Frank Schaeffer: Son of Evangelical Royalty Turns His Back, and Tells the Tale

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.

When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he’s calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new “Hanoi Jane.”

For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters — “the rube base” who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh — had not voted as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/open-letter-to-the-republ_b_172822.html

Frank Schaeffer
@Frank_Schaeffer
Why the Mainstream Media Are Clueless About the Religious Right | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet bit.ly/pRXJty
19 Aug via TweetMeme

Michele Bachmann vs. Rick Perry: Who’s the Bigger Right-Wing Extremist? | Tea Party and the Right .. bit.ly/p910zn
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Frank Schaeffer
@Frank_Schaeffer
How the Head of Fox News Is Making Americans More Right-Wing, More Ignorant and Ever More Terrifie.. http://t.co/Suk7PO1
13 Aug via TweetMeme

Frank Schaeffer
@Frank_Schaeffer
thank the “tea party” for a 4 percent drop in the market
4 Aug via web

more stupidity from the Tea Party religious, Zionist right http://t.co/Z5yqWOo
31 Jul via web

Norway killer made video that could be a Tea Party production http://t.co/1Ruqrda
23 Jul via web

Frank Schaeffer
@Frank_Schaeffer
mass murderer “a Christian fundamentalist with a deep hatred of multiculturalism, of the left and of Muslims” Guardian UK sound familiar?

https://mobile.twitter.com/#!/Frank_Schaeffer

RE: When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he’s calling for more flag-draped coffins

This is of course one of the VILEST and FALSE accusations I have ever had the displeasure to read.

WATCH THIS : http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_012209/content/01125108.guest.html

Sean Hannity asked Rush Limbaugh pointblank whether he wants Obama to fail.

If people even bothered to even LISTEN to UNDERSTAND what Rush said IN CONTEXT. They would understand what he means.

Here is his response to Hannity IN FULL

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Sean, he is our president now, and he’s not black. He’s not from Mars. He’s our president. He’s a human being. We’re a country comprised of human beings that the Democrat Party and the left have attempted to arrange into groups of victims, and that’s who he appeals to, and the victims are the people waiting around for some grievance to be resolved. They’re waiting around for something to happen for them, and he is parlaying that. So I think the fact that he’s African-American — his father was black — to me, it’s irrelevant. This is the greatest country on earth. We want to keep it that way. It is that way for specific reasons. Now I look at the things that he has said, and I’m very much concerned that our greatness is going to be redefined in such a way that it won’t be great, that we’re just going to become average.

We cannot have this large a government role in the private sector with so many people thinking that just because they’re Americans they’re entitled to things, that this guy is going to be passing them out, and keep this country great and innovative, full of entrepreneurs. These things concern me. Now my critics, and yours, when they hear me say things like this, they have knee-jerk reactions. They’re not listening or parsing my words, either. They’re just, “Well, Limbaugh is not with the program. Limbaugh doesn’t get it! Limbaugh is not sensible.” He’s president of the United States. It doesn’t matter to me what his race is, what his ethnicity is. What matters to me are his policies and what his plans are, and I only know what he has said he’s going to do based on what he has done and how he’s voted. And in terms of what I would use to define the greatness of the country, he’s not it.

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Rush is concerned about Obama’s POLICIES. If Obama’s policies are going tot ake this country on the road to socialism, then of course he deserves to fail.

I don’t know where you are getting your ‘Hanoi Jane’ and ‘Draped Coffins” idea from but you are obviously a liberal troll.

RE: For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war

Which one is that? Can you show me which war was attempted that the DEMOCRATS ( your party ) themselves ( i.e. John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton ) did not vote for?

RE: mismanaged economy

Whcih party controlled the purse strings when the debt and deficits started to balloon in 2007?

ANSWER: Democrats under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

RE: lack of regulation of our banking industry

Which party’s congressmen and senators were the one’s calling for stricter and tighter regulation of the practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as early as 2003? ANSWER — THE REPUBLICANS ( and Bush himself ).

