To be fair, there are heartening snippets against fundamentalism, judgmentalism, the erosion of the church-state line, and ignorance dressed up as faith:

All too often we have disobeyed the great command to love the Lord our God with our hearts, souls, strength, and minds, and have fallen into an unbecoming anti-intellectualism that is a dire cultural handicap as well as a sin. In particular, some among us have betrayed the strong Christian tradition of a high view of science, epitomized in the very matrix of ideas that gave birth to modern science, and made themselves vulnerable to caricatures of the false hostility between science and faith. By doing so, we have unwittingly given comfort to the unbridled scientism and naturalism that are so rampant in our culture today.

But there is never a point where the authors call out the politicized leaders who have hijacked their faith. Perhaps that shouldn't come as a surprise. It is a consensus document, after all.

The Manifesto's largest political concern, however, is with articulating the Evangelical relationship to the public square. The signatories reject "the way of Constantine" (faith at the end of a sword) for "the way of Jesus" (living peacefully with difference). It's more intriguing than it sounds in summary, particularly in its discussion of what it means to live in a global public square.

I found the Manifesto's formula of "A Civil rather than a Sacred or Naked public square" problematic, though. There's nothing wrong with the conceptual rejection of a public square either stripped of religious belief or ruled by it. I'm all in favor of a pluralistic discourse. But let's not overestimate the balance between the two extremes here. There are far more voices - and far more empowered voices - in favor of giving a "preferred place in public life to one religion" than there are for removing all traces of religion from the public square. Whatever you want to say about Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, they don't have presidential candidates coming to them hat in hand seeking their endorsements. And can you say "War on Christmas"?

That's probably enough to make some of you stop reading right there. I can't blame you. There's been enough shit under the bridge that if I were the average secular gayboy I wouldn't trust any kind of Evangelical political outreach either.

To make matters worse, the bulk of the paper is taken up not with partisan politics but a theological consideration of the Evangelical identity. It's well-written, subtle and thoughtful, based on a call to reject judgmentalism and pride. Just the kind of thing to raise the heart rate of your local pinhead pastor, in other words. But the nuances will escape the average lay reader. I have no doubt that many of my secular politico buddies would zip right past it without spotting the relevance.

Which is a damn shame, because it's exactly that stuff that matters. The Manifesto is aimed at people like me - the Rev. Daniel Schultz - not Atrios or Markos or Fred Clarkson - and that's what makes it so important. Here's the nut of the entire thing:

Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally.

The whole manifesto - all twenty closely-reasoned pages of it - boils down to this: the authors believe "Evangelical" should refer to a religious identity, not a political one.

As they're quick to point out, that does not mean that Evangelicals will set aside their political commitments. Nor should they be asked to. Nor again are they suddenly going to convert into Democrats or Independents wanting to go deeper not left or right, no matter what Jim Wallis says. Don't kid yourself: many of the people who signed the statement are and always will be conservatives.

But these authors are staking a claim that the future of their movement lies in taking their place alongside other Christians in the US religious ecology. It's tempting to read this treatise as a long letter of apology to other American Protestants: we're sorry, and we promise not to get too political again. Can we come and hang out with you? If the signers manage to reclaim their theological heritage in the way they'd like, the Evangelical brand is going to mean something more like "mainline Protestantism" than "reactionary GOP base."

In other words, they see a greater percentage for their faith in reaching out to an average pinhead pastor such as myself than in lobbying Congress to ban funding for three-way wedding ceremonies for transsexuals in overseas family planning programs.

Which might sound flip, but it's actually not too much of an exaggeration. The old guard - people like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson - really did think that social or political organization furthered their religion. Yes, yes, they were self-serving political hacks of the first order, but that's just the point. They didn't make very fine distinctions between personal, political, or religious advancement. The writers of the Manifesto - among them many highly trained theologians - are willing to expose the older generation's strategy for the soft idolatry that it is.

That generational divide is astounding in and of itself. It speaks volumes about the state of Evangelicaldom that the 80 "Charter Signatories" feel comfortable taking on the rump leadership of the Religious Right.

But like the swift decimation of GOP partisan ID we've seen since 2006, this Manifesto points beyond itself to a changing reality. Right-wing radicalism has worn out its welcome in politics, business, and even the churches. That its authors and signers think the best shot for accomplishing their agenda is to junk their highly politicized social identity and work to reestablish ties with non-partisan religious structures says that something basic has shifted in our society. Whatever you think about these folks - and there are definitely some more trustworthy than others - they've decided they need to play the game in a new way.

As a pastor, I find that tremendously exciting. I look forward to the possibility of establishing new bonds across denominational lines - local pastors almost always do. As a liberal political entity, I have a hard time seeing it as anything but dull, tentative, perhaps irrelevant - and in the long run healthy for our nation. But then the two sides of me don't always communicate so well.

*They're actually taking the mantle of neo-Orthodoxy on themselves, if you want to put it that way.