My horrible right-wing past: Confessions of a one-time religious right icon (barfalert needed?)

Salon ^ | Wednesday, Dec 24, 2014 06:58 AM EST | Frank Schaeffer

[Olog-hai]

I am a white, privileged, well-off, 61-year-old former Republican religious right-wing activist who changed his mind about religion and politics long ago. The New York Times profiled my change of heart saying that to my former friends I’m considered a “traitorous prince” since my religious-right family was once thought of as “evangelical royalty.”

You see, only in the Mafia, the British Royal family and big time American religion is a nepotistic rise to power seen as normal. And I was good at it. And I hated it while hypocritically profiting from it—until, that is, in the mid-1980s, I quit. These days I describe myself as an atheist who believes in God. […]

The leaders of the new religious right were gleefully betting on American failure. If secular, democratic, diverse and pluralistic America survived, then wouldn’t that prove that we were wrong about God only wanting to bless “Christian America?” If, for instance, crime went down dramatically in New York City, for any other reason than a reformation and revival, wouldn’t that make the prophets of doom look silly? And if the economy was booming without anyone repenting, what did that mean?

What began to bother me was that so many of our new “friends” on the religious right seemed to be rooting for one form of apocalypse or another. …

[Olog-hai]

That’s good; it means fewer will pay attention to him.

[Jack Hammer]

Who the heck is Frank Schaeffer, and why on earth should I give a sh*t what he thinks about anything....?

[LeoMcNeil]

The pre-mil position is heresy in the first place. I’m not sure I buy the notion that Francis Schaeffer wasn’t a pre-mil dispensationalist, I believe he became one over time. Even so, all forms of pre-mil invite discussion of and association with the fantasy land of dispensationalism.