Frank Schaeffer. What in the world happened to this man? The son of Francis Schaeffer, a voice that stirred a generation, seems to have completely cut all ties to his father.
There may be a few good reasons, at the risk of trying to psychoanalyze someone I don't know. He was raised in a home that had the influences of 1950s fundamentalist behavior codes, which is true of most anyone born in the 1950s. He was sent off to boarding school while his father's fame and influence took off. Francis is known to have had a temper.
On the other hand, the rigid fundamentalist tag seems a difficult one to make stick. No one, twenty to thirty years ago was more in favor of engaging the culture than Francis Schaeffer. Few were as critical of legalistic insistence on unbiblical absolutes, of being "absolutist about everything". Few were more supportive of Christian involvement in the arts, in simple citizenship, in the full spectrum of living a life as if all things were God given gifts. All the things Franky accuses fundamentalists of depriving him of, his father supported. Odd.
Franky Schaeffer was an instigator of one of Francis' film series, dealing with abortion, infanticide and Euthanasia. Franky was an activist in the pro-life cause. He wrote about the arts, politics, edited a book defending Capitalism from a Christian perspective. Then he went to Hollywood. His documentary making experience did not translate well to feature film. He directed a horror flick, a sci-fi flick and a comedy, all of which were commercial duds. I saw the comedy. It wasn't funny. It was, in fact, dark and pointless. Evangelicals criticized his films for certain less than savory elements. They questioned why he was making Hollywood movies at all - (yet today, perhaps because of Franky, there are many Christians in Hollywood making good films that are not mere propaganda).
Then he, along with Catholic convert Tom Howard, looked into the early church. He eventually embraced Eastern Orthodoxy. “It was a relief to replace tyrannical simplicity with Byzantine paradox, tidy theology with messy mystery, smug certainty with forlorn hope.” He wrote a book detailing his conversion, blaming almost all ills in western society on Protestantism, making the case that individualism in the reading of scripture is the reason abortion is now epidemic.
Franky Shaeffer changed his name to Frank.
He then wrote a series of novels. He says that they are not autobiographical, yet they were about a young man being raised by Calvinist Missionaries in Europe. The father is an egomaniac with a temper, the mother a completely irrational pietist. The characters bear a striking resemblance to Francis and Edith.
He wrote critically acclaimed accounts of his struggles with having a son enlist in the military and seeing him stationed in the middle east. He chided the wealthy and white in the United States for depending on minorities and less well financed to serve in the all volunteer army. He gets lots of interviews now, on Oprah and C-Span.
Now, he blogs for the, Huffington Post that bastion of calm, balanced political and cultural analysis. Several posts are unable to mask his utter disdain for Reformed theology, for fundamentalism, disdain for some of the perhaps naive prayers of his mother, for some of the firmly held ideas of his father. He recounts some of the hate-mail he gets from Evangelical Christians who feel betrayed, some of which is laced with the "f" word. He posts excerpts from a new novel he seems to be working on, in which the characters toss around the "f" word with equal frequency. Not much reference to his Orthodox piety to be found. Virtually all references to American Protestantism are filled with invective. Like this one, “…you want to make sure your kids get caught up into the clouds with Jesus. But you've got a problem. How are you going to get them to believe right, when you're clearly insane? See you're going to have to come up with a way to sneak the gospel message to them since no one in their right mind would join you.”
Certainty is arrogance, he arrogantly certifies. What we need is a recognition of "mystery". Life is complex, nobody really knows it all. Hard to find this sort of humility practiced in his prose. He recounts the old "fundamentalists have hi-jacked the Republican Party" canard, as if mainliners had no influence in the party of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and as if political involvement by religious people is wrong. He fits well at HuffPo, though he takes aim at Democrats as well. He is an equal opportunity bomb thrower.
Just a thought. C.S. Lewis was known for the way his Christian faith was never worn on his sleeve, yet saturated everything he wrote. He was genial, logical, quick to dissect any idea he felt deficient without dehumanizing his debate adversary. Francis Schaeffer was forceful, harshly critical of ideas, staunch in his insistence on certain truths, but rarely, if ever, directing his passionate ideas at persons.
Frank, imprecise in his reasoning, is considerably less careful with his machete-like writings. People are, if not the targets of his invective, the collateral damage. There may be many reasons for the path Frank Schaeffer has chosen. One can only hope his incendiary rhetoric damages as few human beings as possible. But one thing is for certain. He is as far away from the theologically conservative faith of his father as he can possibly be.
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