Frank who? (more on Obama and pastor)

Hot Air ^ | March 17, 2008 | by Ed Morrissey

[jdm]

Has anyone heard of this guy? I mean, besides Mike Huckabee?

LOL.

[blueyon]

Yes he has written many great books.

[DGHoodini]

Obama trusted Wright...
Obama trusted Rezko...

And these are people he personally knows.

Obama was wrong on the Iraqi War...
Obama was wrong about Pakistan
Obama is wrong about Amadinejhad...
Obama is wrong on Cuba...
Obama is wrong about Chavez...

So much for his vaunted unerring judgment.

[Cubs Fan]

Never heard of him

[jdm]

Apparently he wrote a book called “Is Capitalism Christian?”

[fish hawk]

His father(Francis) if very famous. BUT, what does any of this have to do with the subject. Obama grasped on to Wright but McCain has not idea who Schaeffer is. Big difference there eh?

[TornadoAlley3]

If it walks like a duck....

[aruanan]

Francis Schaeffer has written a lot of great books including The God Who Is There and Escape from Reason.

[TexasCajun]

Frankie probably pals around with Ron jr. these days, so much in common and all that.

[t2buckeye]

I’ve read many books by Francis Shaeffer and believe me...his son is lying about his own father. Shame, shame, shame. His father was called the missionary to the intellectuals; he was NOT emotionally charged but used philisophical arguments to support his faith in an outreach to Europeans primarily. He was extremely instrumental in the pro-life movement as was the son at one time; in fact, it influenced Reagan’s pro-life stance.

To compare his own father to Wright is a travesty.

[Richard Kimball]

I've read several of his books, including The God Who is There, Escape From Reason, and Genesis in Space and Time. I don't recognize him in his son's writings. Schaeffer was a pioneer in setting up an intellectual defense of Christianity. In The God Who is There, he traces intellectual thought through Hegel, Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Sartre and Heidegger. I was most interested in his writings on Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Picasso and Duchamp, having been a fine arts major.

He also has some good writings on the Beatles, Dylan Thomas and Henry Miller. Schaeffer believed that the reason for the current insanity in the world was that modern thinkers had abandoned the premise of thesis and antithesis, or classical reasoning.

Francis Schaeffer is a good read. I never got the impression that he was particularly well received by the Religious Right for several reasons. The first is that most hadn't heard of him. The second reason was because he pushed strongly for an intellectual defense of Christianity, and most of the Religious Right never, from what I saw, never came to grips with putting together an intellectual defense of Christianity against modern relativist thought.

Since I'm more interested in society and culture, I found The God Who is There to be his best book.

[Richard Kimball]

I agree. Schaeffer tried to point out where individuals were wrong in their premises, not engage in race baiting.

[Richard Kimball]

Take Dad’s words and put them in the mouth of Obama’s preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason.

I've heard Obama's preacher. He wouldn't comprehend ten percent of Schaeffer's writings.

[HerrBlucher]

Here I am a big fan if Christian apologetics from an intellectual point of view (Lewis and Chesterton) and I have not even heard of Francis Schaeffer.....me bad....me going to become unbad and do some Schaeffer reading. Sounds like his son is a raving nutjob....oh well..

[elk]

hmmm... Did Francis Schaeffer (great guy) make the mistake of sending his son to public school and on to college for final indoctrination?

[LJayne]

Over the years I’ve had a fascination with Frank Schaeffer, the increasingly wayward son of Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984). The father was a great man who profoundly influenced a generation of Christian thinkers and encouraged some of the early proponents of ID (notably Charles Thaxton and Nancy Pearcey) to challenge evolutionary theory. The son, by contrast, has turned repudiating his father’s legacy into a full-time occupation, cultivating a churlishness and cattiness that is hard to match. My fascination has consisted in tracking how far the son will go in turning against the father.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/frank-schaeffer-nowhere-near-his-fathers-footsteps/

[LJayne]

Francis A Schaeffer is very well known. He was ahead of his time. My husband read his material in college in the 70’s. He definitely spoke and wrote of the times we are living in now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Is_There_and_He_Is_Not_Silent

[Alex Murphy]

Francis A. Schaeffer PING

I’ve read many books by Francis Schaeffer and believe me...his son is lying about his own father.....To compare his own father to [Obama's Pastor Jeremiah] Wright is a travesty.

Frank(y) went off the deep end decades ago, IMO when his "evangelical filmmaker" career cost his financial backers millions, and I suspect Franky couldn't handle the resulting lack of forgiveness. (You want irony? He authored the book Addicted to Mediocrity, before he directed the film "Wired To Kill".) I suspect he converted to Orthodoxy as a sort of protest. Afterwards, he used to promote the Greek Orthodox Church, but I guess that doesn't pay the bills quite like trashing his father's legacy and shilling for liberals and Democrats. Franky always liked attention.

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....

- Os Guinness, "Fathers and Sons", a review of Frank Schaeffer's book Crazy for God.

[Gamecock]

Interesting thing about reading Schaeffer.

You can skim through on of his books quickly and feel like you’ve learned something or you can read a page a day and enjoy a feast for the mind.

His writings seem to be hit home not just at the intellectual, but the hurried casual reader as well.

[allmendream]

I would say a religion that says in its holy book that ‘if you don't work you don't eat’; and ‘my contract with the latecomers who I paid a shekel doesn't negate my contract with you who worked all day for a shekel.’, and “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”; is WELL in accord with capitalism.

What kind of pinko nut you gotta be to even think the question is relevant? Huckabee pink I guess.