An Evangelical Icon Speaks Out

Ex-Gay Watch has a review (http://www.exgaywatch.com/wp/2007/12/crazy-for-god-an-evangelical-icon-speaks-out/#more-2744) of an interesting new book by Frank Schaeffer, the son of Francis Schaeffer whose name that commands automatic respect in most evangelical circles. His father's book, How Shall We Then Live?, and its companion video series, have been credited as the primary catalysts that led to the formation of the religious right and the politicization of the evangelical church. More on Francis Schaeffer can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Schaeffer.

Now in his book, 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, Frank Schaeffer seeks to set the record straight. During an interview, he had some interesting comments about currently prominent Christianist leaders. Some of what he says, some of us had figured out already, but it is interesting to see someone of his background making such statements. (I love his comments on Falwell and Daddy Dobson). I for one am not surprised about the comments on Dobson and the use of the threat of the alleged "gay agenda" as a means to power and money. Here are some highlights from the interview:

On the leadership of the religious right: The public image of the leaders of the religious right I met with so many times also contrasted with who they really were. In public, they maintained an image that was usually quite smooth. In private, they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have had a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement.

On the politics of the religious right: I personally came to believe that a lot of the issues that were being latched onto by the Christian Right, whether it was the gay issue or abortion or other things, were actually being used for negative political purposes. They were used to structure a power base for people who then threw their weight around.

On the issue of homosexuality: A lot of people in the evangelical and fundamentalist communities speak theoretically about homosexuality being no worse than adultery or divorce. However, in practice, they are not undertaking national campaigns to single out evangelical people who were married to somebody else at one time and got divorced. So actually there is a tremendous moral hypocrisy there because the whole gay issue has been singled out for special treatment. My dad didn’t see it as a special problem to be singled out from everything else. He didn’t see it as threatening. We had quite a few gay people come through L’Abri [a community founded by Schaeffer and his wife in Switzerland].