FRANK SCHAEFFER ATTACKS THE "FRAUDS"--ONCE AGAIN

Frank Schaeffer

Every once in a while, we come across the case of Frank Schaeffer; the son of the evangelical intellectual powerhouse Francis Schaeffer.  One time a firm member of evangelical Christianity, who moved away from his roots and converted to eastern orthodoxy--in a way.  In fact, Frank Schaeffer moved from his near fundamentalist beliefs to the liberal side of the ledger--more congruent with the enthusiasms of mainline Christianity. 

Frank Schaeffer was an integral part of his father's work and life within his father's L'Abri community in Switzerland.   Francis Schaeffer opposed theological modernism and promoted a more historic Protestant faith and a presuppositional approach to Christian apologetics, which he believed would answer the questions of the age.  Thousands from around the world came to visit L'Abri and some lived there at times.  L'Abri was meant to be a sort of intellectual learning center established to lend vitality to classic Evangelical discussions many of which had gone dormant in the twentieth century.  To say Frank had been his father's acolyte would be something of an understatement if those who had been a part of L'Abri are to be believed.  According to many, it was Frank himself who goaded his father into making his more strident, public statements and political activities in the mid-1970's to his death in 1984.  It was during this time, Frank Schaeffer says he was instrumental in the formation of the religious right in America.  (Many inside conservative and the "religious right" circles have said that Schaeffer grossly overstates his role in the establishment of the righteous right and its subsequent activities in American politics.)

Schaeffer says that by 1990 he completely dropped out of the Evangelical leadership--later to be admitted into the Greek Orthodox Church in 1992.  Much but not all of his animus against the Christian right seems to stem from the attacks and criticisms Senator John McCain suffered from conservatives during his unsuccessful 1990 campaign for the Republican nomination for the Presidency.

(Much of conservative opposition to Senator McCain stems from his sponsorship of distinctly "non-conservative" measures in Congress and his habit of grasping defeat from the jaws of victory by teaming up with Democrats and moderate Republicans to form "compromises" which blocked Republican measures working their way through the legislative process.  The practical effect being McCain carrying the Democrats' water for them.)

Francis Schaeffer

In 2007, Schaeffer published his autobiography Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back--a sort of "tell all" book.  In Crazy for God, Schaeffer savagely attacked his father and mother, L'Abri, those associated with L'Abri ,  other ministers and many conservative politicians--describing all as frauds and hypocrites. 

In a nutshell, Schaeffer tells us that many in the Evangelical leadership really don't believe what they are saying.  A few don't even believe in God.  But the prime motivation in fabricating their poison swill is money--pure and simple.  Opposition to abortion--the major cause of the religious right--has nothing to do with concern of the unborn but rather  a corrupt and ugly fear of female sexuality.  In addition, Schaeffer has become an ardent champion for Barak Obama--in the extreme.  Schaeffer grants  only the very basest of motives for any opposition and criticism toward Obama and his policies. 

One time friend and confidant, OsGuinness, responded to Crazy for God thus:

Frank Schaeffer unquestionably adored his father, just as his father passionately adored him. Having lived in their home for more than three years, I have countless memories of this, including the sight of the two of them wrestling on the floor of the living room of their chalet, and ending with a fierce hug. Yet no critic or enemy of Francis Schaeffer has done more damage to his life's work than his son Frank—a result that one might not be able to infer from many reviews of the memoir, including that which appeared in the previous issue of Books & Culture.

The problem is not so much that Frank exposes and trumpets his parents' flaws and frailties, or that he skewers them with his characteristic mockery. It is more than that. For all his softening, the portrait he paints amounts to a death-dealing charge of hypocrisy and insincerity at the very heart of their life and work. In Frank's own words, his parents were "crazy for God." Their call to the ministry "actually drove them crazy," so that "religion was actually the source of their tragedy." His dad was under "the crushing belief that God had 'called' him to save the world." Because of this, his parents were "happiest when farthest away from their missionary work." Back at their calling, they were "professional proselytizers," their teaching was "indoctrination," and it was unclear whether people came to faith or were "brainwashed" and "under the spell" of his parents. Frank's own arguments in their support, he now says, were a kind of "circus trick."

