By Jon BrownChristian Post Reporter Friday, April 12, 2024

A group of Christian clergy, theologians and scholars who participated in the inaugural conference of the Center for Public Theology & Politics of the Yale Divinity School this week signed a statement denouncing so-called “religious nationalism”.

In a document titled the “New Haven Declaration on Moral and Spiritual Issues in the 2024 Presidential Election,” the group of self-described “religious leaders” also pledged to dedicate themselves to promulgating progressive causes, and warned that “traditional values” were being politically weaponized.

Signatories led by Bishop William J. Barber II, a progressive activist who founded the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, asserted that there is “a well-funded, coordinated political movement that has taken over our faith tradition and is exploiting so-called 'traditional values' to undermine democracy.” and divide men across this earth.”

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Barber, who co-chairs the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and held a private meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris in February, featured prominently in the recent documentary “God & Country.” The film produced by Rob Reiner suggested that there is an invasive “Christian nationalism” that finds its most egregious form in former President Donald Trump and his supporters.

Without naming specific individuals or organizations, the New Haven Declaration suggests that those who adhere to such religious nationalism are motivated only by political power and blinded to the important moral issues that the document goes on to list.

“This distorted religious nationalism has led many well-intentioned Christians to focus on a narrow set of divisive cultural wedge issues while ignoring the real moral issues that are at the heart of our Scriptures and tradition,” the statement read.

The statement does not define what it means by “traditional values” or “cultural wedge issues,” but in a 2019 interview with An intelligent personBarber suggested that “the Christian right” is a “slave-owning religion”, linked Christian nationalism to “white evangelicalism”, and condemned those concerned with flashpoint issues such as abortion and school prayer as heretical.

“To suggest that if you're against abortion, you're against women's right to choose, you're pro-guns, pro-prayer in schools, pro-tax cuts, a Republican, then you've taken the moral position, that's modern-day heresy,” Barber said at the time. “And we have to challenge it. But we're not just going to challenge it just emotionally. We're saying if you want to have a discussion about morality from a biblical point of view, then let's have a real one.”

The signatories of the New Haven Declaration continue to publicly “repent” of not more effectively preaching and teaching against religious nationalism, while promising to “proclaim in word and deed a public theology that is good news for all people.”

After claiming to follow in the moral tradition of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison, Ida B. Wells, Reverdy Ransom, Walter Rauschenbusch, Francis Perkins, Howard Thurman, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rosa Parks, Martin King, Dorothy Day, Pauli Murray, John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer, and James Reeb, the signatories of the New Haven Declaration explained what they believe to be “the critical moral and spiritual issues of the presidential election in 2024.”

“[W]Join our voices as religious leaders to launch a season of preaching on the moral issues of a living wage and union rights, health care and environmental justice, an end to the shedding of innocent blood, reimagining criminal justice, and the protection and expansion. of voting rights and equal protection guarantees,” they wrote.

After describing such subjects as the “heavier issues of the law”, the declaration goes on to imply that the subjects of concern to the Right are “manufactured conflict over minor subjects.”

Although acknowledging that it is not the job of priests to teach others how to vote, the declaration noted that clergy “have a responsibility to explain how the tradition of Jesus and the prophets speak to the world today.”

“We must challenge our congregations and the wider public to choose carefully and wisely which candidates for public office best represent our true moral values,” they added.

Other signatories of the New Haven Declaration include Yale Divinity School Dean Greg Sterling, Afrming Ministries presiding bishop Yvette Flunder, Unitarian Universalists Association President the Rev. Sofía Betancourt, The Irresistible Revolution author Shane Claiborne, and others.