Covenant always involves the shedding of blood (Hebrews 9:18). Jesus knew it. Paul knew it. Peter knew it. Saint Ignatius in the Colosseum knew it.

The worship service I attend this Sunday will serve cute little plastic grape juice cups and pita bread shards from gold-plated dishes in broad daylight. But before Constantine, Christians huddled in the dark catacombs of Rabat, Malta, and passed around a cup that sealed each man’s fate.

On November 20, nearly 150 men once again threw their lots together, this time in a manifesto called the “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience.” Drafted by Dr. Robert George of Princeton University, Dr. Timothy George of Beeson Divinity School, and Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship, and signed by an interdenominational array of church leaders (including WORLD’s Joel Belz and Marvin Olasky), subscribing as individuals, it is a line in the sand putting the government on notice of their intent to resist further encroachment on the sanctity of life, marriage, and liberty:

“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.”

That sounds like civil disobedience is a real possibility. Which means that jail time is a real possibility. The declaration mentions “costly grace”—and the costs of this public stand may be dear indeed. One is reminded of the man who from prison penned in his opening paragraph to The Cost of Discipleship: “We are fighting today for costly grace” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). One is reminded of King David, who said, “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord that cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). Covenant may once more come to mean the shedding of blood.

The declaration continues:

“Throughout the centuries, Christians have taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted but sometimes required. . . . [W]e will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide, or euthanasia or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnership, treat them as marriage or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. . . .”

This is a very serious development indeed. But of course, there are precedents:

“But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with suffering, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plunder of your property . . .” (Hebrews 10:32-34).

“You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Hebrews 12:4).

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

The New York Times can be relied upon to tell us where liberals want to take the country—to tell us what they really want. In an editorial last Thursday, the Times said:

“[I]n a rational system of medical care, there would be virtually no restrictions on financing abortions. But abortion is not a rational issue.”

Not rational? Medical science has known since 1857 that human life begins at conception. It was the medical profession—not the churches—that vigorously lobbied for protective laws against abortion in the 1850s and 1860s. Those laws upheld the highest form of rationality and morality. Those protective laws said simply: Innocent human life may not be directly attacked.

Another influential journal—maybe not as influential as The New York Times, but influential all the same—is California Medicine. Its editors told us in their pro-abortion editorial of 1970 why the Times is wrong to say opposition to abortion is not rational:

The traditional Western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life regardless of its stage or condition. This ethic has had the blessing of the Judeo-Christian heritage and has been the basis for most of our laws and much of our social policy. The reverence for each and every human life has also been a keystone of Western medicine. . . . Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices.

The slaughter of innocents is unjust. It will not matter that it has the backing of the Supreme Court, the president, the Congress, or The New York Times.

Our opposition to liberal abortion is based on this fundamental truth, this self evident truth. This nation—of all nations—proclaimed the right to life as the first among rights, the first human right endowed by our Creator. Jefferson said it well: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.”

Even if you do not believe in God—as apparently The New York Times does not—medical science has incontrovertibly told us when human life begins. “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,” says the Declaration of Independence, including primarily the right to life.

Does The New York Times believe that the Declaration, too, is irrational? Do they think the United States should be adjourned?

Our opposition to abortion is as rational and as deeply ingrained as our opposition to slavery or to segregation. For centuries, slavery was “legal” in all too many parts of our country. Our Supreme Court, in an earlier act of “raw judicial power,” affirmed slavery as a right of property and explicitly declared it constitutionally protected. That gross injustice brought the nation to the brink of dissolution. Lincoln used the words of Jesus to warn that “a house divided could not stand.” Was Lincoln’s opposition to the spread of this evil also irrational?

We hear that The New York Times has had to mortgage its headquarters, that this once-great newspaper is in financial peril. I do not want to see this American institution go under. But if it does die, the obituary for the powerful paper they call “the Gray Lady” will read: Suicide.

Last week columnist Cal Thomas sat down to talk with Louisiana governor and GOP rising star Bobby Jindal, who said he hoped the Republican Party would soon see the light and learn its lessons from the last two election cycles.

Toward the end of the interview, Thomas asked Jindal, a Roman Catholic, about his faith. He replied:

“I read Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life right after I lost my first election in 2003, and one of the main lessons I got out of that was keeping the eternal perspective. If we truly believe what we read in the Bible and hear in our churches there are a lot of things we worry about in life that aren’t that important from an eternal perspective. There are things more important than winning the next election [NOTE: Jindal's next election is in 2011, and he says he's running.] You realize you’re not indispensable. The world can continue whether you are in or out of office, whether your party is in the majority or not. At the end of the day, we are not in control of everything. If you don’t have that perspective, it can mean elected officials taking shortcuts to an end that justified the means.