Commenting on the time when Francis Schaeffer went through his watershed crisis of doubt in 1951, which he claimed was pivotal to his faith and work, Frank says it was never resolved with any integrity: "Somehow he convinced himself to still believe." His father's "stunted" theological convictions "he held on to more as emotional baggage … than for any intellectual reason." Really? "Left to himself, Dad never talked about theology or God … . God and the Bible were work." And he was different when away from L'Abri altogether: "Dad never said grace over meals. It was as if Dad and I had a secret agreement that away from L'Abri, we were secular people."

And so it goes. With such a son, who needs enemies? To be sure, Frank tries to nuance the conclusion: "I once thought Dad's ability to present two very different faces to the world—one to his family and one to the public—was gross hypocrisy. I think very differently now. I believe Dad was a very brave man," one who simply had to "carry on"—the victim, presumably, of his own unresolved but inadmissible inner tensions. Yet there is no way round it. Francis Schaeffer, in his son's portrait, lacked intellectual integrity. There was a lie at the very heart of the work of L'Abri, and the thousands of people who over the decades came to L'Abri and came to faith or deepened in faith, were obviously conned too.

I challenge this central charge of Frank's with everything in me. I and many of my closest friends, who knew the Schaeffers well, are certain beyond a shadow of doubt that they would challenge it too. Defenders of truth to others, Francis and Edith Schaeffer were people of truth themselves.

For six years I was as close to Frank as anyone outside his own family, and probably closer than many in his family. I was his best man at his wedding. Life has taken us in different directions over the past thirty years, but I counted him my dear friend and went through many of the escapades he recounts and many more that would not bear rehearsing in print. It pains me to say, then, that his portrait is cruel, distorted, and self-serving, but I cannot let it pass unchallenged without a strong insistence on a different way of seeing the story. There is all the difference in the world between flaws and hypocrisy. Francis and Edith Schaeffer were lions for truth. No one could be further from con artists, even unwitting con artists, than the Francis and Edith Schaeffer I knew, lived with, and loved.

Crazy for God unquestionably has its humorous passages. It also has some pages of lyrical beauty and poignancy in which Frank describes his wife Genie and his daughter Jessica. I have no problem with a picture of Francis Schaeffer "warts and all." I knew him well, and could have added one or two stories myself. He was always open about his flaws, just as he was compassionate toward those of others. I had my own disagreements with him. My wife and I actually left L'Abri in 1973 for principled reasons, grieved but certain that we, along with several others, needed to break with a community that we believed was missing its way—mainly because of the direction Frank was intent on taking it.

Yet despite all that, for those of us who were part of the story of L'Abri in the late '60s and early '70s, the better qualities and the legitimate revelations in the memoir are overwhelmed by a blindness and bitterness that cannot be excused. No one who witnessed the stature and diversity of the thousands who came to L'Abri's 50th-anniversary celebration in 2005 could doubt the depth of quiet, enduring gratitude that thousands owe to Francis and Edith Schaeffer. For many of us, they changed our lives forever and set us off on the strenuous and costly path we are still pursuing decades later with no reservations and no regret.

Are there other problems with the book? First, Frank's portrayal of his mother is cruel and deeply dishonoring, monstrously ungrateful since she poured herself out for him far more than his workaholic father. Edith Schaeffer was one of the most remarkable women of her generation, the like of whom we will not see again in our time. I have never met such a great heart of love, and such indomitable faith, tireless prayer, boundless energy, passionate love for life and beauty, lavish hospitality, irrepressible laughter, and seemingly limitless time for people—all in a single person. There is no question that she was a force of nature, and that her turbo-personality left many people, and particularly young women who tried to copy her, gasping in her slipstream. To many of us she was a second mother, and in many ways she was the secret of L'Abri.

