Posted on 03/22/2008 4:36:18 AM PDT by coffee260
When Sen. Obama’s preacher thundered about racism and injustice, Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father - religious right leader Francis Schaeffer denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr.
Every Sunday thousands of right-wing white preachers (following in my father’s footsteps) rail against America’s sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the “murder of the unborn,” has become “Sodom” by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children.
They say, as my dad often did, that we are, “under the judgment of God.” They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama’s minister’s shouted “controversial” comments were mild.
All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
Dad and I were amongst the founders of the religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation’s sins, instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father’s sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.)
We were rewarded for our “stand” by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.
Consider a few passages from my father’s immensely influential America-bashing book, “A Christian Manifesto.” It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless, it sold more than a million copies.
Here’s Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:
“If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government] ... then at a certain point force is justifiable.”
And this:
“In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools ... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union. ... ”
Then this:
“There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate ... A true Christian in Hitler’s Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion ... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God’s law it abrogates its authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation ... ”
Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become surgeon general. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop).
Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad’s statements.
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.
Yet when we of the white religious right denounced America, white conservative Americans and top political leaders called our words “godly” and “prophetic” and a “call to repentance.”
We Republican agitators of the mid-1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays.
Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.
My dad’s books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the “respectable” evangelical community and he’s still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders.
When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he’d take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad’s “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler’s Germany.
The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister’s words, is staggering.
They are the same people who argue for the right to “bear arms” as “insurance” to limit government power. They are the same people that in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as “fallen away from God” at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.
Today, we have a marriage of convenience between the right-wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the “progressive” Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine.
As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post “[The Clintons] are, indeed, now part of the ‘vast right wing conspiracy.’ ” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html)
Both the far-right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the “scandal” of Obama’s preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency.
Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/far-right smear machine proves that Obama’s minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of “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.
I liked this bit in particular:
"Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells"—their term—and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia. In 2002, Sharlet joined The Family's home for young men, forswearing sex, drugs and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn't undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn't completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners—alone."
Obama says that “words have meaning”. Thanks for reminding us that other “rants”, tho not so crudely put, have meaning too. Perhaps the “crudeness” is what is turning me off of Reverend Wright but more likely, it is his Black theology; he seems to worship Rev. Crone instead of Jesus Christ.
As for Mrs. Bill Clinton, she has lied and purjured so many times she would not recognize the truth if it landed in her lap.
He was campaigning as the healer of America's racial rifts at the same time that he had a close relationship with a racist pastor.
flogging-his-own-otherwise-completely-unknown-book alert.
I take it Father’s Day is a lost tradition in the Schaeffer household...
Just watch what happens as the stakes go up.
When we point our index finger at Jeremiah Wright, saying 'See the hate!', there are 3 fingers pointed right back at us. I'm beginning to see a long, hot Summer ahead...
...when 'Fair & Balanced' is brought full circle...
...and neither Hillary nor McCain will escape unscathed.
Thanks for posting this. I had no idea about Hillary's ties to The Family and only recently learned of McCain's 'spiritual advisor' preaching that the USA was established by God to destroy all the Islamic people of the world...
Popcorn may soon lose its luster...Bookmark...
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