Which Legislators were fighting against this? ANSWER — Barney Frank (whose boyfriend Herb Moss was a Fannie Mae executive ) and Chris Dodd ( who got a sweetheart deal from Angelo Mozillo of Countrywide, he was on the list of “Friends of Mozillo”).

RE: handing our country to rich crooks...

Which party did the rich crooks of Wall Street contribute most of their money to and which party in power actually INCREASED stimulus to bail them out? (e.g., took over Citigroup, GM and Chrysler and bailed out Goldman Sachs via AIG )?

ANSWER: THE DEMOCRATS.

RE: obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Ha ha ha. Doubling and Tripling the deficits and spending so much in just 2 1/2 years ( DOUBLE THAT of Bush’s yearly spending ) to a point where we exceeded our debt ceiling, got downgraded, and now is demanding that we continue to increase our spending, is called “repairing the damage” in your warped reasoning. What we need is more people who think and vote like you and we will accelerate the process of being like Greece.

RE: These days to be a conservative means that you hate the United States government elected by the people

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If you really believe this, then you don’t really know conservatives and misunderstand conservatism. In fact, you don;t really know the principles by which this coutnry was founded.

Conservatives believe in the following :

1) That there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.

2) It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably; the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire. It i ‘s through convention—a word much abused in our time—that we contrive to avoid perpetual disputes about rights and duties: law at base is a body of conventions.

3) America is guided by morality, having an origin in God

4) The U.S. Constitution is not a “living and breathing document.” Americans are guided by contracts, and the biggest of these contracts is the U.S. Constitution. It is the defining document which enables our rights, and delegates the powers to each branch of the U.S. Government, as well as to the states of the Union. It prevents societal experimentation, and was the mortar on which the bricks were laid in founding the country.

5) The Free Market fosters creativity and inventiveness. American conservatives know that businesses operating in a free market system are far more productive than any other businesses in the world. For they understand that to do away with this system will create high unemployment and expand poverty never before seen on American soil.

6) Illegal immigration is against the law, and threatens our security, morality and traditions as a nation.

7) The Tenth Amendment should never be forgotten, keeping Federalism alive and well.

8) The reason for public policy is for the preservation and improvement of American society. It cannot be made in an experimental attempt to rush us into a Utopian society. It must be the same for American foreign policy.

9) Americans have the right to keep the fruit of his own labors. Taxes must be kept low, and government spending must be kept under control so that prosperity may ring throughout America.

We therefore are ALWAYS VIGILANT regarding our government, no matter which party is in power.

Therefore, Conservatives know that we must continue to educate the masses of individuals that would rather watch American Idol than to even notice the amount of taxes taken from their paycheck. It is in this principle that we can never, under any circumstances, allow ourselves to fall into a malaise when in power. We must continue to be active in our educational opportunities. “The conservative must become more engaged in public matters. It is in his nature to live and let live, to attend to his family, to volunteer time with his church and synagogue, and to quietly assist a friend, a neighbor, or even a stranger. These are certainly admirable qualities that contribute to the overall health of a society. But it is no longer enough.” We must be organized, resolved and aggressive in defeating the left, and keeping them down so that they never dare think of entering public life again.

And therein lies the problem with your statement -— You confuse being vigilant with “hating” the government that we ( conservatives included ) elected. It is not “hate” that drives conservatives, it is the desire to hold those in power ACCOUNTABLE to the people that drives us.

in other words, YOU FORGET what our founding fathers and early presidents and even those whose thoughts influenced the shaping of this country warned us about. Here they are again to refresh your memory :

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“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.” — Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” — Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884), abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator, in a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852, according to The Dictionary of Quotations edited by Bergen Evans

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.” — Edmund Burke

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” — James Madison, Federalist no. 51.

“It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.” — John Adams, 1788

“Those who have been once intoxicated with power and have derived any kind of emolument from it can never willingly abandon it.” — Edmund Burke

“Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power.... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” — Thomas Jeffferson, 1799

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