Posted on 08/21/2011 5:29:10 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — In every line of work, there are family businesses. But no business is more defined by dynasties and nepotism than evangelical preaching. Lyman Beecher, Bob Jones, Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Robert H. Schuller, Jim Bakker: all had sons who became ministers.
It is never easy stepping into Dad’s shoes, of course. But when the family business is religion, it is especially perilous. That is one of the central laments, anyway, of “Sex, Mom, & God,” a new memoir by Frank Schaeffer. To secular Americans, the name Frank Schaeffer means nothing. But to millions of evangelical Christians, the Schaeffer name is royal, and Frank is the reluctant, wayward, traitorous prince. His crime is not financial profligacy, like some pastors’ sons, but turning his back on Christian conservatives.
Mr. Schaeffer, who is now 59 and lives north of Boston, grew up in L’Abri, a Christian community in Switzerland founded by his parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer. In the 1960s, L’Abri was known in Christian circles as a drop-by haven for intellectually curious evangelicals, who could live in the mountains for a few days or even a few years, talking with Francis and Edith about the Bible, Christian art or existentialism. Mr. Schaeffer grew up surrounded by heady talk and, as he discusses in his memoir, tempted by the young women who passed through. He got one of them pregnant when he was 17, then married her.
In the 1970s, Mr. Schaeffer’s eccentric, relatively obscure family became wealthy and influential. Books like “The God Who Is There,” published in 1968, made his father a hero to American evangelicals, including future political activists like Jerry Falwell.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I think they need to re-write this article ... start over with a new premise. “In every line of work, there are family businesses. But no business is more defined by dynasties and nepotism than HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY and POLITICS.”
“Secular leftist Jews are trying to drive a wedge between Jews and evangelicals. A support of Israel unites them and this makes leftists crazy.”
This is an incredibly succinct and inarguable statement.
“No point in getting into the latter two here, but anybody who rails against the first two or thinks the world prior to the Renaissance and Enlightment was a better place is completely insane.”
Please don’t judge Francis Schaeffer by what this biased reporter says.
that reminds me of something I read and it ended with:
“In the end it is between you and God and always has been.”
that reminds me of something I read and it ended with:
“In the end it is between you and God and always has been.”
All of this has nothing to do with anything other than that the NYT discovered that at some point Michelle Bachmann stated that one of the most influential books in her life was “How Shall We Then Live?”
So they started poking around to see what hay they could make out of that and ran into Frankie. Bingo.
At bare minimum Mr. Schaeffer is not honoring his father and mother. Not the mark of a disciple of the Master.
Before all this nonsense about him converting to something or other, Franky had some very very good books. He’s a talented writer. I credit Franky with swaying me to a pro-life viewpoint.
But the Christian life isn't a sprint, it's a long distance race. Paul encouraged all Christians to finish strong and remain true to the faith.
Washington Post, 7/10/11 | Jane Smiley
“[Schaeffer’s] memoirs have a way of winning a reader’s friendship… Schaeffer is a good memoirist, smart and often laugh-out-loud funny… Frank seems to have been born irreverent, but his memoirs have a serious purpose, and that is to expose the insanity and the corruption of what has become a powerful and frightening force in American politics… Frank has been straightforward and entertaining in his campaign to right the political wrongs he regrets committing in the 1970s and ‘80s… As someone who has made redemption his work, he has, in fact, shown amazing grace.”
“Part memoir, part exploration of evangelical views.”
PoliticusUSA.com, 5/16/11
“A work that alternates from heartwarming to thought provoking to laugh out loud funny… Schaeffer brilliantly guides the reader through an exploration of the Bible’s strange, intolerant, and sometimes frightening attitudes about sex, and how these Biblical teachings, through the evangelical grassroots of the Republican Party, have come to dominate the GOP stance… Schaeffer’s writing style combines intelligence, warmth, humor, depth and insight… Sex, Mom, and God is hands down one of the best non-fiction books of the year.”
Huffington Post, 6/13/11
“Intelligent and easy to read; it transitions smoothly back and forth between story-telling and point-making prose… In his portrayal of Edith Schaeffer, Frank is able to call out the nuttiness of the religious right and to humanize conservative and Evangelical Christians in the same narrative. It is the deft work of a talented writer practicing his craft… It is a bit of wisdom our entire nation-hell, the whole world-needs to hear.”
The Daily Beast, 6/24/11
“Intriguing… [Schaeffer’s] privileged view of the Christian right’s sexual weirdness makes his account particularly interesting, and helps explain why the aggressively pious so frequently destroy themselves with sex scandals.”
http://www.frankschaeffer.com/
Frank Schaeffer (born August 3, 1952) is an American author, film director, screenwriter and public speaker. He is the son of the late theologian and author, Dr. Francis Schaeffer. He became a Hollywood film director and author, writing several internationally acclaimed novels depicting life in a strict, fundamentalist household including Portofino, Zermatt, and Saving Grandma.
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
Schaeffer has written: “In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God).” He added that he was a Republican until 2000, working for Senator John McCain in that year’s primaries, but that after the 2000 election he re-registered as an independent.
