On Apologies

Since the Kool Kristian Kids now think we should apologize for everything (the Crusades! the Inquisition!) we did not do or things we are thought to be doing even if we are not (sexism! racism! homophobia!), I would like to add a new category. I think we should begin to apologize for people who inflict the world, but who might be associated with us.

This is, of course, useless since we cannot actually be sorry for someone else’s sins. It is even annoying since it might strike a reasonable soul as judgmental, but it seems not so different from apologizing for history or generic sins of our community.

Let’s emerge from old restrictions related to confession and follow the spirit of our age . . . which we know is almost always the spirit of the Christ, missional, or at least Vatican II.

I would like, therefore, to apologize for Frank Schaeffer, the living example of what happens when the angry young man becomes merely angry. Schaeffer manages to move from position to position, but is always the prophet of better living to the infidel. In his latest incarnation, he is a thoughtful, pensive even, barely believer confirming stereotypes of Evangelicals to a left-of-center audience. In this recent version of himself he forgets an early “fundamentalist Orthodox” Frank Schaeffer that so shamed regular members of the Greek Orthodox Church.

I hope this apology is accepted.