If you don’t have that perspective you can say it’s OK to attack another person’s character and engage in mudslinging. In 2003 we were criticized for refusing to go negative. I was asked, ‘You obviously regret that choice.’ Absolutely not. How do you go home and tell your children, ‘Don’t worry about what Daddy is doing, just listen to what I say.’ But if we really believe from this eternal perspective that there are things more important than winning the next election or having money . . . it really doesn’t matter whose name is on the statue [because] that has no lasting meaning. This perspective should change the way you conduct yourself, whether it’s politics, or business. And it should. None of us is perfect, but you have to strive toward that.

Second, viewing the sanctity of life, I believe the reason people are valuable is that they are created in the image of God and there’s a dignity there. And that leads me to believe people should have access to health care, not because of policy reasons, but because they’re valuable because we are created by God in His image.

Read the complete interview here and Thomas’ column about the interview here.

Supporters of the “Washington Death with Dignity Initiative” have raised $1 million and are using that windfall to try to get 225,000 valid voter signatures by July 3 to place the measure on the November ballot. One person who supporters of the initiative would probably think would benefit from its passing is opposing it. John Peyton has ALS and can’t do much on his own and can no longer speak. His doctor gives him only three to six months to live, and former Boeing computer programmer is using those last months to oppose the ballot measure that would allow physicians to assist terminally ill patients to end their lives. “What we’re really doing I believe, is attempting to eliminate the sufferer so we don’t have to deal with them,” Peyton said.

Former Washington Gov. Booth Gardner, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, which is incurable but not fatal and would not qualify if the initiative comes law, has come out in support of the measure, but his son and some of his political allies are against it. “I love him, I want the best for him,” his son Doug Gardner said. “But don’t make it easier for these people who are in a weak state to have an opt-out option.”

Roman Catholic bishops meeting at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops today in Orlando, Fla., issued a document designed to clarify the Church’s stance on embryonic stem cell research, an important issue in this election year. The bishops said that …

“… no commitment to a hoped-for ‘greater good’ can erase or diminish the wrong of directly taking innocent human lives here and now.

“As believers who recognize each human life as the gift of an infinitely loving God, we insist that every human being, however small or seemingly insignificant, matters to God.”

The document was approved 191-1.

In a case reminiscent of the Terri Schiavo story, the father and mother of comatose 16-year-old Javona Peters are fighting over whether she lives or dies. Peters’ father wants his daughter to remain on life support, but her mother is seeking full custody so she can sue the hospital for malpractice … and potentially determine her daughter’s fate.

According to Steven Miles, a medical ethicist at the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics, the fate of the girl should be determined by the one “who speaks with the most loving and intimate knowledge of the daughter.” What do you think?

Kyle Smith, a film critic for the New York Post, had an intriguing essay in Friday’s Opinion Journal that, for all its merit, left me wondering why so many of us reflexively assume that to oppose violence is to be anti-American. Smith wanders about, first reviewing what sounds like an absolutely dreadful new Jodie Foster film, and then taking a few jabs at liberals, before settling down to his thesis, which is that liberals like movies that question the use of violence. Such movies, Smith implies, are anti-American. To substantiate his point, Smith points to two recent films, “The Bourne Ultimatum,” and “A History of Violence,” which he says capture the liberal ethos regarding violence, to wit, that it is bad and somehow caused by nefarious forces — in the former movie, a shady government, and in the latter, a violent American culture.

It’s a bad habit for conservatives to adopt this reflex of defending whatever liberals critique. Eric Breindel, a New York Post journalist from a more thoughtful era, once wrote that “some things are true even though Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy said they were.” The same can be said of Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky. The fact that liberals approve of a storyline in which Jason Bourne, the haunted ex-assassin from the Bourne trilogy of movies, was trained by the U.S. government, shouldn’t lead conservatives to suggest that the only pro-American stance is to be in favor of CIA-trained assassins. If conservatism is about, in part, a rightful distrust of large, unaccountable government bureaucracies, then shouldn’t conservatives applaud films that pick on the CIA?

More disturbing, however, is the notion that to oppose violence is somehow anti-American. A conservative understands that in a fallen world, violence may sometimes be necessary. But a conservative, and especially a Christian, also mourns the destruction of life. Smith notes that left-wing Hollywood filmmakers must be disappointed “that audiences remain more interested in crisp revenge than messy guilt.” It seems to me that genuine conservatives, and Christians above all, ought to be disappointed as well. That doesn’t mean that every movie which attempts to portray the true ugliness of violence should be applauded (Smith mentions some real stinkers). But it does mean that we ought to admit that violence is an ugly, terrible thing, even if Oliver Stone says so.