Crazy for God

I discovered Francis Schaeffer in 1980, during a week's visit to the Camp of the Woods in upstate New York. I discovered  Death in the City there, and read it on the beach in between stealing glances at the many teenage girls in their two piece bathing suits (what kind of a Christian camp was this?). I was fifteen and my exposure to Christian culture had been limited to the pulpit musings of self taught preachers fresh from the hills of Kentucky; so Francis Schaeffer seemed even more daring than the beach girls. He wrote about philosophy, and threw about names of thinkers that I had barely heard of, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre (I only knew Sartre from a Saturday Night Live skit called "Sartre and Hutch.”) The picture on the book jacket showed a balding, round faced man with a goatee, and he kept mentioning some place called L'Abri in Switzerland, so I assumed he was some exotic European.


I read his books now and then over the years, even as I drifted in and out of the Christian world. The last one I read was The Great Evangelical Disaster in the late eighties. I thought it was terrible; fortunately it was a thin book, but it had a thesis worthy of a pamphlet: any denominational group that does not hold to absolute inerrancy of the Bible in all matters will quickly slide into apostasy.

Most of the book was composed of accounts of the sad fates of different denominations who had strayed. (It also included stills from the film How Then Should We Live? by Frank Jr….it looked badly dated…a Francis Schaffer puppet debating a Phil Donahue puppet)  Of course, apostasy is in the eye of the beholder; G.K. Chesterton, darling of many Conservative Evangelicals, thought that the Reformation was the beginning of liberal apostasy. How does one mark off a denominational slide so neatly? The book was heavily footnoted; however, I soon noticed that almost all the footnotes were to Schaeffer's own books. It seemed an exercise in vanity and hysteria. I wondered at the time if the early books I read were as good as I remembered; had I changed, or had Schaeffer?

Reading  Crazy for God put all of this into perspective for me. Schaeffer was not some exotic euro-Christian; he was a working class guy, quite rough around the edges, who married the refined daughter of Chinese missionaries. I got the sense that there were really three Francis Schaeffer’s: one who embraced a standard issue fifties Fundamentalism, one who dived head first into the Jesus people movement, and one who was somewhat reluctantly pulled into right wing politics and the abortion quagmire.

The first Schaeffer is the also the one we read about in Frank Schaeffer's novels (I really hope these get made into movies someday...but not with John Lithgow for the Dad...wrong wrong wrong!). A man with a limited world view who nevertheless discovers a love for art and culture.

The second Schaefer is the Schaffer that many Christians remember, especially baby boomer Christians; the hip Schaeffer with his goatee, witnessing to hippy drop outs in his far out pad in Switzerland. There are many people who claim to have been saved from the worst excesses of the sixties bacchanalia through Schaffer’s ministry. In Crazy for God Frank Jr. seems to relish this view of his father, even as he also documents his short comings, his anger, his depression, his doubts.

The third Schaffer is the one I have the most problem with. I believe Frank Jr. when he says that his father originally thought of abortion as a Catholic issue. I don't recall abortion being a central concern in the churches I grew up in; it was condemned, of course, but only alongside other societal evils (homosexuals, drugs, promiscuity, women wearing pants and working outside the home, etc.).  I don’t recall it being the only issue that mattered. I can’t call myself “pro-life” if that means wanting all abortion outlawed. I think that would be a disaster. I think most abortions are wrong, but can’t make the jump to saying it always wrong, but I’m all for people trying to convince people that they shouldn’t take that step. I would hope that most sincere abortion opponents would see the wisdom in seeking to reduce the number of abortions rather than just trying to win fights, pass legislation, or attack “baby killers”.

This Schaffer became the intellectual backbone of the evangelical right; he also became the authority for cultural and philosophical questions in the conservative Christian academic world. This Schaeffer's view of cultural history seems to be that everything was great right at the Reformation and it’s been declining ever since; as someone with no great desire to live in Calvin's Geneva I think this view is highly flawed. When I went to Cedarville Schaeffer was everywhere...the feeling seemed to be "he's one us, and he's also really really smart!"

He has been used to create the illusion that there are no intellectual problems at the heart of Evangelicalism. His books are used to prove that you can be a theologically rigid, conservative evangelical and still engage in a healthy artistic, intellectual, and cultural life...I just don't think that is the case. It didn't work for me...and based on Jr.s book, Poppa Schaefer struggled with it too. The Schaffer presented here was a real flesh and blood man who struggled with doubt, depression and anger. Strange though it may be this was encouraging to me. Even the great Francis Schaeffer knew that something in his own spiel didn't add up.

Also, Frankie boy is dead on when he calls Evangelicalism a fast moving personality cult. So much of it is about celebrities and showbiz. I appreciate his sharing the struggles he had with receiving affirmation and money for putting on a show he didn't believe. I've been through that. The only real validation  I get in my life is from church related functions; I'm not particularly valued at work, I have no social life outside of Brunswick Church, even though I have issues with many of the evangelical beliefs that are espoused there (although to be fair, I have always felt free to explore other theologies at Brunswick with fellow spiritual spelunkers). At the same time I know in my heart if I went the standard evangelical route I could do well. I could be a conservative evangelical preacher, and I think I could be successful at it. Like Frankie, I know the arguments, and I know how to present them in an effective and entertaining manner. I just wouldn't believe in what I was doing.