He’s offering this measured proposal to an evolving human race: Eradicate Fundamentalism In All Its Forms.
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June 24th, 2010 | 10:45 pm | #1
Franky Schaeffer: Eradicate Fundamentalism In All Its Forms.
(a) Let’s start with eradicating Liberal Fundamentalism.
(b) Was his daddy a Fundamentalist?
June 25th, 2010 | 12:05 am | #2
Lord have mercy… Is he still Orthodox? That’s a very unfortunate essay…
June 25th, 2010 | 4:30 am | #3
Although I would replace “liars” with “self-deceived,” I suspect Schaeffer is making a really important point here. The example of gluttony seems apt. Fundamentalists typically engage in a lot of rationalization to align their Bible lessons with a selective assortment of “common sense and compassion,” as well as norms lifted from tradition, contemporary Christian culture, etc.
So let’s call this the Schaeffer challenge: in your attempts to apply Romans 12:2, begin, like Descartes, by trying to call into question every idea, norm and value commitments. Then, try to read the Bible afresh, holding in suspicion all your past understandings and assumptions about what it says, or how it should be interpreted. Build anew your beliefs and values according to this straightforward and child-like reading of the Bible, continuing to doubt everything that can’t be clearly legitimized in terms of this straightforward reading.
Anyone willing to take this challenge? If done sincerely, diligently and rigorously, I think it would be an eye opener–especially for and about those fundamentalists who claim a purely biblical foundation for their beliefs and values.
June 25th, 2010 | 7:52 am | #4
I think I will use the same standard Mr. Schaeffer uses and eradicate his “literal-minded” commentary.
June 25th, 2010 | 9:16 am | #5
“I think I will use the same standard Mr. Schaeffer uses and eradicate his “literal-minded” commentary.”
D’Oh!
June 25th, 2010 | 9:52 am | #6
What a zealous little essay that was.
June 25th, 2010 | 11:24 am | #7
Frank Schaeffer is wandering in an increasingly dry and barren land.
His father, Francis, was indeed not a fundementalist. He was a Fundementalist — capital “F” — with a keen understanding of the historical and theological roots of that word. An understanding clearly lacking both in his son and in his son’s temporary friends at HuffPo.
June 26th, 2010 | 7:22 am | #8
Frank sounds shocked that there are hypocrites in Christianity. Shocked!
I’m a hypocrite, as is every single Christian I’ve ever known. In fact, hypocrisy seems to be a key prerequisite of entering the church. We realize that we’re fallen people, that we say one thing and do another, that we live our lives by a different–and lower–standard than we should. This doesn’t disappear when we become Christians–although the situation should, hopefully, improve–we just realize that we are, finally, forgiven by God.
And in response to Irene’s question about his orthodoxy…no, he’s not orthodox. He’s strayed far and wide from classical Christian faith. He’s lost his way. Fortunately, he’s not far enough away that God can’t bring him back. He needs prayer.
June 26th, 2010 | 10:48 am | #9
Poor Frank Schaeffer. I thought he would eventually find joy in Orthodoxy. But, alas, you can take the boy out of fundamentalism but you can’t take the fundamentalism out of the boy. The bad habits he nurtured as a flame-throwing culture warrior in the 80s he has honed to near perfection in his current exhibitions of self-righteous indignation.
The “everyone who disagrees with me is an a**hole” attitude of the “angry young man, Franky” has become the sad, pathetic ramblings of an angry middle-aged man, Frank.
As Bob Dylan once said, “Everyone wants me to write finger-pointing songs, but I only have 10 fingers.” Apparently, Schaeffer has an endless supply of fingers.
June 26th, 2010 | 11:53 am | #10
Well said, Steve P., well said. Frank’s problem is that he does not yet know himself as a poor lost sinner. And because of this, he also has not yet come to know the one and only saving Gospel, “how that Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:1-4).
I am sorry to say that I see this same problem with many of the commentators on the Evangel blog. It is a mish-mash of true Christian faith and blind human reason.
“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” (1 Tim. 1:15).
June 26th, 2010 | 3:15 pm | #11
I wonder what folks think of the “Schaeffer challenge” I mentioned in #3:
I recognize that Catholics probably see this as a boneheaded personal endeavor, but wouldn’t it yield some interesting insights into those sola scriptura Protestants of a fundamentalist stripe?
Or why not?
