“We removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.”

Conservatives are expressing shock and frustration after Apple pulled an iPhone/iPad “app” from its online store that contained basic Christian beliefs on homosexuality and abortion.

Although the move impacts only owners of iPhones and iPads, conservatives fear it is another indicator of where society is headed when it comes to critiquing core Christian values.

The app — one of more than 200,000 applications, or software programs, in the app store — included the complete text of the Manhattan Declaration, a 4,700-word statement on the culture that about 150 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox leaders signed last year and that more than 475,000 other people have since signed.

At the time, the declaration received wide mainstream press coverage, partially because leaders such as James Dobson, Richard Land, R. Albert Mohler Jr., Charles Colson and Timothy Dolan — the new head of the U.S. Council on Catholic Bishops — all were on board. A large number of Southern Baptists signed it.

By downloading the free app, a person could easily read and sign the declaration. More than 35,000 people have signed a petition at ManhattanDeclaration.org asking Apple to reinstate the app.

The application was pulled after 7,700 members of the liberal website Change.org e-mailed Apple and asked the company to remove it, which Apple did in late November.

Read More: http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?id=34201