Frank Schaeffer Takes on the Christianists

Frank Schaeffer (pictured at left) is an American author, film director, screenwriter and public speaker. He is the son of the late evangelist Francis Schaeffer, one of the founders of the modern day Christian Right. He became a Hollywood film director and author, writing several internationally acclaimed novels depicting life in a strict, fundamentalist household including Portofino, Zermatt, Saving Grandma, 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. He has appeared on the Rachel Madow show and other broadcasts and Wednesday of this week he was on on Blog Talk Radio, hosted by James Hipps of The Gay Agenda, another fellow attendee of the LGBT Blogger Summit last December. Schaeffer's views are unique because he saw the fundamentalists from the inside out and what he has to say is informative. I encourage readers to listen to his interview with James.

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I find Schaeffer interesting and a week or so ago his publicists e-mailed me asking if I'd like a free copy of Schaeffer's newest book, Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism). Naturally, I said yes and the book arrived via overnight delivery the next day. In reading his book and having heard him on Rachel's show, he views the current Christianist agenda to be frightening and sees the movement as a menace. Moreover, he sees the far right fundamentalists as having perverted Christianity. Surprisingly, he makes a statements similar to those I made in a debate with a Regent University professor some years back:

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Of course, evangelical/fundamentalists can't stand the Bible's obvious flaws because they worship the Bible, not God. So they try to "fix" their inerrant Bible's reputation by torturous justifications. They make rules even for God as if they understand God as some sort of creature trapped in the pages of the Bible, something like a fly caught on flypaper. . . . God is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock? - human words by flawed authors. The hard place? - the Bible as interpreted by self-interested parties.

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Wikipedia has the following information on Schaeffer's polical views which again largely mirror my own:

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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.
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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."
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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.

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In my view, Schaeffer is correct and the reality is that the evangelical/fundamentalists actual have weak faith, but much fear and hatred in their hearts. I consider them a danger as well. They certainly have no regard for freedom of religion for others.