Yet Frank describes his mother as a "high-powered nut," who was "best at the martyrdom game." He mocks her with vitriol in several of his books, and her incredible and justly celebrated passion for beauty and excellence he dismisses with a postmodern sneer as a mission that was "nothing less than repairing the image of fundamentalism." Several times I saw her reduced to tears in private after his barbs against her. But now in her nineties, with her failing memory, she neither fully knows nor is able to respond to all he has written about her. "If I read it," she said to me about one of Frank's earlier books, "it would probably break my heart."

Second, Frank's descriptions of other people and events are often equally irresponsible and wildly inaccurate. He rightly disavows the immaturity of his early books and films. He was as "addicted to mediocrity" as anyone he attacked. But for all his improved writing style, his manner of sneering dismissals is unchanged. Sometimes he is ludicrously negative, as in his remarks about Billy Graham and Carl Henry. Sometimes he is self-servingly positive, citing compliments from people—such as Malcolm Muggeridge—who were well known for their overall scathing dismissals of both Francis and Frank. Sometimes he is just plain cruel, as in his description of the woman assigned to be his home school tutor—and as in most cruelty, he is worst when mocking those unable to reply.

Third, Frank's broad dismissals of faith different from his own are often absurd, and his portrayal of recent Christian history is woefully ignorant. On the one hand, he routinely conflates evangelicalism with fundamentalism, or disdainfully dismisses evangelicalism as "fundamentalism-lite," the child of an older fundamentalism. The reverse, of course, is true. Fundamentalism is the recent movement, and evangelicalism pre-dates it by centuries. On the other hand, he inflates his own role in founding the Religious Right, even if out of self-flagellating disgust.

Frank says he was "the prime mover and shaker when it came to making sure that Dad got truly famous within the evangelical subculture," and that he and his father were "amongst the first to start telling American evangelicals that God wanted them involved in the political process." Yet Francis Schaeffer's international recognition came far earlier than the Religious Right, and calling Schaeffer "the father of the religious right" overlooks the far more crucial early role of such players as Ed McAteer, Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, and Jerry Falwell, who were the real fathers of the movement.

Apart from these flaws, and above all the central one mentioned first, Frank Schaeffer's memoir raises other grave issues for me. For a start, I am dismayed by the responses to the book. It has understandably given perverse comfort to those who already dislike the Christian faith, or evangelicalism, or conservatism. More troubling is how many evangelical reviewers and readers have betrayed symptoms of the postmodern disease in their response. The book's revelations are taken as gospel and the book is judged in terms of its style rather than its substance. Our postmodern age is a free schooling in cynicism, so nothing is ever what it appears to be and there are no heroes once you see what really makes people tick. But no one should take Frank's allegations at face value.

Schaeffer seems to fancy himself as a gadfly toward evangelicalism; but it seems to me his role is more like being a dick.  It is doubtful Evangelicals bother themselves to pay attention to him these days--his real audience being fellow liberals who enjoy listening to an apostate spill the beans about what happens behind the curtain which cloaks the goings on in world of the evangelical leadership.  The picture he paints is not a pretty one; but having been behind that curtain himself he feels this gives him a great deal of credibility.  It certainly does among liberal audiences.To get a flavor wider Schaeffer's point of view, peruse the titles for some of his recent writings:

Christians’ Constitutional Religious “Right” to Discriminate and Abuse Post-Hobby-Lobby, Wheaton and Gordon

Gordon College Expels Dietrich Bonhoeffer Because He’s Gay — Christianity Today Magazine Won’t Hire Him Either

Dear Mr. President, As the Executive Editor of Christianity Today Magazine I Demand A Religious Exemption For Burning Witches Our Freedom As Christians is at Stake (No Pun)

Gordon College Believes That Religious Liberty is the Right to Persecute Gays or as Westboro Puts it “FAG MARRIAGE DOOMS NATIONS”

The Can and Can’t LIST of the Religious Right

Wheaton College Becomes a Tool of the Far Right Obama-Haters and Seals the Fate of the Evangelical Community’s Reputation for a Generation.

