Crazy For Conservatism

Monday, March 9, 2009, 10:01 AM

Frank Schaeffer, the youngest son of famous evangelical leaders, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, has written a book about his adventures in the big-time religion industry. Crazy for God is apparently Frank’s penance for all of the damage his once-doctrinaire theology has done to our culture.


For those who don’t know much about the Schaeffers, they were quite popular in the 1970s and 1980s, with a large following among conservative evangelicals and other fundamentalists. My first encounter with Francis Schaeffer was through his book, A Christian Manifesto, published in 1981. The thesis of the book was that modern America, ignoring its biblical roots, had become ungodly and it was up to Christians to reestablish Bible-based, absolutist morality by engaging in political activities, including civil disobedience, if necessary.

Arguably, Francis Schaeffer was the first prominent culture warrior, believing that “secular humanism,” with its alleged commitment to relative truth, was at war with biblical Christianity, with its assumed commitment to absolute truth. Imagine Bill O’Reilly or Rita Crowell with brains and you’ll have an idea where Francis was coming from. Schaeffer influenced many in the evangelical world to become activists against abortion, including Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue.

But Frank Schaeffer, who played a large role in making his father famous, regrets much of his efforts in promoting liberal-hating, which was the practical result of the Schaeffers’ ministry in America. The subtitle of Crazy for God is, 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. Throughout the book, which is often quite funny, Frank expresses his honest doubts about most things he once preached with certainty.

He also has much to say about the sanctimony and profitability of the Christian right, including unflattering characterizations of some evangelical stars:

James Dobson: “A power-crazed political manipulator cynically abusing his followers.” “The most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met.”

Pat Robertson: “A lunatic.” “Would have a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement.”

Jerry Falwell: “Unreconstructed bigot reactionary.”

But there is an interesting connection in Crazy for God to the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh and his “I want Obama to fail” remarks. In commenting on “the new breed of evangelical leadership” in the early 1980s, Mr. Schaeffer says:

Empire builders like Robertson, Dobson, and Falwell liked rubbing up against (or quoting) my father, for the same reason that popes liked to have photos taken with Mother Teresa.

What I slowly realized was that the religious-right leaders we were helping to gain power were not “conservatives” at all, in the old sense of the word. They were anti-American religious revolutionaries….

The new religious right was all about religiously motivated “morality,” which it used for nakedly political purposes.

Frank then goes on to reference the old radioman, Father Charles Coughlin, whom he calls a “pro-fascist ‘Catholic’ xenophobic hatemonger”:

Father Coughlin would have understood Dobson, Falwell, and Robertson perfectly: Begin a radio ministry, move steadily to the populist right, then identify the “enemy”—in Coughlin’s case, socialism and Roosevelt; in the new religious right’s case, the secular humanists and the Democrats.

The connection to Limbaugh, besides the obvious comparison to the polarizing Father Coughlin, is the following comment by Mr. Schaeffer:

The leaders of the new religious right were different from the older secular right in another way. They were gleefully betting on American failure. If secular, democratic, diverse, and pluralistic America survived, then wouldn’t that prove that we evangelicals were wrong about God only wanting to bless a “Christian America?”

In the same vein, many conservatives, led by Limbaugh, are “gleefully betting” on the failure of “liberal” policies because the success of those policies would prove that conservatives were wrong about God only wanting to bless a “Capitalist America.”

Perhaps someday a scion of right-wing radio royalty will have the courage to write his confessional:

Crazy for Conservatism: How I Grew Up as a Dittohead, Helped Poison America, and Lived to Take All of It Back.