June 26th, 2010 | 3:51 pm | #12
Re: the Schaeffer challenge. May I assume that one of these assumptions to be jettisoned is the belief that a fresh straightforward reading of scripture will somehow be an eye-opener? Or is that old tradition of constantly seeking the novel exempt from from this challenge?
June 26th, 2010 | 4:02 pm | #13
David,
The first assumption you mention should be jettisoned. In taking up the challenge, one should of course jettison all assumptions about the outcomes of this investigation. There should likewise be no prior commitments to “that old tradition of constantly seeking the novel.” In other words, the novel, as such, isn’t to be favored or disfavored.
On the other hand, to engage in the “Schaeffer challenge” work, a certain minimal set of background assumptions and commitments must of course be maintained. Among these we would place some of those core “fundamentalist” commitments that are being put to the test, such as that one’s beliefs and values ought to have, as much as possible, a purely biblical foundation.
June 26th, 2010 | 5:34 pm | #14
Frank Beckwith wrote:
The bad habits he nurtured as a flame-throwing culture warrior in the 80s he has honed to near perfection in his current exhibitions of self-righteous indignation.
So true. Couldn’t stomach him then, either. You’d think the people at Huffington Post would read into his background and see the rather unhealthy pattern; but, alas, his character defects are too useful to them.
June 26th, 2010 | 5:46 pm | #15
“The bad habits he nurtured as a flame-throwing culture warrior…exhibitions of self-righteous indignation”
Words chosen, perhaps, from intimate, personal experience? I’m not sure if Dylan ever uttered it, but I have heard it said, “It takes one to know one.”
June 26th, 2010 | 6:00 pm | #16
“It takes one to know one”? That’s an argument in defence of Schaeffer? How about “I’m rubber, you’re glue”?
If you support Frank, it might be best just to say that. No one’s going to take your head off.
June 26th, 2010 | 6:11 pm | #17
Steve P., As I’ve said…well, just read comment #3.
June 26th, 2010 | 6:18 pm | #18
I just read comment #3, Janice. Still, it’s easier if you make your position clear, at least to me.
“Build anew your beliefs and values according to this straightforward and child-like reading of the Bible, continuing to doubt everything that can’t be clearly legitimized in terms of this straightforward reading.”
But Scripture, like anything, isn’t read in a vacuum. So, what is straightforward? You talk about the need for common sense and compassion when reading, but whose common sense and whose compassion? Yours? A Nigerian Christian’s? A Copt, Russian Orthodox, Pentecostal? And how does one determine what can and cannot be “clearly legitimized” by this kind of reading?
If we jettison all, then, we can assume, we have nothing influencing us at all. Of course, this is impossible.
June 26th, 2010 | 6:26 pm | #19
These, of course, are all good questions for the fundamentalists to ask themselves. These are sorts of “eye-opening” questions a fundamentalist should be pressed to consider.
You should read comment #13.
June 26th, 2010 | 6:57 pm | #20
“These, of course, are all good questions for the fundamentalists to ask themselves. These are sorts of “eye-opening” questions a fundamentalist should be pressed to consider.”
No, I’m asking you to consider them. How do you do this? How do you approach scripture anew, with this apparently straightforward approach? If you’re making strong assertions about how one should approach scripture unburdened from some sort of fundamentalist perspective, then you can give me some idea of what a “straightforward” reading is, determining what can and cannot be “clearly legitimized.”
From your #13 post:
“Among these we would place some of those core “fundamentalist” commitments that are being put to the test, such as that one’s beliefs and values ought to have, as much as possible, a purely biblical foundation.”
You point me to this post, you mentioned some “background assumptions” that must be maintained, but then just go ahead, and state what I quoted above, which isn’t a core assumption that must be maintained, but something fundamentalist-related that must be jettisoned. This doesn’t answer my question. So, what is “straightforward”? It’s still not clear to me what you’re trying to say.
June 26th, 2010 | 7:22 pm | #21
Here’s my suggestion then. Reflect on what you know of regarding popular fundamentalist attitudes towards the scriptures. Are you familiar with any fundamentalists who claim that the Bible is the ultimate authority, and who ascribe to some or all of their beliefs and values a purely biblical foundation? Then think through the “Schaeffer challenge” (as explained in #3 and #13) and ask yourself this: what might Janice be getting at? Why might a fundamentalist, as previously described, think that the “Schaeffer challenge” is something she could accept? Finally, ask yourself this: what might such a fundamentalist come to realize if she actually tried to engage in the Schaeffer challenge, sincerely and rigorously?