Hobby Lobby Verdict is a Victory For Ultra-Right Roman Catholic Co-Conspirators With Chuck Colson’s Ghost

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is like Some Mafia Thug, Actually Worse

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to my Execution for Heresy…

“Iraq in Flames” What the F#@! Happened? Answer: Idiot Evangelicals and The Fool They Elected Broke Iraq and the Middle East and the World. Period

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Was Flamingly Gay– Deal With It -

Rubio is a Traitor to the Human Race & a Willful Fool Pandering to Stupid Evangelicals by Denying the Evidence on Climate Change

World Vision: It’s Never Too Late To Hate

The Only Difference between the Late Fred Phelps and the Evangelical Establishment (Not to Mention Christianity Today Magazine) is that Fred had the Guts to Act on His Evangelical Convictions

Do Evangelical Leaders Really Believe Their Own BS? -

There Are No “Absolutes” So Honor the Ethical Evolution of Our Species by Changing Your Religion

I Ended Up in the Greek Orthodox Church and Found I Was Just as Dumb as Before

When Billy Graham Dies, What Circus Has Franklin Set Up to Profit, Given What He Did With His Mother’s Body?

One Look at American Christians and I Figure Jesus Must Have Hated Women– Right?

(If you wish to investigate deeper for yourself, each one of these articles can easily be found on the internet.)

At first blush, one makes allowances that Schaeffer is merely exercising the columnist's art of snarking hyperbolae.  But, after a while, one comes to the uneasy conclusion that he really believes what he writes and means it exactly as he writes it. 

Edith Schaeffer with husband Francis

In the very last part of March, I almost wrote about an article Schaeffer wrote about his mother--an article rather indelicately titled "My Mother Is Dead  (reproduced  in other locations with the more respectable title "Goodbye Mom, Edith Schaeffer 1914 – 2013 RIP").  But at the time, I thought better of it--concluding it wasn't worth the effort. 

I am a Lutheran--not an Evangelical.  I don't even think Evangelicals would have me.  (My years in college and in "ecumenical" youth groups kind of brought that home to me.)  And why should they?  The fact of the matter is that there is a long list of theological issues of intense interest among Evangelicals that are not that interesting or pertinent to the Lutheran walk of faith.  If not about the "first things", then for the second order of things Lutherans came to different conclusions a long time ago--beginning with Luther's own theology itself.  So who am I to weigh in on one of their inter-family squabbles?

That is until I began to sense that a number of Lutherans were getting a bit of schadenfreude watching old Schaeffer giving the what for to those backward Evangelicals.

The occasion in question is an open letter Schaeffer published entitled "Dear Evangelical Establishment...".   It comes in the guise of "friendly advise" to the Evangelical community; but it is in fact merely a collection of Schaeffer's familiar battleaxes sure to warm the hearts of liberals everywhere.  And it is sure to be mostly read by liberals--confirming all the worst stereotypes liberals have about conservative Evangelicals.  But too many won't just stop thinking this way about Evangelicals; they assume in one way or another the same is true of all Christians and Churches--especially those who get in their way and refuse to practice their faith in private.  (That the private sphere seems to be getting smaller and smaller each year is of little moment in their view.)

Among all the articles and books Schaeffer has written, these is several annoying characteristics. 

The first is Schaeffer's penchant for self promoting his previous books--constantly reminding us of his break from the religious right and his knowledge of what goes on behind Evangelical closed doors--often distracting from the subject.  It is like Schaeffer can't help himself in turning every issue to be about him.

Schaeffer also ascribes a conspiratorial character to those of religious and politics different from his.  Especially those whose Christian faith different from his, he deems that they are either brainwashed fools or insincere.  Schaeffer apparently believes the truth of his faith is self-evident.

Schaeffer also claims he has received thousands of letters from Evangelicals who secretly agree with him--but keep their thoughts and doubts to themselves for fear of the evils that would befall on them from their own congregations and shunning from their own families.  Schaeffer scandalously claims his mother entirely agreed with him and fully supported him in his campaign to reveal the truth.  Something which cannot be confirmed or denied now that she is dead.  (If his mother in fact gave her full support, it would be news to those who were closest to her.)

