The 150 evangelical leaders who met behind closed doors on January 14 to anoint a Republican candidate for President were wise not to have invited me.

I believe that Christians have an urgent duty to engage the social, economic, and moral threats to a healthy society. That requires a wide variety of political action. However, one thing it doesn’t call for is playing kingmaker and powerbroker.

By conspiring to throw their weight behind a single evangelical-friendly candidate, they fed the widespread perception that evangelicalism’s main identifying feature is right-wing political activism focused on abortion and homosexuality. In truth, it is hard to imagine the Religious Left in 2008 doing something similar: holding a conclave to decide whether they would throw their collective weight behind either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, unwilling to leave the Democratic primary results to the voters.

I am jealous for the reputation of evangelical Christians. And so are a host of other Christian thought leaders. In 2008, Presbyterian pastor (and Christianity Today board chair) John Huffman gathered a broad-based group to affirm and lend support to a defining document, entitled “An Evangelical Manifesto.” The broad coalition included key seminary presidents, leaders of Hispanic evangelicalism, tall-steeple pastors, and leaders of key parachurch ministries. There were even denominational leaders: the national commander of the Salvation Army was among the first to sign up after the charter signatories.

Christian leaders who exercise the will to power partake of the same thing they decry in society.

The Manifesto explained that evangelicalism is defined by its beliefs, its piety, its compassion, and its mission activity. The Manifesto was largely positive, but when it finally turned negative, it strongly repudiated attempts to politicize the faith, either from the Right or from the Left.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Wheaton College literature professor Alan Jacobs suggested what the Manifesto writers should have put up front (full disclosure: I was one of the document’s editors). He said what some of us thought without being bold enough to blurt it out: “We’re fed up with being the Republicans’ lapdogs, but don’t think we’re joining the Democratic kennel.”

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