June 26th, 2010 | 7:54 pm | #22
The “Schaeffer challenge” is remarkably similar to John Rawls’ veil of ignorance in that both have virtually the same degree of plausibility in the real world.
June 26th, 2010 | 8:04 pm | #23
Janice’s “Schaeffer Challenge” is well-named. Like Frank Schaeffer, she thinks setting up straw men and knocking them down constitutes a convincing argument.
I’d be curious to know if she knows the first thing about “fundamentalist” or evangelical hermeneutics; and no, a general stereotype of how a fundamentalist interprets scripture doesn’t count.
June 26th, 2010 | 8:11 pm | #24
David T. Koyzis,
It looks like you may be misunderstanding both Rawls’ veil of ignorance and the Schaeffer challenge. What exactly is the “real world” plausibility” that you assume each must have?
Consider thought experiments in philosophy. What do you think Rawls meant when he called the original position a “thought experiment for the purpose of pubic- and self-clarification”? What is your understanding the “real world plausibility” that an effective philosophical thought experiment is required to have?
June 26th, 2010 | 9:00 pm | #25
Janice wrote:
What do you think Rawls meant when he called the original position a “thought experiment for the purpose of pubic- and self-clarification”?
Rawls’ qualification is meant to defeat a common objection to social contract theory: that society isn’t formed by an agreement of individuals. Thus, to theorize as to content of such a “contract” is an empty exercise. Rawls avoids the issue by proposing his thought experiment.
What is your understanding the “real world plausibility” that an effective philosophical thought experiment is required to have?
To have value, a thought experiment should be possible. The “original position” as proposed by Rawls is not only a historical fiction; it is a conceptual impossibility. No person can stand apart from the culture, assumptions and language in which they are raised– to propose that they can do so is an exercise in self-deception, and any conclusions drawn from such an exercise, including Rawls’ statements about the conditions of justice, are merely a rehearsal of the cultural assumptions which Rawls claims to set aside.
June 26th, 2010 | 9:24 pm | #26
Exactly, Dale. I couldn’t have put it better.
June 26th, 2010 | 9:26 pm | #27
This is true only if you mean logical or conceptual possibility.
This is erroneous on multiple levels. The original position thought experiment does not require a person to “stand apart from the culture, assumptions and language.” The thought experiment rather asks us to imagine persons that are not allowed to know:
Are suggesting that it is impossible to imagine such persons? Are you claiming that it is impossible to imagine the pairwise preferences of such persons? (Remember, the original position also stipulates specific interests of such persons.)
Moreover, Rawls is clearly not asking us to rid ourselves of all “cultural assumptions.” Rawls’ conception of justice presupposes a certain public political culture. This is an explicit in Political Liberalism.
It’s a bit unfortunate that some folks here don’t understand the “Schaeffer challenge” I proposed. It’s a lot more unfortunate that folks here misunderstand Rawls’ basic ideas.
June 26th, 2010 | 9:51 pm | #28
“Here’s my suggestion then. Reflect on what you know of regarding popular fundamentalist attitudes towards the scriptures.”
So, it’s easier to instruct others to do something–even though your own instructions are quite vague–than for you to just clarify what a “straightforward” reading of scripture is.
“Are you familiar with any fundamentalists who claim that the Bible is the ultimate authority, and who ascribe to some or all of their beliefs and values a purely biblical foundation?”
Are you familiar that not just fundamentalists do this (that is, finding a biblical foundation for their lives and claiming the Bible as their ultimate authority)? Fundamentalism is a very slippery, and overused and misused term with deep historical significance. I think you’re failing in trying to define fundamentalism. But perhaps that’s the problem; you’re not even trying to define it clearly.
“Then think through the “Schaeffer challenge” (as explained in #3 and #13) and ask yourself this: what might Janice be getting at?”
So, it’s better for me to determine what you’re saying, than it is for you to just clarify by answering a few questions?
“It’s a bit unfortunate that some folks here don’t understand the “Schaeffer challenge” I proposed.”
That’s your fault for not being clear. You’re proposing we approach scripture–at least in your initial explanations–in a nonsensical manner. You can pepper your responses with tidbits from Rawls and Descartes, but it boils down to a lack of clarity.
