Posted on 03/17/2008 4:47:42 PM PDT by jdm
The Huffington Post sends us this essay by Frank Schaeffer claiming that Republicans have acted hypocritically in scolding Barack Obama over Jeremiah Wright — because the GOP embraced him and his father. His father is “Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer”, which around here might combine up with a buck to buy a bag of donut holes. Schaeffer fils has repented of his conservativism — hence the appearance at HuffPo — and spends most of it spanking his dad:
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.
Has anyone heard of this guy? I mean, besides Mike Huckabee?
Even getting beyond the arrogance, Schaeffer sets up at least a couple of straw men in this argument. Has anyone of significance accused Rev. Wright of treason? We’ve certainly accused him of America bashing and of conducting hate speech from the pulpit, but neither of those are treason. We have also questioned whether Obama’s description of him as a “spiritual adviser” and as a political mentor means that Obama shares the view that God should damn America and that it should be called the US of KKK-A. Given that Obama explicitly campaigns on his claims of better judgment, shouldn’t we look at his judgement in associating with that kind of hateful rhetoric — especially when he has so little else to offer?
Second, we are told that he “had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan,” and was a “frequent” guest of the Kemps, although Schaefer doesn’t exactly give that any context. So he met once with Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, and stayed overnight with the former — who wasn’t exactly enamored with evangelicals anyway. One supposes that Jack Kemp probably arranged the meetings, but it doesn’t sound as if either President found him or his rhetoric attractive enough to have a second meeting. That’s both quantitatively and qualitatively at the far end of the spectrum from Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright. He sat in that church for 20 years, bringing his children to hear Wright speak and donated over $20,000 in 2006 to support Wright.
Also, I just checked, and Jack Kemp isn’t running for President in 2008. Reagan and Ford aren’t either, although some Republicans did everything but dig Ronaldus Magnus out of his grave in the primaries. \
Schaeffer undermines his own argument in the passage above, too. He notes that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson made inflammatory and downright stupid statements about the 9/11 attacks — and hell, Robertson has made foolish and objectionable remarks both before and since. Both, however, apologized for those remarks and retracted them. They didn’t do that because Democrats objected; they did it because Republicans denounced them for making those statements. Trent Lott similarly resigned from his leadership position in the Senate for saying a lot less than Wright uttered in the mildest of his sermons, and only after his fellow Republicans openly called on him to do so.
At least I know why I’ve never heard of either Schaeffer.
LOL.
Yes he has written many great books.
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.
Never heard of him
Apparently he wrote a book called “Is Capitalism Christian?”
Francis Schaeffer has written a lot of great books including The God Who Is There and Escape from Reason.
Frankie probably pals around with Ron jr. these days, so much in common and all that.
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.
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.
I agree. Schaeffer tried to point out where individuals were wrong in their premises, not engage in race baiting.
I've heard Obama's preacher. He wouldn't comprehend ten percent of Schaeffer's writings.
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..
hmmm... Did Francis Schaeffer (great guy) make the mistake of sending his son to public school and on to college for final indoctrination?
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/
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
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.
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.
What kind of pinko nut you gotta be to even think the question is relevant? Huckabee pink I guess.
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