I prefer to think that the infamous steering committee sincerely desired my opinion of their Evangelical Manifesto but they just didn't know how to contact me.

So out of a temporary overstock of conviction I will offer a piece of advice for evangelicals' next scheduled Statement of Our Importance to Ourselves with Accompanying Signatures.

Make all statements about your identity clear and unambiguous. If you allude to "useful idiots", leave no doubt as to what you mean.

Make all statements of belief undisputed; nothing blunts the impact of a manifesto like an ensuing controversy and a nationwide scramble for definitions. Some possible declarations might include:

God is good.
Water is wet.
We really want to make the world a better place.

It's not unreasonable to hope that a simple majority of evangelicals can sign on for that. And since credibility tends to be notable by its absence, you might include something like:

Inasmuch as judgment of sin is an essential part of the Gospel we profess to have, insofar as believers' disobedience is a scandal and a discredit to the faith, and insofar as judgment begins at the house of God (I Peter 4:17), we cordially invite all observers of the Christian religion to dismiss our preachments until such time as we demonstrate a proper understanding of divine hatred of sin, the sine qua non of the euangelion.

I offer this believing that it is truly helpful advice. But beyond that, I offer it in the hope that you might spare us the pain of hearing men like Darrell Bock whining on and on about how, Yes, abortion is a holocaust, but we must not be single-issue people because "if we tip our environment enough out of balance that we have more tsunamis, of the kinds of scale that we've seen recently, that kind of thing...could it affect my grandchildren and great-grandchildren?" He admits that 50 million abortions is a "modern kind of holocaust", but "on the other hand I sit there and say if the environment goes sour and we can't sustain life on the earth, what kind of holocaust izzat?"

Yeah. I think the emergents' would agree that that is not a marketable eschatology of hope.

But back to my point: I would genuinely appreciate it if you guys didn't give occasion for the opinions of Dr. Bock to find a home on the public airwaves. We have seen enough moral lapses and heard enough of your trendy worrying about tsunamis to last us until the eschaton, and no one seems to be discrediting the Way of Jesus as effectively as evangelicals.

For the rest of us, an alternative for the term "evangelical" is desperately needed. David Wells settled on the word protestant, I've settled on the word non-conformist. But whichever way you go, waste no more time in making necessary distinctions.