June 26th, 2010 | 10:14 pm | #29
Steve P, it’s not really my interest to engage in remedial instruction. If you can locate your misunderstanding more specifically, then perhaps I can help you. If not–if you’re just going to basically say, “I can’t understand”–then I’m just going to point you back the to some helpful questions I proposed for you to try to think through in comment #21. I would also direct you to use a dictionary, several of which are available for free online.
June 27th, 2010 | 9:05 am | #30
It would seem to me that the “Schaeffer Challenge” is something that Schaeffer himself has failed to accomplish. That being the case, why would I want to follow Mr. Schaeffers challenge?
June 27th, 2010 | 1:19 pm | #31
Well, we tend to think a certain brand of christianity will solved all our problems with God. Frank was once a protestant, then now is a liberal eastern orthodox. And there are some eastern orthodox liberal in their theology like Protestants and Roman Catholics, either could solved his problems.
June 27th, 2010 | 5:34 pm | #32
Steve, I’m curious: why do you think this?
June 27th, 2010 | 6:42 pm | #33
I took the challenge! I wound up a Baptist again! Sweet! :)
June 28th, 2010 | 9:58 am | #34
Janice: “It’s a lot more unfortunate that folks here misunderstand Rawls’ basic ideas.”
You mean folks like David T. Koyzis and Dale Black?
“Steve P, it’s not really my interest to engage in remedial instruction.”
Alright, I have to say that I did burst out in laughter when I read that put-down. It wasn’t nice, but it was funny.
I, of course, disagree with you, Janice, on this one, and many others as well, but I do acknowledge your intransigent “pluckiness” amidst your sophistry.
And I acknowledge your humorous barbs too.
June 28th, 2010 | 3:34 pm | #35
Janice wrote:
This is erroneous on multiple levels. The original position thought experiment does not require a person to “stand apart from the culture, assumptions and language.”
From my (very) dog-eared copy of A Theory of Justice, Rev. Ed., (1999), p. 11
In justice as fairness the original position of equality corresponds to the state of nature in the traditional theory of the social contract. This original position is not, of course, thought of as an actual historical state of affairs, much less as a primitive condition of culture. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice. Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
Are suggesting that it is impossible to imagine such persons?
Yes. We can’t imagine people who have no social sense of themselves, and we certainly can’t imagine what such hypothetical people would think. The very words we use to reason are partly determined by our social rank, our abilities, our sense of the good–all things which Rawls forbids his hypothetical persons to know. His thought experiment is flawed from the outset.
Rawls’ conception of justice presupposes a certain public political culture. This is an explicit in Political Liberalism.
Rawls’ argument in Political Liberalism builds upon A Theory of Justice. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls derives a concept of justice (and thus a “public political culture”) from a hypothetical agreement between individuals who are “in” the original position. As the text I’ve quoted shows, such individuals aren’t even supposed to know their own conception of the good, let alone have a political culture.
It’s a bit unfortunate that some folks here don’t understand the “Schaeffer challenge” I proposed.
I understand your straw man perfectly well. It proves nothing, except your lack of understanding of “fundamentalist” or evangelical hermeneutics.
June 28th, 2010 | 4:52 pm | #36
The best answer to Mr. Koyzis’s question – Whatever happened to Frank Schaeffer? – is answered here.
Books & Culture | March 2008
FATHERS AND SONS
On Francis Schaeffer, Frank Schaeffer, and Crazy for God.
by Os Guinness
If asked what is the deepest relationship imaginable, many people would say it is between lovers, or between husbands and wives. The case can be made, however, that from a Christian perspective, no relationship is more mysterious and more wonderful, yet sometimes more troubling, than that of fathers and sons. The depth and wonder begin with all we know of the relationship of God the Father and God the Son, while the troubled aspects stem from the Fall. Consider Absalom’s rebellion against King David in the Old Testament, Edmund Gosse’s exposure of his father Philip, the Oedipal drive in the writings of Sigmund Freud—and now Frank Schaeffer’s Crazy for God, a memoir that is his personal apologia at the expense of his famous father, Francis Schaeffer, who was the founder and leader of the worldwide network of L’Abri communities.
Frank Schaeffer unquestionably adored his father, just as his father passionately adored him. Having lived in their home for more than three years, I have countless memories of this, including the sight of the two of them wrestling on the floor of the living room of their chalet, and ending with a fierce hug. Yet no critic or enemy of Francis Schaeffer has done more damage to his life’s work than his son Frank—a result that one might not be able to infer from many reviews of the memoir, including that which appeared in the previous issue of Books & Culture.
