FRANK SCHAEFFER, the sometimes controversial author of Addicted to Mediocrity and Baby Jack, has just released a book which will challenge many people’s views of his famous father, Francis.  

Crazy for God is subtitled ‘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.’ The unwieldy description is apt, as Schaeffer makes clear in a recent interview in Oldspeak, an online publication of The Rutherford Institute.

While some might be disappointed by his characterization of his parents’ marriage as troubled and sometimes violent, others will be more disturbed by his view of the current Christian social conservative movement – and his insistence that Francis Schaeffer would have disavowed much of it.

Of the renowned founder of the L’Abri Institute, Oldspeak interviewer John W. Whitehead states: “Without the influence of Francis Schaeffer . . . the so-called Christian Right of today would not exist – [and] it is highly unlikely that people such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Tim LaHaye and others would have had the political influence they wield.”

Further, he contends, “much of what comes out of the mouths of these people would today alarm Francis Schaeffer.” He particularly cites the latter’s view of homosexuality.

Continue article >>

Frank Schaeffer concurs, stating: “My dad didn’t see it as a special problem to be singled out from everything else. He didn’t see it as threatening . . . He just saw this as one amongst all kinds of challenges that face people humanly, and was very compassionate.”

Further, he declares, Francis “has been used by people like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and others to give some respectability to points of view that really were not his . . . The idea of watching himself on The 700 Club or a replay of him preaching from Jerry Falwell’s pulpit would not please dad, given the direction all this has gone . . . The idea that he was somehow a creature of the Religious Right is ridiculous.”

Issues such as abortion and homosexuality, Schaeffer continues, “were actually being used for negative political purposes. They were used to structure a power base for people who then threw their weight around.”

His own views on conservative politics have also changed.

Asked about the common image of George W. Bush as a ‘Christian president,’ Schaeffer calls Bush “arguably the worst president in the history of the United States. He is unfit for the office of president . . . Bush is personally responsible for the displacement of the Christian minority in Iraq.”

The Iraq war, he asserts, was based on deception, and “was a completely misbegotten fiasco from the beginning.

– David F. Dawes

December 2007