Lastly, Schaeffer constantly sets himself up as a martyr.  He constantly anticipates attacks and sufferings which are to follow each time he reveals some inconvenient truth about the right.  He sometimes expresses amazement when no such thing happens.  Instead, he cites all the positive reviews his books receive and the positive reception he gets from the public--especially from individual Evangelicals who react with a sigh of relief that--damn it--somebody finally somebody said it.

As of late, Schaeffer cloyingly darts about whether he still regards himself as a Christian.  At the very least, Schaeffer holds on to a version of the "the ethics of Jesus/the religion of Paul" trope.  His latest book, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace., significantly muddles the water.  Describing himself as a Christian atheist,  writes:

That killing was done “for God” and yet didn’t lead to a complete re-think about the theological “approach” to a relationship with God is simply insane. Yet this madness persists today. Every time a sermon is preached where someone says “the Bible says God says” the lie continues to be spread. The answer to all such claims is a loud “Says who?”

David Fischler on the Standfirm website notes (Frank Schaeffer: Off His Meds Again)

Frankie doesn’t like “correct” belief. He prefers incorrect belief, evidently. What he actually means is, “I object to anyone claiming that what they believe is correct, except me. I am correct, which is why I can say as many slanderous and/or foolish things about people I disagree with as I want, because I can guarantee that I will never get violent, except rhetorically.”…. It’s an approach taken by virtually no one except a handful of extremely fringe rationalists, but Frankie is convinced that all of Western Christianity is nothing more than a reflection of hyper-intellectual hyper-Calvinism.

So what does Schaeffer write in Dear Evangelical Establishment ?  Here is a sample:

… please read this “open letter” to you to understand what’s been done to you. I’m not your enemy. Your neoconservative “friends” are your enemy.

Your real enemies are not progressive Christian/Atheist/Backsliders like me. Your real enemies are some of the influential people who pretend to be your friends. They are your Nemesis.

I’ll bet the board members of Gordon College, Wheaton College and Christianity Today have no idea about the real reasons behind a bad set of choices they were duped into making in order to serve a purely political agenda masquerading as a “religious liberty” issue. They’ve been had. -

A day is fast approaching where ordinary evangelicals will be cursing Wheaton College, Gordon College and the other evangelical establishment bastions that demanded the right to discriminate against women and gays as a matter of “religious liberty

So many evangelicals live in bubbles that they have no idea how the real world functions. They are going to find out that outside the comfortable inner circle of home-school, Christian school, Christian radio, TV and publishing, churches and Bible study groups, to the larger world people who want to discriminate against gays and women are weird outcasts to be shunned.

And what self-respecting secular, moderate or even ordinary tolerant religious organization will associate with people who write letters to the president demanding the right to discriminate against gay men and women — just for being gay?!?!

What college will play a sports team from Gordon College if Gordon succeeds in gaining the “legal” right to discriminate against gay men and women? Who will hire a Gordon grad from “that place that discriminates against gays?

What academic association will want to work with faculty from Wheaton College, now that Wheaton has “won” a Supreme Court case giving it the right to withhold contraceptive insurance coverage from women?

The argument will soon be made that if Christians can “legally” discriminate against gays and women then secular institutions should be able to exercise their consciences and discriminate against evangelicals. Just wait.

Major evangelical institutions have been talked into becoming part of the Tea Party attack on President Obama in particular and progressive America in general. They are “winning” some battles. But they will lose this war.

With the election of America’s first black president, the advent of the Tea Party and the shift of the GOP to the right, it seems that the major evangelical institutions are launching initiatives that Falwell would have loved. Why?   Short answer:  Evangelicals were manipulated

 

A long history of behind-the-scenes activities to move the evangelical base rightward are paying off. I’ll bet most evangelicals don’t even know they have been duped by neoconservative Roman Catholics and a few others, into a war where they’re just cannon fodder in a larger political battle.

