The Catholic Bishops have rejected President Obama’s so-called “accommodation.” Good for them! They have stood up for the religious freedom of their own faithful and all believers.
The battle is joined. This is the greatest fight for religious liberty in our domestic politics in our lifetimes. No Christian can afford to be on the sidelines. We need you to be involved.
The real issue here is not contraception or even abortion, although the media and the pro-choice crowd are trying to put contraception in the forefront in order to isolate the Bishops. No, the issue here is religious liberty: Can the state trample on the rights of conscience and force us to violate what we believe are our obligations before God?
What we are witnessing is a profound assault on what our Nation’s founders thought was the primary, foundational liberty which had to be guaranteed—freedom of conscience and free religious exercise. If those are destroyed, no bulwark against tyranny remains.
This is why we are redoubling our efforts to defend religious freedom through the Manhattan Declaration. While we will continue to run a lean operation, we are bringing in a staff person to help organize meetings around the country, social media, petition drives—anything and everything we can do to mobilize faithful Christians in the United States.
The Manhattan Declaration—now signed by more than 516,000 people—is unique in modern American history: Churches and believers of many Christian traditions and denominations standing together as one. Our strength is in our unity and in our determination to be faithful to the Lord in whatever he calls us to do.
We can and will win this fight, but we need your help. That is why I am appealing to you to help us with funding. I know many of you last week attempted to make a donation, but we had a failure in our donation system. However, if you feel led to donate, you can do so now because we have fixed the system.
The stakes have been raised since our last communication with you. We must put the resources in to make our cause succeed. Please help now. And get your friends to help.
In the end, we all know this is a spiritual battle. So get on your knees and ask your friends to join in prayer alongside you. Pray especially that God might use this dreadful threat to unite His church and raise us up for action.
Thank you for standing with us in defense of the most precious of all freedoms—freedom of religion. And thank you for signing and supporting the Manhattan Declaration.
Sincerely,
Chuck Colson
Robert George
Timothy George
http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/home.aspx
