Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

“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,” it says.

The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an effort to rejuvenate the political alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals that dominated the religious debate during the administration of President George W. Bush. The signers include nine Roman Catholic archbishops and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America.

They want to signal to the Obama administration and to Congress that they are still a formidable force that will not compromise on abortion, stem-cell research or gay marriage. They hope to influence current debates over health care reform, the same-sex marriage bill in Washington, D.C., and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

They say they also want to speak to younger Christians who have become engaged in issues like climate change and global poverty, and who are more accepting of homosexuality than their elders. They say they want to remind them that abortion, homosexuality and religious freedom are still paramount issues.

“We argue that there is a hierarchy of issues,” said Charles Colson, a prominent evangelical who founded Prison Fellowship after serving time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. “A lot of the younger evangelicals say they’re all alike. We’re hoping to educate them that these are the three most important issues.”

The document was written by Mr. Colson; Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, who is Catholic; and the Rev. Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School, an evangelical interdenominational school on the campus of Samford University, in Birmingham, Ala.

They convened a meeting of Christian leaders in Manhattan in September to present the document and gather suggestions. The 4,700-word document is called the “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience.” The New York Times obtained an advance copy.

The document says, “We will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other antilife act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent.”

Ira C. Lupu, a law professor at George Washington University Law School, said it was “fear-mongering” to suggest that religious institutions would be forced to do any of those things. He said they are protected by the First Amendment, and by conscience clauses that allow medical professionals and hospitals to opt out of performing certain procedures, and religious exemptions written into same-sex marriage bills.

The most likely points of controversy, he said, could involve religious groups that provide social services to the public. Such organizations could be obligated to provide social services to gay people or provide spousal benefits to married gay employees.

Mr. George, the legal scholar at Princeton University, argued that the conscience clauses and religious exemptions were insufficient, saying, “The dangers to religious liberty are very real.”

First of all, because this is such a hot-button topic, I will lay out several items. 1) I have a close family member who is gay, and who has been in several monogamous relationships, including at least one that she considered to be “marriage” before this was even a dream in the heart of legislators. I love her dearly; she is important to me, and I have no intention of causing her heartache. This is ultimately an issue between her and the Lord. 2) Having attended eight years of art school and being in the art-making business for over ten years, I have had friendships, some very close, with several peers that self-identify as gay or lesbian. Some are still following that lifestyle; some are not. Not all that have left it have done so because of spiritual conviction. I believe firmly in taking people at face value, protecting their dignity and loving them unconditionally. I have never, and will never, shun or attack someone because of their sexual orientation. 3) I am intentionally not posting this on my facebook or twitter because I don’t believe that a one-liner world is the place to have an intelligent discussion about this. Because a blog from a teeny church in New Jersey is. Ha ha. 4) Be it ever so unpopular, I know Whom I have believed, and believe that His Word is unchanging, true for all time, and I am always seeking to become more literate in the Biblical narrative and underlying meaning as a whole. I am committed to Jesus Christ, and I believe His is the way of Truth and Love.

Now. I’ve been very troubled by the growing wave of believers in Christ that are willing to go along with the movement to legalize same-sex marriage. Somehow we have believed the age old half-truth about God being a God of love and acceptance. “Isn’t God a God of love?” we hear the pundits say (most recently, Brian Lehrer from WNYC in his completely irresponsible and sensational coverage of the NY situation). And then a well-meaning person on the other side will say, “Well, that’s the way marriage has always been.” Then Brian will invoke the example of slavery in the Bible. And the whole argument goes down the tubes.

I want to offer my clear, cut-and-dry reason why I believe that no Christian should support so-called “Marriage Equality”, however loving it seems to be. The legislature can take care of itself on this one; we are already a post-Christian society. But the Church must get its head on straight. The issue at hand, and the reason we must care and must stand against this, is because of the importance of God’s Image.

Marriage is not just a cultural institution. If it were, it would be fine if same-sex couples married; it would be fine if people married their dogs; it would be fine if parents married their adult children. But in the beginning, God made Adam and Eve male and female. Why? Because He wanted to create a unique expression of His image. When God said “Let us make Man in Our image”, He proceeded to create them male and female. Do we care about how God chose to reveal Himself to the world? This was before sin entered the equation–when nothing hindered God from doing things exactly as He wanted. We believe that God became a person, yes, to die for our sins, but also to show us, as Hebrews 1 puts it, “the exact representation of the Father.” Is that image worth caring about? Yes! So if the way that God revealed Himself in Christ is important, what about the way He chose to do so at the beginning of human history itself? He carries that image of male and female, and of marriage, through the whole biblical narrative. A rule, as I understand, of biblical interpretation, is that if in a passage or over the whole Bible a concept is repeated more than once, it bears paying attention to. Ultimately, toward the end of that narrative, we read about Christ and His Church–Christ as a Bridegroom, and the Church as the Bride. In fact, the whole Bible is bookended by the male-female marriage paradigm: Adam and Eve as His Image personified in the Garden; and the union of Christ and His Church at the end of history. Important?

We as believers need to be absolutely honest about God’s image and His revelation of Himself. He has chosen to reveal something of His nature by the union of compliments and counterparts–male and female being, I believe, the ultimate earthly expression of that nature. If God cared so much about revealing Himself in a certain way that He created the archtypical expression of it at the very beginning, how dare we stand in judgment of Him? We pat Him on the head like a kindly old grandfather, and say, “Oh, Lord, we know you did it this way before anybody knew better, but we’ve evolved as a society, and we know what is loving more than you do. Don’t worry, it’ll be OK. Who does it really hurt, anyway, if two people want to love each other?” Who does it hurt? It hurts the image of God. And all other arguments aside, that should cause us to tremble.