Mainstream evangelical leaders like Wheaton, Gordon and Christianity Today used to set themselves apart from the likes of Falwell. No more. They have now become willing co belligerents of the far-right GOP leadership seeking to discredit Obama.

That is all this “religious liberty” shtick has really been about. And it is going to isolate and damage the evangelical cause. Do the words “Scopes Trial fallout and loss of credibility” ring a bell?

This is no accident. The anti-Obama shift by the evangelicals has been the aim of some dedicated activists. Their work is paying off. But they never did care about the likes of Wheaton and Gordon and would find the journalism of Christianity Today Magazine, let alone the religion of the big pastors that went along, laughable.

The late evangelical leader (and former Nixon hatchet man) Charles Colson was the evangelical Judas that sold his brethren for a mess of political pottage. He sold them to the religious right via Roman Catholic activist Professor Robert George of Princeton, and George’s friends on the Court (Justice Antonin Scalia and the other Roman Catholic members). George helped create The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the legal group at the heart of arguing the Supreme Court “religious liberty” cases.

The neoconservatives have played the evangelicals like a violin. I say “played” because after the 1950s evangelicals never were anti-contraception– until recently that is when aroused on the “religious liberty” issue. And believe it or not many evangelicals, say most teachers at Gordon, never woke up in the morning asking themselves how they could find new ways to hurt the feelings of their gay students by inflicting them with Medieval Roman Catholic “Natural Law.”

Neoconservative activists like George and his Beckett Fund, and Colson helped set the stage for the Tea Party and what should be called the Biblical Patriarchy Restoration Movement. They gave a gloss of intellectual respectability to what was a theocratic wish list targeting gays and women as a means to target President Obama and the Democratic Party. That’s the real game. It is a game worthy of Karl Rove, in fact it is his game…

The aim was not freedom for religion but a chance to deliver a blow against a president that many evangelicals have never accepted as legitimate but that the racist Republican establishment hates. The result risks fulfilling Justice Ginsburg’s “minefield” prediction where the rule of law and equal protection fade into chaos.

The larger American community will not stand for this. Most evangelicals won’t either. They are good  loving people. Wheaton, Gordon and Christianity Today Magazine et al are mere tools in a larger fight. Now they are marked as bastions of intolerance. They will pay a heavy price. They have been abused. That is a shame. Evangelicals deserved better. The cause of Christ did too.

If you doubtful…thinking perhaps I've taken these comments out of context, I invite you to read Schaeffer's letter in full and make your own judgment.

(It should be pointed out that the Supreme Court's ruling on the Hobby Lobby case was actually a quite narrow one.  The fact is Hobby Lobby does provide contraceptive coverage under its healthcare plan.  What Hobby Lobby objected to was four specific medications which are not contraceptives at all but rather are aborficants.  In other words, they don't prevent conception, they destroy the new life after conception.  What the Court will rule in the matter of Catholic institution who do not provide coverage for contraception at all will be decided latter--perhaps years from now.)

Schaeffer letter asserts a conspiracy (neoconservatives and right wing Roman Catholics) which has drawn Evangelicals to make the moral decisions they have.  Moral decisions no decent and fair minded person of good will would make.  Evangelicals have been drawn into a "culture war" whose hidden real agenda is to restore a Biblical Patriarchy in American law and customs and defeat President Obama. 

Because Schaeffer believes the religious right's battles against abortion and advocacy for religious liberty are only a smoke screen for more nefarious purposes, he feels no need to directly take on the debates over those issues.  If they are
"fake" issues, why give them the honor of paying attention to them?  Why fight all the crocodiles when you can just drain the swamp?

But, if Schaeffer's neoconservative/Roman Catholic conspiracy theory is just a product of his imagination, is painting Evangelicals as duped fools and refusal to take moral issues seriously fair?  Not only to Evangelicals; but also to the American civil forum?

Is Schaeffer's mean-spiritedness a merely reflection of that he attributes to so many Christian leaders all over the world?