This is inspired by a comment by Karin to a “quick message” I posted recently regarding Christian political ignorants (not ‘ignorance’ though it does apply, but “ignorants”. I see the one as a condition and the other as the persons). So what if I’m an arrogant, opinionated SOB. You can’t please everyone and I really don’t care to try much among certain segments anymore. It’s all relative depending where you find yourself on the religious/spiritual and/or political planes of thought and perspective. “To thine own self be true”.
In the mid to late seventies I was intimately involved with much of what was evolving within the Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian community. My own ‘Christian’ spiritual and religious understandings were yet in the early stages of development, though my approach to knowledge and truth were more highly influenced by my earlier questioning of authority as realized and manifested in my rebellious “hippy” years of the late sixties and the early seventies. Generally speaking, I was a zealot, but without a gr
eat deal of foundation to express my arguments regarding what I ‘believed’. I found myself sitting under the teaching of a highly intellectual pastor who consumed religious information at a rate that would boggle the minds of most and disseminated this to his congregation weekly and through the week through various courses. But prior to becoming a part of this I had already spent over a year travelling with an independent Evangelical evangelist who taught his trusts how to research the resources of the Bible and utilize these to “get it for your self”. This ability to think and study freely eventually led to challenges to the system that were disconcerting to some and perceived as rebellious by others.
In the late seventies I was first introduced to the teachings of Francis A. Schaeffer through a series of videos produced by Frank Schaeffer, the son of Francis, entitled “How Should We Then Live”. The series was excellent and if you are interested in history in general, art and the influence of both art and Orthodox Christianity on Western culture it is well worth the time. This led me to explore many more of the writings of Francis A. Schaeffer. I have read about 15-20 of his works including reading twice a trilogy of his philosophy/theology considered foundational to the rest of his writings. In his later years he wrote numerous books including “A Christian Manifesto” which is loosely a Christian response to Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto”. There are many more, but time and space precludes enumerating these, and a history of L’Abri, although I can attest that from the perspective of a conservative theological and historical understanding of what is “true” these are excellent works. The reasoning and logic is virtually unarguable. BUT … that is “assuming” that the “Orthodox” perception of history and reality is in “fact” true. Should that “assumption” be proven to be “false” and that the “Bible” is not in fact the absolute measure of “truth” … the reasoning is just so much religious dribble and rehashed lies, even though presented in all sincerity and “faith”.
Now, having said that, I will say that I do highly respect Francis A. Schaeffer and the insight he has exposed through his writings regarding many issues that should concern both Christians and non-Christians. I simply think the foundation upon which he builds his logic is faulty … but I respect the man and many of his conclusions.
The problem became, as Francis’ works were becoming popular, a second video series was produced by Frank Schaeffer, in collaboration with his father Francis and the then surgeon-in-chief at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, C. Everett Koop (who later became U.S. Surgeon General under Ronald Reagan), entitle “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” This series galvanized the conserv
ative Evangelical movement regarding the “abortion” “right to life” issue. As the more “Fundamentalist” segment of Evangelicalism (the Farwell’s and Pat Robertson’s) became receptive of Schaeffer’s highly persuasive “Biblical” stance, more ultra-conservative politically motivated religionists (Rousas John Rushdoony, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen and others) began surfacing and injecting their own formulas of “reconstructionism” and theocracy into the now more consolidated Evangelical/Fundamentalist movement.
This “reconstructionist” – “dominion theology” perspective is now what parades itself as Christian absolutism. It is this religious-political-socio economic ideology that demonstrates itself on the streets of Washington D.C. and permeates the Republican Party. It isn’t a matter of thinking and reasoning. It is a matter of a few conservative intellectuals presuming an absolute based on a limited perspective of history and rejecting all others, and an unwillingness to consider that the church at some point may have gotten it “wrong”. It is the same lie that the Roman imperial powers of the early fourth century recognized as feasible and necessary in order to establish some form of universal control and thus manage itself and those it would rule. The church, willingly – or unwillingly – succumbing to the influence of power and wealth, and thus prostituting itself as a matter of its own security and preservation.
“God” (although I do question the religious conception) did not die with this act on the parts of those who invoke his name, but the “church” as a spiritual entity (at least to the greater degree) did.
That raises more questions than what this blog is about. This is about the Schaeffer’s and the influence they have had on contemporary Evangelicalism.
In the late eighties I began to notice that Frank Schaeffer (the son) was beginning to speak out on his own. His first works were regarding the shallowness of most “Christian” art “Addicted to Mediocrity: Contemporary Christians and the Arts”. Later his writings included more critical examinations into basic assumptions of Orthodoxy and political and economic matters (Is Capitalism Christian?, A Modest Proposal, Bad News for Modern Man: an Agenda for Christian Activism, A Time For Anger - The Myth Of Neutrality). Eventually I became aware that Frank had left the Evangelical wing of Christianity and had taken up association with the Greek Orthodox Church which had always leaned more in the direction of the “mystical” aspects of the faith. Though Greek Orthodoxy may be more open to mysticism, it is still fundamentally “Orthodox” and in my own estimation and research, less than what the “faith” was pre forth century.
So … within the “Christian” environment there is some hope that thinking minds can be heard. But I fear over all the rest of the clamor, that is a very very small chance. The difference between Frank Schaeffer’s thinking and my thinking is that Frank Schaeffer remains within the box of Orthodoxy and I have stepped out of that box. Other than that, I think we would get along pretty well.
