The Manhattan Something-or-other.

The usual suspects are all buzzing with excitement (well the noise is either excitement or Peter Ould has finally worked up the courage to buy a “special” device on ebay) about The Manhattan Declaration, which is the latest definitive statement on what Conservative Christians must believe.

Superseding all previous definitive declarations of Biblical Christianity, including those found in the Gospels, this document sets out everything Conservatives from a whole range of traditions have in common, with the exception, of course, of one minor detail: deep down each of them believes the others heretical and thus damned in perpetuity. Not that a little thing like that need ever get in the way of the really important aspects of ministry, like hating people who simply want to live and love as God made them, or controlling women’s reproductive organs.

There is, however, one other thing which I must explain in response to the thousands of Sinners who’ve been distraught to see I’m not one of the declaration’s original signatories. My absence is purely as a result of slight misunderstanding: when Metropolitan Jonah asked me to join the gang I thought he was talking about The Manhattan Project (he does have quite a strong accent), and naturally hung up on him.

That’s because when I was a younger man I was quite heavily involved with Bobby Oppenheimer and the people behind the bomb, only falling out when they stopped me using our findings to develop a means of dealing with Baptists once and for all. It’s a little known fact that I’d previously helped Albert Einstein discover the special theory of relativity, although I held that E stood for Evangelism, which was directly related to M ( Money) multiplied by C for Christian Troll, and that business about being square was just Bert’s idea of a joke he then took much too far. So naturally I wasn’t interested in going down that path again, and anyway, since the end of the Cold War there’s nobody to whom I could sell our research secrets.

Now everything’s been explained properly by someone who's only canonically foreign I’m 100% behind this innovative new repetition of the last innovation in hating people like folks did in the good old days. To show my support I’ve even accepted responsibility for promoting things in the blogosphere, and I’m sure little Martyn Minns and all the other schismatics involved will be delighted to learn I’ve already got the ball rolling at http://manhattandeclaration.blogspot.com.

After all, they’ve been so enthusiastic about using my acronym “GAFCON” there’s no doubt they’ll be just as proud to see what the future holds for The Manhattan Declaration. Goodness knows it’s got to be less turgid than their self-righteous tome.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.