As a self-avowed opponent of organized religion, it's not surprising that the director of the new end-of-the-world blockbuster “2012” obliterates the Vatican and Rio de Janeiro's huge mountaintop statue of Christ. In the spirit of eschatological ecumenism, Roland Emmerich also pondered the destruction of one of Islam's holiest sites, the cube-shaped Kaaba in Mecca – until realizing that, unlike van Gogh, he was not willing to sacrifice body parts for his art.

“You can actually ... let ... Christian symbols fall apart,” Emmerich told the Sci Fi Wire. “But if you would do that with (an) Arab symbol, you would have ... a fatwa.”

In just six days, however, more than 122,000 people across the usually divided Christian spectrum have signed a pledge that seeks to replace “turning the other cheek” with an approach that is every bit as scriptural and, under the circumstances, infinitely more appropriate.

Described by evangelical leader Chuck Colson as a “wake-up call for the church,” the Manhattan Declaration calls upon signers to reaffirm and defend three fundamental truths increasingly attacked by our culture and government: the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage and the right to conscience and religious liberty.

“This has been bubbling up for the last year, but it could have been done 10 years ago, or 10 years from now,” said Timothy George, a divinity professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., who helped draft the declaration. “We must render to God what is God's.”

In today's politically correct climate, where the mere mention of “Christmas” is considered intolerant and divisive, George knows some will attempt to brand the declaration as an attack on President Obama or a threat to the First Amendment. It is, in reality, a long-overdue reassertion of beliefs polls suggest are still embraced by most Americans, if not by all of their political, social and even religious leaders.

Right-wing fear-mongering, you say?

Congress is debating health-reform bills that could force taxpayers to pay for abortions, and Obama has said he wants to repeal laws allowing health care workers to refuse to provide abortions, contraceptives and other services for moral reasons.

After more than 100 years, Catholic Charities in Massachusetts no longer participates in adoptions because it refuses to obey a law requiring placement in same-sex households.

And, George told me, pastors in Canada and some European countries have been prosecuted for preaching biblical admonitions against homosexual behavior. Could new hate-crime laws in America produce the same thing here?

America's government is secular, not religious, and faith-based institutions should not expect to accept government money without the strings that come with it. But Americans are not prohibited from allowing their faith to influence their votes. In fact, as second President John Adams observed, the Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

Even before the Manhattan Declaration was announced Nov. 20, there were signs of a great awakening. Bishop John D'Arcy of the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese boycotted Obama's May address at the University of Notre Dame's commencement because of the president's enthusiastically pro-choice policies. Same-sex marriage has been rejected in all 31 states in which it has been put to a popular vote. Providence, R.I., Bishop Thomas Tobin has told abortion-friendly Rep. Patrick Kennedy it would be “inappropriate” for him to receive Communion, and numerous tea parties and rallies have demonstrated that faith-based civic activism is no longer the exclusive property of the left.

This is, by happy coincidence, Thanksgiving Day, set aside by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 as a day of gratitude and praise not to an all-providing government but “to our beneficent father.” Not all prayerful thanks are God-pleasing, however, as Christ himself warns by exalting the repentant tax collector while condemning the lawyer seeking to justify himself by his works. The Declaration of Independence holds that our rights come from God; the Manhattan Declaration freely acknowledges that Christians often misuse those rights. Colson himself was implicated in the Watergate scandals.

There, then, is no basis for self-righteousness in this declaration, which I gladly signed this week. Just a call to repentance, reformation, boldness and hope for a nation that, despite everything, can still praise God from whom all blessings flow.