BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (ABP) — A Baptist historian and divinity-school dean
is involved in a controversy pitting gay-rights advocates against
conservative Christians — with Apple computers caught in the middle.
Timothy George
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In 2009, Timothy George, dean of the ecumenical Beeson Divinity School at Baptist-affiliated Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., helped draft a document titled the Manhattan Declaration. Co-authored with Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson and Catholic scholar and Princeton professor Robert George, the 4,700-word manifesto defends, from a conservative Christian perspective, the sanctity of life, dignity of marriage and religious freedom.
In October Apple OKed an iPhone application allowing users to read and endorse the statement and made it available in the iTunes Store. Apple quietly pulled the app in November after about 8,000 people signed online petitions claiming the declaration is anti-gay.
"We removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the app store because it violates our developer guideline by being offensive to large groups of people," Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said in a statement to PC Magazine.
The three authors wrote Apple CEO Steve Jobs Nov. 29 asking him to restore the app.
"As you may know, the Manhattan Declaration is a non-partisan statement of conscience supporting the sanctity of human life in all stages and conditions, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and religious freedom and the rights of conscience," the letter said. "The Declaration was issued by more than 150 religious leaders representing a broad spectrum of Christian denominations: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Church of God in Christ, African Methodist Episcopal and many more. To date, nearly half a million supporters have joined them as signatories.
"As you will immediately see if you read the Manhattan Declaration, it is written in respectful language, and it engages the beliefs of those who differ in an honest, thoughtful, and civil manner. It is entirely free of rancor, name-calling or offensive rhetoric. It restates, firmly but without animosity towards anyone, central moral teachings of the Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical Protestant traditions deriving from the biblical witness and the tradition of rational reflection and argumentation that has marked Christian moral philosophy from ancient times to the present day."
Gay-rights organizations saw it differently. They said the declaration calls gay and lesbian couples "immoral," recognition of their relationships "false and destructive" and claims that allowing them to marry will lead to "genuine social harms."
"This application fuels a climate in which gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are put in harm's way," the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said in an action alert. "Apple did the right thing in recognizing that this application violates the company's guidelines."
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A Manhattan Declaration website responded with a petition urging Jobs to reinstate the app. "That Apple would deem the Manhattan Declaration as 'offensive' is alarming and distressing," read the petition with more than 47,000 electronic signatures as of Jan. 4. "Some who are 'offended' by the Manhattan Declaration can only be offended by the positions the Manhattan Declaration takes — positions based on biblical Christianity and affirmed by nearly half a million Christians representing dozens of denominations."
A Manhattan Declaration blog reported Dec. 23 that Apple the night before rejected a tweaked and resubmitted version of the application.
"Apple is telling us that the app's content is considered 'likely to expose a group to harm' and 'to be objectionable and potentially harmful to others,'" according to the blog. "Inasmuch as the Manhattan Declaration simply reaffirms the moral teachings of our Christian faith on the sanctity of human life, marriage and sexual morality, and religious freedom and the rights of conscience, Apple's statement amounts to the charge that our faith is 'potentially harmful to others.'"
The Manhattan Declaration's authors deny the document is homophobic. The document expresses "compassion" for people disposed toward same-sex relationships but argues that, for the good of society, marriage should remain between a man and a woman. It also describes laws like anti-discrimination statutes and judicial imposition of same-sex marriage as potential threats to religious liberty.
In a Beeson podcast n Oct. 25, Colson told Timothy George he was inspired to draft the document after reading the Barmen Declaration, a 1934 statement by a "confessing church" movement urging resistance to theological claims of the Nazi state.
"I thought that while the conditions here of course are nothing like that, there still is a time in every society when you have to face the threat to the gospel and the threat to the critical issues that the gospel reflects in society," Colson said.
When the Manhattan Declaration was first released, most attention focused on its closing statement: "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."
Some viewed that as calling for "civil disobedience" and urging Christians to disobey laws that violate their conscience.
"We really don't do that," George explained in the 37-minute Beeson podcast, accessible through the iTunes Store. "We hope and we pray that in this country the rights that are enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution and in our laws will continue to be respected."
"We said that if necessary we will be wiling to go against unjust laws just as Rev. Martin Luther King did in the Civil Rights period," George said.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.