The problem is not so much that Frank exposes and trumpets his parents’ flaws and frailties, or that he skewers them with his characteristic mockery. It is more than that. For all his softening, the portrait he paints amounts to a death-dealing charge of hypocrisy and insincerity at the very heart of their life and work. In Frank’s own words, his parents were “crazy for God.” Their call to the ministry “actually drove them crazy,” so that “religion was actually the source of their tragedy.” His dad was under “the crushing belief that God had ‘called’ him to save the world.” Because of this, his parents were “happiest when farthest away from their missionary work.” Back at their calling, they were “professional proselytizers,” their teaching was “indoctrination,” and it was unclear whether people came to faith or were “brainwashed” and “under the spell” of his parents. Frank’s own arguments in their support, he now says, were a kind of “circus trick.”
Frank’s baleful influence on his father is a textbook example of how Christian ministries and organizations can be ruined through undermining their own principles—in this case, through nepotism and family politics.
Commenting on the time when Francis Schaeffer went through his watershed crisis of doubt in 1951, which he claimed was pivotal to his faith and work, Frank says it was never resolved with any integrity: “Somehow he convinced himself to still believe.” His father’s “stunted” theological convictions “he held on to more as emotional baggage … than for any intellectual reason.” Really? “Left to himself, Dad never talked about theology or God … . God and the Bible were work.” And he was different when away from L’Abri altogether: “Dad never said grace over meals. It was as if Dad and I had a secret agreement that away from L’Abri, we were secular people.”
And so it goes. With such a son, who needs enemies? To be sure, Frank tries to nuance the conclusion: “I once thought Dad’s ability to present two very different faces to the world—one to his family and one to the public—was gross hypocrisy. I think very differently now. I believe Dad was a very brave man,” one who simply had to “carry on”—the victim, presumably, of his own unresolved but inadmissible inner tensions. Yet there is no way round it. Francis Schaeffer, in his son’s portrait, lacked intellectual integrity. There was a lie at the very heart of the work of L’Abri, and the thousands of people who over the decades came to L’Abri and came to faith or deepened in faith, were obviously conned too.
I challenge this central charge of Frank’s with everything in me. I and many of my closest friends, who knew the Schaeffers well, are certain beyond a shadow of doubt that they would challenge it too. Defenders of truth to others, Francis and Edith Schaeffer were people of truth themselves.
For six years I was as close to Frank as anyone outside his own family, and probably closer than many in his family. I was his best man at his wedding. Life has taken us in different directions over the past thirty years, but I counted him my dear friend and went through many of the escapades he recounts and many more that would not bear rehearsing in print. It pains me to say, then, that his portrait is cruel, distorted, and self-serving, but I cannot let it pass unchallenged without a strong insistence on a different way of seeing the story. There is all the difference in the world between flaws and hypocrisy. Francis and Edith Schaeffer were lions for truth. No one could be further from con artists, even unwitting con artists, than the Francis and Edith Schaeffer I knew, lived with, and loved.
Crazy for God unquestionably has its humorous passages. It also has some pages of lyrical beauty and poignancy in which Frank describes his wife Genie and his daughter Jessica. I have no problem with a picture of Francis Schaeffer “warts and all.” I knew him well, and could have added one or two stories myself. He was always open about his flaws, just as he was compassionate toward those of others. I had my own disagreements with him. My wife and I actually left L’Abri in 1973 for principled reasons, grieved but certain that we, along with several others, needed to break with a community that we believed was missing its way—mainly because of the direction Frank was intent on taking it.
Yet despite all that, for those of us who were part of the story of L’Abri in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the better qualities and the legitimate revelations in the memoir are overwhelmed by a blindness and bitterness that cannot be excused. No one who witnessed the stature and diversity of the thousands who came to L’Abri’s 50th-anniversary celebration in 2005 could doubt the depth of quiet, enduring gratitude that thousands owe to Francis and Edith Schaeffer. For many of us, they changed our lives forever and set us off on the strenuous and costly path we are still pursuing decades later with no reservations and no regret.