On February 7, 2008, Schaeffer endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, in an article entitled “Why I’m Pro-Life and Pro-Obama.” The next month, prompted by the controversy over remarks by the pastor of Obama’s church, he wrote: “[W]hen my late father — Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer — denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.”
On October 10, 2008 a public letter to Senator McCain (and Sarah Palin) from Schaeffer was published in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. The letter contained an impassioned plea for John McCain to arrest what Schaeffer perceived as a hateful, and prejudiced tone of the Republican party’s election campaign. Schaeffer was convinced that there was a pronounced danger that fringe groups in America could be goaded into pursuing violence. “If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters ... history will hold you responsible for all that follows.”
Soon after Obama’s inauguration, Schaeffer criticized Republican leaders for the course on which they had taken his former party:
How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today’s wholly negative Republican Party.
In February, 2010, Schaeffer criticized President Obama’s critics for being racist.
What are the sources for 51 and 52?
On October 10, 2008 a public letter to Senator McCain (and Sarah Palin) from Schaeffer was published in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. The letter contained an impassioned plea for John McCain to arrest what Schaeffer perceived as a hateful, and prejudiced tone of the Republican party’s election campaign. Schaeffer was convinced that there was a pronounced danger that fringe groups in America could be goaded into pursuing violence. “If you do not stand up for all that is good in America and declare that Senator Obama is a patriot, fit for office, and denounce your hate-filled supporters ... history will hold you responsible for all that follows.”
Soon after Obama’s inauguration, Schaeffer criticized Republican leaders for the course on which they had taken his former party:
How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today’s wholly negative Republican Party.
In February, 2010, Schaeffer criticized President Obama’s critics for being racist.
“I am an Obama supporter. I am also pro-life . . . Our country needs someone to show us a better way, a president who is what he seems, someone with actual moral authority that our diverse population can believe in who has the qualities that make us want to follow him. Obama is that person.”
Franky is crazy for something or other. Thanks for the link.
Francis Schaeffer is a pathetic figure. Son of famous, dedicated Christian leader Francis Schaeffer, he has declared his distaste for his father’s activities in the service of Christ. Frank has apostatized from his and his Father’s theology and politics as revealed in a recent television interview to promote his new book while at the same time bashing Christian authors for making gobs of money with their books! In that interview he declared that “Nobody is damned or going to Hell,” Christians are haters for being critical of abortion and gay rights; and “salvation is a journey.”
He proudly said, “I’m an enormous fan of Obama. He’s a Christian and the greatest political leader of my lifetime.” He supported Obama for President although he claims to be an Independent.
He speaks of “religious paranoia boiling in the Tea Party” movement without documenting any examples.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/21845
“The son has become a lefty. That is his main problem.”
Odd thing, the people running the L’Abri organization has the same problem. Don’t know why or how that happened.
I grew up in a fundamentalist missionary family that in the 1970s and 80s morphed into my father’s activity as one of the founders of the Religious Right. We would hobnob with Republican leaders from Ronald Reagan to Gerald Ford and the Bush family, Jack Kemp and many others. One day it dawned on me that the far right of the Republican Party -— in other words its base -— actually hates America.
The Religious Right reveled in rising crime statistics, “family breakdown” statistics, failing public schools and so forth. As I explain in my book Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism), if crime started going down, or public school test results started going up -— without the country “turning back to Jesus” -— then that would prove that somehow “we” were wrong.
We wanted our country to fail because it had “turned away” from what we believed to be true.
Combined with the fact that we began to lose parts of the culture war, when it came to other Americans beginning to recognize gay rights, expanding women’s rights, abortion rights and such, the Religious Right and the Republican Party infected gun-toting America with a chip on its shoulder about a mile wide. This led to the myth that “they” (fill in the blank, gays, Jews, blacks, liberals -— whatever) are “taking away our country from ‘us’”...
“Conservative” means that you believe it’s right to legalize torture, but reject health care for all.
These days to be a conservative means that you hate the United States government elected by the people; believe that if millions of citizens are out of work that it’s their own fault and that the rest of the community should not help them by spending tax dollars; think that Sarah-believes-in-casting-out-demons-before-she-ran-for-governorship-Palin speaks for you. To be a conservative means you believe that healthcare reform will lead to “death panels”; that the president of the United States is not a “real American”; that a university education is a dangerous thing; that Americans who live in big cities are less American than those who live in small towns; that brown people, blacks, progressive whites, gays, public school teachers, Hispanics, immigrants, are somehow conspiring to subvert the “real America” with a “gay agenda” or a “Muslim agenda” or at least the browning of “our” white America.
In other words to be a conservative today is to be an anti-American, nihilistic libertarian know-nothing who believes in unregulated consumerism and the theology of dominion, and the Rapture that many conservatives also subscribe to along with such ‘facts’ as that Obama is the - literal! - Antichrist.
In other words to be a conservative today is to be an anti-American, nihilistic libertarian know-nothing who believes in unregulated consumerism and the theology of dominion, and the Rapture that many conservatives also subscribe to along with such “facts” as that Obama is the -— literal! -— Antichrist.
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