Revealing Article in Religion Dispatches
Recently, Fred and André published an article titled: New Apostolic Reformation Faces Profound Rift Due to Trump Prophecies and ‘spiritual Manipulation of the Prophetic Gift’ in Religion Dispatches. (https://religiondispatches.org/new-apostolic-reformation-faces-profound-rift-due-to-trump-prophecies-and-spiritual-manipulation-of-the-prophetic-gift/)
The article describes a growing schism between movement prophets and apostles who say that God wants Trump to be restored as president and those who say such claims are an abuse of the role of the prophet in the Church.
The media keeps saying white Christian evangelicals are Trump’s base, but it’s more complicated than that.
Let’s begin with the Manhattan Declaration. In the mid-1990s, conservative Catholic intellectuals and Christian Right and evangelical leaders held a series of theological dialogues. Eventually, they had a breakthrough. A neoconservative Catholic professor Robert P. George found a way to bring them together in 2009. He found three concepts on which all could agree. And these were:
- Life
- Marriage
- Religious Liberty
And agree they did. It became their platform in the culture war.
- Life means being anti-abortion
- Marriage is the opposition to marriage equality for LGBTQ people
- Religious Liberty means exemptions from civil rights laws regarding life and marriage
These three ideas, life, marriage, and religious liberty began to appear on the websites of politically active Christian Right groups and the Pro-Life Secretariat of the Catholic Bishops. And most tellingly, Mitt Romney, in his 2012 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention for the Republican nomination, specifically listed those three terms. As a Mormon, he needed to signal that he belonged, so he used the three themes of the Manhattan Declaration to do so.
That’s how important the Manhattan Declaration was to everything from the center-right to the far right in American politics. The 500 initial signatories included Catholic prelates and a wide range of evangelical leaders, including some NAR apostles.