Are there other problems with the book? First, Frank’s portrayal of his mother is cruel and deeply dishonoring, monstrously ungrateful since she poured herself out for him far more than his workaholic father. Edith Schaeffer was one of the most remarkable women of her generation, the like of whom we will not see again in our time. I have never met such a great heart of love, and such indomitable faith, tireless prayer, boundless energy, passionate love for life and beauty, lavish hospitality, irrepressible laughter, and seemingly limitless time for people—all in a single person. There is no question that she was a force of nature, and that her turbo-personality left many people, and particularly young women who tried to copy her, gasping in her slipstream. To many of us she was a second mother, and in many ways she was the secret of L’Abri.
Yet Frank describes his mother as a “high-powered nut,” who was “best at the martyrdom game.” He mocks her with vitriol in several of his books, and her incredible and justly celebrated passion for beauty and excellence he dismisses with a postmodern sneer as a mission that was “nothing less than repairing the image of fundamentalism.” Several times I saw her reduced to tears in private after his barbs against her. But now in her nineties, with her failing memory, she neither fully knows nor is able to respond to all he has written about her. “If I read it,” she said to me about one of Frank’s earlier books, “it would probably break my heart.”
Second, Frank’s descriptions of other people and events are often equally irresponsible and wildly inaccurate. He rightly disavows the immaturity of his early books and films. He was as “addicted to mediocrity” as anyone he attacked. But for all his improved writing style, his manner of sneering dismissals is unchanged. Sometimes he is ludicrously negative, as in his remarks about Billy Graham and Carl Henry. Sometimes he is self-servingly positive, citing compliments from people—such as Malcolm Muggeridge—who were well known for their overall scathing dismissals of both Francis and Frank. Sometimes he is just plain cruel, as in his description of the woman assigned to be his home school tutor—and as in most cruelty, he is worst when mocking those unable to reply.
Third, Frank’s broad dismissals of faith different from his own are often absurd, and his portrayal of recent Christian history is woefully ignorant. On the one hand, he routinely conflates evangelicalism with fundamentalism, or disdainfully dismisses evangelicalism as “fundamentalism-lite,” the child of an older fundamentalism. The reverse, of course, is true. Fundamentalism is the recent movement, and evangelicalism pre-dates it by centuries. On the other hand, he inflates his own role in founding the Religious Right, even if out of self-flagellating disgust.
Frank says he was “the prime mover and shaker when it came to making sure that Dad got truly famous within the evangelical subculture,” and that he and his father were “amongst the first to start telling American evangelicals that God wanted them involved in the political process.” Yet Francis Schaeffer’s international recognition came far earlier than the Religious Right, and calling Schaeffer “the father of the religious right” overlooks the far more crucial early role of such players as Ed McAteer, Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, and Jerry Falwell, who were the real fathers of the movement.
Apart from these flaws, and above all the central one mentioned first, Frank Schaeffer’s memoir raises other grave issues for me. For a start, I am dismayed by the responses to the book. It has understandably given perverse comfort to those who already dislike the Christian faith, or evangelicalism, or conservatism. More troubling is how many evangelical reviewers and readers have betrayed symptoms of the postmodern disease in their response. The book’s revelations are taken as gospel and the book is judged in terms of its style rather than its substance. Our postmodern age is a free schooling in cynicism, so nothing is ever what it appears to be and there are no heroes once you see what really makes people tick. But no one should take Frank’s allegations at face value.
At a deeper level, Frank’s baleful influence on his father is a textbook example of how Christian ministries and organizations can be ruined through undermining their own principles—in this case, through nepotism and family politics. We have a rash of nepotism currently afflicting evangelicalism across the board, so this point carries wider lessons. In the early 1970s, when I was considering my long-term future at the Swiss L’Abri, I remember asking John Stott and James Houston what sort of questions I should be asking. Among other things, they both made the same point: “Watch and see whether the Schaeffers truly give authority to those who are not family members, or whether the family members are always more equal than others.”
Frank unwittingly confirms their wisdom by openly admitting that his role was the result of “nepotism,” and by acknowledging that “it was our family, not the other L’Abri workers and members, who were really calling the shots.” Yet the worst example of nepotism and family politics was his own disastrous persuading of his father to enter the political fray. After the Lausanne Congress in 1974, I remember well how Francis was blackly depressed, believing he had no more to say. It was Frank, alarmed at what he saw, who then abandoned his own aspirations as an artist and became his father’s “sidekick” in order to re-charge his father with visions of political activism.
