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This is great news, and I'm thrilled that Jonah, the OCA metropolitan, is a signatory:

Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

"We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence," it says.

The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an effort to rejuvenate the political alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals that dominated the religious debate during the administration of President George W. Bush. The signers include nine Roman Catholic archbishops and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America.

Good for them. This ecumenism of the trenches is a great thing. More of that, please, and less of this, from the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Jose, California, which starts: "Secretly, San Jose is the most gay-friendly diocese in the nation. And now, one parish wants the world to know." My Catholic friend Irene Groot once wrote an essay about her San Jose diocese parish, which removed the crucifix and replaced it with a Jung-inspired "birth canal cross," i.e., a cross with a hole in it where Jesus once was. Which says a lot. Which says everything important about what's going on in that parish, and perhaps in that diocese.

The culture war isn't only between churches and the world, but also between churches that refuse to conform to the world, and those who cannot conform fast enough. I am encouraged and thrilled to know which side of the divide my bishop (who is also my metropolitan) is on. Choose today whom ye will serve...

UPDATE: Here's the text of the Manhattan Declaration, which you are invited to sign:

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

the sanctity of human life
the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The great libertarian scholar Charles Murray has spent six weeks watching Glenn Beck's show, and has come to a conclusion:

Beck is spectacularly right (translation: I agree with him) on about 95 percent of the substantive issues he talks about. He is a full-throated libertarian in a world of wishy-washy Republicans. The man is a gifted communicator. His style doesn't happen to be one I like, but many times I've sat there on my sofa wishing I could make the same point as effectively.

But Beck uses tactics that include tiny snippets of film as proof of a person's worldview, guilt by association, insinuation, and occasionally outright goofs like the fake quote. To put it another way, I as a viewer have no way to judge whether Beck is right. I have to trust that the snippets are not taken out of context, that the dubious association between A and B actually has evidence to support it, and that his numbers are accurate. It is impossible to have that trust.

Which leads Murray to conclude:

What Beck does is propaganda. Maybe propaganda has its place, but let's not kid ourselves. Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann are brothers.

The iconoclastic environmentalists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger light into the popular green blogger Joe Romm as a Green McCarthy. Excerpts:

It's no coincidence that America's Climate McCarthyite-in-chief is a blogger at the largest liberal think tank and not a U.S. Senator. Busy fundraising and campaigning, members of Congress have largely outsourced the deliberative process of legislating to partisan interest groups and think tanks.

Much has been written about the ideological echo chamber conservatives like Sen. James Inhofe, Rush Limbaugh, and Glen Beck have created to enforce anti-environmental orthodoxy on the Right. Less remarked upon has been the creation of its analog on the Left - an accomplishment in which Romm has taken a leading role. Romm has mastered the echo chamber in its liberal expression and creates a reassuring green womb for his growing cadre of loyal readers.

Most importantly Romm functions to inform his readers of the partisan identity of any given thing, whether it be a new technology, policy, or analysis. Thus, when it came time for Romm to criticize a rather technical piece on the rising carbon intensity of the global economy that appeared in the journal Nature he attacked it not as inaccurate or incorrect, but rather as Republican.

More:

Joe Romm has the trust of liberals and Democrats, but not on the force of his arguments, the weight of his evidence, or the success of his agenda, for all are spectacular failures. As terrible as it may turn out to be, global warming is not "apocalypse now." No, Joe Romm has won the trust of partisans because he tells them the story they want to hear better than anyone else. Unfortunately, hyper-partisans like Joe Romm are part of the problem, not the solution. Effective solutions to global warming cannot be enacted in our extremely divided political environment.

Democratic partisans, liberals and greens have spent much of the last eight years tearing out our hair about all the ways the hyper-partisan it's-all-a-hoax! Republicans have blocked action on climate. These complaints may have been cathartic, but they have not been productive. We have not had and cannot have any impact on Republicans, and our partisan apocalypse talk and our sacrifice-now agenda are obviously alienating the vast, moderate middle.

Their post is well worth reading in its entirety. A dismal reality cited by the authors is that in today's fractured media and political environment, the only way to get heard, it seems, is to stake out extreme positions. This is true on both the left and the right.

Timothy Egan says that liberal and conservative won't matter so much in 2010. Why? Excerpt:

It takes quite a bit for Americans to say that the social contract is broken, or look upon concentrated wealth as anything except a virtue.

But we may have reached that breach. Our politics are not simply left and right, conservative and liberal. Never have been. Every once in a while, the great middle of independents are stirred to one side. My guess is, if the drift caused by recent actions continues, the United States will be consumed in the coming year by the politics of betrayal, and the winner will be ahead of the rage.

Right now, a time when only 20 percent of Americans call themselves Republicans and Democrats are shrinking as well, the independents are disgusted with both parties. In large part, it's because neither one seems to be on their side.

More:

There was once a political party that came out against concentration of wealth. They called for regulation of food, drugs, and big corporations. Called for "square deal" for the average American. And their robust spokesman, the leader of their party, said this of his countrymen:

"There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensitive to every duty, regardless of principle, bent only on amassing a fortune."

That party was the Republicans, a bit more than century ago, led by Teddy Roosevelt.

Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center is out with new polling numbers showing that 2010 is shaping up to be a powerful anti-incumbent year -- but no real interest in a third party. Independents are especially volatile, and Republicans are in a better position headed into 2010 than Democrats. It's time for some Republican outsiders who care more about lunchbucket economic issues than the Club for Growth and K Street to get their acts together and challenge GOP incumbents and party regulars!

It's looking like 2010 is going to be a year of anti-incumbent insurgency. I'm wondering if there's any interest from readers with the skill and the wherewithal to organize this sort of thing in setting up a political action committee to fund candidates for Congress who believe in what you might call the Wendell Berry/Front Porch Republic worldview? At FPR, Mark T. Mitchell recently set down what he thinks would be a good platform for people of the left and the right disgusted with the political status quo. He wrote:

Many political analysts are suggesting that this race may be a bell-weather indicating the fortunes of the Obama agenda. But even more, this could portend the rumblings of a challenge to the dominant two parties in America. Recent polls suggest that the vast majority of Americans think we are on the wrong track. Another indicates that fully a half of voters would like to see a viable third party.

What are the prospects of galvanizing this dissatisfaction into a coherent challenge to the entrenched people and interests of both the Democrats and the Republicans? On the one hand, it may be that the general dissatisfaction is real but is coming from far left, far right and everywhere in between. If so, then the prospect of a viable third party emerging from that morass is unlikely. On the other hand, perhaps, despite the differences, there is a significant portion of Americans who could rally around a platform that addresses some of the most urgent concerns underlying the pervasive dissatisfaction with the status quo. While this is merely a preliminary attempt to articulate the broad parameters of such a platform, here are ten positions that might fit the bill.

Read the whole thing to see the particulars he thinks we could unite around.

Take a look at that, and tell me if you'd have any interest in helping form, and/or contributing to, a PAC that backed candidates who generally shared that political orientation? I know I would. But how do we do this?