Frank Schubert
President, Schubert Flint Public Affairs (Sacramento, CA)
David Schuringa
President, Crossroads Bible Institute (Grand Rapids, MI)
Tricia Scribner
Author (Harrisburg, NC)
Dr. Dave Seaford
Senior Pastor, Community Fellowship Church (Matthews, NC)
Alan Sears
President, CEO, & General Counsel, Alliance Defense Fund
(Scottsdale, AZ)
Randy Setzer
Senior Pastor, Macedonia Baptist Church (Lincolnton, NC)
Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Founder and Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition (Anaheim, CA)
Most Rev. Michael J. Sheridan
Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs, CO
Dr. Ron Sider
Director, Evangelicals for Social Action (Wynnewood, PA)
Fr. Robert Sirico
Founder, Acton Institute (Grand Rapids, MI)
Dr. Robert Sloan
President, Houston Baptist University (Houston, TX)
Charles Stetson
Chairman of the Board, Bible Literacy Project (New York, NY)
Dr. David Stevens
CEO, Christian Medical & Dental Association (Bristol, TN)
John Stonestreet
Executive Director, Summit Ministries (Manitou Springs, CO)
Dr. Joseph Stowell
President, Cornerstone University (Grand Rapids, MI)
Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas
Editor, The Catholic Response
Dr. Sarah Sumner
Professor of Theology and Ministry, Azusa Pacific University (Azusa,
CA)
Dr. Glenn Sunshine
Chairman of the history department of Central Connecticut State
University (New Britain, CT)
Joni Eareckson Tada
Founder and CEO, Joni and Friends International Disability Center
(Agoura Hills, CA)
Luiz Tellez
President, The Witherspoon Institute (Princeton, NJ)
Dr. Timothy C. Tennent
Professor, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, MA)
James R. Thobaben
Professor of Bioethics and Social Ethics, Asbury Theological
Seminary
Michael Timmis
Chairman, Prison Fellowship and Prison Fellowship International
(Naples, FL)
Mark Tooley
President, Institute for Religion and Democracy (Washington, D.C.)
H. James Towey
President, St. Vincent College (Latrobe, PA)
Juan Valdes
Middle and High School Chaplain, Flordia Christian School (Miami,
FL)
Most Rev. Allen Vigneron
Archbishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Detroit (Detroit, MI)
Todd Wagner
Pastor, WaterMark Community Church (Dallas, TX)
Dr. Graham Walker
President, Patrick Henry College (Purcellville, VA)
Fr. Alexander F. C. Webster, PhD
Archpriest, Orthodox Church in America and Professorial Lecturer,
The George Washington University (Ashburn, VA)
George Weigel
Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center
(Washington, D.C.)
David Welch
Houston Area Pastor Council Executive Director, US Pastors Council
(Houston, TX)
Dr. James White
Founding and Senior Pastor, Mecklenberg Community Church (Charlotte,
NC)
Dr. Hayes Wicker
Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church (Naples, FL)
Mark Williamson
Founder and President, Foundation Restoration Ministries/Federal
Intercessors (Katy, TX)
Parker T. Williamson
Editor Emeritus and Senior Correspondent, Presbyterian Lay Committee
Dr. Craig Williford
President, Trinity International University (Deerfield, IL)
Dr. John Woodbridge
Research professor of Church History & the History of Christian
Thought, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, IL)
Don M. Woodside
Performance Matters Associates (Matthews, NC)
Dr. Frank Wright
President, National Religious Broadcasters (Manassas, VA)
Most Rev. Donald W. Wuerl
Archbishop, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.
Paul Young
COO & Executive VP, Christian Research Institute (Charlotte, NC)
Dr. Michael Youssef
President, Leading the Way (Atlanta, GA)
Ravi Zacharias
Founder and Chairman of the board, Ravi Zacharias International
Ministries (Norcross, GA)
Most Rev. David A. Zubik
Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, PA