In the process Frank overrode the established principles of how decisions were made at L’Abri. As he acknowledges, he “goaded” Schaeffer toward the strident and increasingly gloomy last period of his life, and he himself became a brash and intemperate hothead, notorious for his slashing attacks on evangelical scholars who disagreed with him. The net effect of Frank’s efforts was to sow the seeds of his own self-loathing, and also to return his father to fundamentalism and to undermine his reputation in the long term. That was the first time in my experience at L’Abri when a major decision was made without unanimity among the leaders, and it was clear that the family trumped everyone else and Frank trumped everyone else in the family. It was the breaking point for me and many others.
The deepest issue of all lies in how all this happened, and here Frank gives us the clue but never follows the trail with the honesty he should have. Throughout the memoir he says he was neglected by his parents, which may have been true—though he was always central in the daily thoughts and prayers of his mother, and at the time he welcomed the neglect as freedom. Frank also hints at his ability to manipulate his parents because of their guilt over the neglect: “No one has more power over a loving father (especially if that father feels a bit guilty for neglecting his children) than a beloved son.”
But neglect and guilt are not the deepest explanation. The real truth is that Franky, as he then called himself, was spoiled. He was more like a poster child for Benjamin Spock than the son of “fundamentalist missionaries.” Having been born well after his sisters, and having survived polio as a child, he was rarely challenged, disciplined, or denied. As a result, he grew up a “little Napoleon,” as some of the L’Abri students called him. He would boast that he could twist his parents around his little finger, and time and again he proved it.
Running away from boarding school at fifteen, Frank was bright and gifted, with talents that showed as clearly in his art then as in his writing now. But he bucked at all formal education and serious tutoring, and his claim that he then received a “‘great books’ British university-level literature course” comes as quite a surprise to his tutor. Francis actually praised Frank’s dropping out of school to a friend of mine, arguing that “Christians should be like Bolsheviks.” Later, pushed far out of his depth by the momentum of his and his father’s activism, Frank found himself propelled into becoming the arrogant, pompous, and hollow young fraud that, to his credit, he came to loathe and then repudiate. Frank himself is where the con artistry came into the story.
In sum, the combination of neglect, guilt, nepotism, and spoiling was a toxic brew. Some sons of famous Christian fathers are pushed by their fathers into following in their footsteps, and they respond with a slow-burning resentment that comes to cast a shadow on their fathers’ reputations. In Frank’s case, he chose to steer his father’s steps for his father’s sake, so he is responsible rather than resentful. But he is responsible for what he now acknowledges was a horrible outcome, so he turns on his entire upbringing to excuse his role.
Does all this matter outside the Schaeffer family and the wider L’Abri community, which in its many branches continues the Schaeffer’s work quietly and effectively? Would it not be better to let sleeping dogs lie, and judge Frank’s memoir by its readability? There are powerful lessons here for any organization and ministry in which the founder’s family plays a part. But what matters in the end is that Francis and Edith Schaeffer’s place in 20th-century evangelicalism—and their contribution to the lives of so many—is too important to surrender to such a scurrilous caricature.
Speaking for myself, my heritage is not fundamentalism and my intellectual mentor is the eminent sociologist Peter Berger. But there is much that I owe directly to Francis Schaeffer, such as my understanding of apologetics. One thing above all I will never deny, and for that I am eternally grateful, however great his flaws and however wrong he was on certain details of philosophy and history: I have never met anyone anywhere like Francis Schaeffer, who took God so passionately seriously, people so passionately seriously, and truth so passionately seriously. The combination was dynamite, and it is that vision and style of faith, rather than the content of his thinking, which is the debt I owe to him. With Nietzsche, Schaeffer could well have said, “All truth is bloody truth to me.” The idea that such a man was “crazy for God,” let alone a two-faced con man, is and will always be utterly anathema to me. I was there. I saw otherwise, and I and many of my friends have been marked for life.
One of Frank’s more curious accusations is that evangelicals have no sense of the journey of faith. Perhaps he has forgotten John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which has far outsold any other account of the journey of life and faith. And that is where I find hope at the end of Frank’s memoir. He is plainly still on the road. The book is dedicated to his daughter Jessica, and he hints of his guilt over the way he treated her when she was small. He may yet examine himself more deeply, and he may yet find himself at home with his faith. I pray he will one day.
 Forty years ago, Frank and his father used to mock the weak ending of John Osborne’s play Luther, in which the ringing certainty of “Here I stand” was replaced by the hesitancy of “I hope so.” Yet “I hope so” and “If there is a God” are the very words Frank uses to describe his own Orthodox faith now. With his prodigious but wayward talents, my old friend still has the air of the restless prodigal.
But we all have journeying still to be done—in Frank’s case, a long and winding journey home indeed, but with both a waiting Father and a waiting father and mother at its end.
Os Guinness is the author most recently of The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It, just published by HarperOne.
June 28th, 2010 | 5:21 pm | #37
Janice: “Among these we would place some of those core “fundamentalist” commitments that are being put to the test, such as that one’s beliefs and values ought to have, as much as possible, a purely biblical foundation.”
For the sake of a reference point, here’s Wikipedia’s entry on Fundamentalist Christianity:
“The first formulation of American fundamentalist beliefs can be traced to the Niagara Bible Conference (1878–1897) and, in 1910, to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church which distilled these into what became known as the “five fundamentals”:
Inerrancy of the Scriptures
The virgin birth and the deity of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14)
The doctrine of substitutionary atonement by God’s grace and through human faith (Hebrews 9)
The bodily resurrection of Jesus (Matthew 28)
The authenticity of Christ’s miracles (or, alternatively, his pre-millennial second coming), e.g. healing, deliverance, and second coming.”
Janice, which of these “Five Fundamentals” would you deny, if any?
(And any that you do not deny, it’s tacitly assumed that you affirm that particular “fundamental.”)
June 28th, 2010 | 7:58 pm | #38
Dale Black,
The passage you quote should make you realize that the original position does not require a person to “stand apart from the culture, assumptions and language in which they are raised.” The thought experiment also does not require the representatives to have “no social sense of themselves” (or of the people they represent). Let’s make this simple for you: even if an American citizen’s particular vocabulary happens to be influenced by her “place in society,” this doesn’t mean that we can’t imagine this person, ignorant of her particular place in American society, and yet still able to speak English and evaluate alternatives principles of justice.
The reason we know that Rawls, in proposing the original position thought experiment, is not asking us to rid ourselves of “cultural assumptions” is that Rawls is proposing a political conception of justice. According to Rawls, political conceptions of justice are “worked out from fundamental ideas seen as implicit in the public political culture of a constitutional regime, such as conceptions of citizens as free and equal persons, and of society as a fair system of cooperation” (Collected Papers, p. 584). Rawls began to emphasize this about his theory of justice after A Theory of Justice. The idea of a political conception of justice is developed in Political Liberalism and it is a key to understand pretty much all of Rawls’ subsequent work. You’ll completely frustrate yourself, for example, if you tried understand Rawls’ view of international justice without understanding that his conception of domestic justice is a political conception of justice.
Finally, you employ the term “straw man,” but you demonstrate complete ineptitude in its application. For a much better fit, try applying the term to the ideas that you have created for yourself to attack. Better yet, try to think more seriously about the actual proposals you’ve been hoping to dismiss, including my own, but especially Rawls’.
June 29th, 2010 | 12:31 am | #39
Janice: “Finally, you [Dale Black] employ the term “straw man,” but you demonstrate complete ineptitude in its application.”
Although I’m not able to differentiate between partial ineptitude and complete ineptitude in applying the term “straw man”, and yet apparently you can, I do acknowledge another humorous barb by you.
Janice, if you please, could you answer my question in #37?
It could be as simple as this:
1-5: Affirm.
or
1-5: Deny.
or some combination thereof.
June 29th, 2010 | 3:22 pm | #40
Tuad, maybe I should’ve erred on the side of generosity: perhaps Dale Black is just partially inept. Pending future evidence.
Dale, more seriously: I do appreciate your dog-earing efforts to defend an unpromising objection to Rawls’ thought experiment.
Tuad, I don’t believe any of the five tenants you list.
June 29th, 2010 | 3:34 pm | #41
Janice: “Tuad, I don’t believe any of the five tenants [sic] you list.”
Much thanks for your candor.
I pray, that if it’s God’s will, that you might one day confess genuine belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ (the third “fundamental” tenet), and then, as a result, to all the subsequent implications that naturally arises from that one confession.
June 30th, 2010 | 1:23 am | #42
“Tuad, maybe I should’ve erred on the side of generosity: perhaps Dale Black is just partially inept. Pending future evidence.”
That’s gracious of you.
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