by GRITtv was published on November 6th, 2009
In Max Blumenthal's book
Republican Gomorrah
and in his
GRITtv appearance,
he introduced us to Francis Schaeffer, one of the important figures in the anti-choice and religious right movements in the United States.
Frank Schaeffer, Francis's son, wrote a book about growing up in the religious right,
Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back
.
Schaeffer has a new book now,
Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism)
, and in it he takes on both the "incipient fascism" of the religious right and what he called "proselytizing" atheism of Richard Dawkins and others. He joins Laura on GRITtv for a fascinating interview about his own journey, and how people, religious or irreligious, are all looking for answers to the same questions.
Frank’s book was the first step for me when I was leaving the Evangelical Church. It has been 2 years and I am breathing freely. Quite honestly I say now, that I still feel as uncertain of the big questions as I did as a Christian, I just don’t have to pretend I know the answers anymore. I do disagree with Frank on the issue of Obama. He has continued with the governments policies of illegal detention, continued and increased out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, offers unquestioning support for Israel as it continues its Occupation and land theft and war crimes. He did not stand up for Single Payer and eagerly bailed out the big banks.
On the issue of the Atheists he spoke about I couldn’t agree more. Sam Harris, Dawkins, even Bill Maher have such evangelical zeal for their atheism and hostility towards others.
I do appreciate Frank for speaking out about his experience in the Evangelical movement and naming names. It needed to be done!
By deb83 on November 6th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
“incipient fascism”….why doesn’t anybody recognize that Glenn Beck et al have Fox as a platform because Murdoch comes from the same social class as the Brit Hitler appeasers who don’t mind Hitler scapegoating middle-class working class people against minorities and against each other.
Hating, fighting and killing each other just so they aren’t voting in high taxes on Murdoch’s social class, or socialism or communism.
It is a formula. The only people who have anything to gain from this are the wealthy backers of these religious special interests…The worse the world gets, the failure of the state, the more people in desperate poverty the more their money is worth, and the better for them.
WF Buckley and his Buckley vs Valeo is a big cause of these problems…
By AlbyFlugzeug on November 6th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
You know in both Religion and Politics, if people could just belive what they want to believe, and keep, it to themselves our nation and the world would be better off.
In both these things to convert others, or make others do, think, act, or believe as you do, becomes an all out effort.
One might do better to fix ones own house, rather than trying to fix someone else’s.
By iremember54 on November 7th, 2009 at 12:38 am
I never cease to be amazed at how people like Frank get to succeed peddling nonsense. Either there is truth, which is what is (in regard to each situation), and there is only one truth for each situation, or there is no truth. There can’t be truth about some situations (Sarah Palin’s lies), and no truth about other situations (does God exist). If there is truth about one situation, there is truth about every situation.
Frank gave up truth about God, because he found flaws in the evangelical movement, but was unwilling to admit his mother and father were frauds; which they obviously were, just read his book in an unbiased manner and see —his father used to beat his mother). If he wants to live in this never never land, that is fine. But to go out into the world and promote a view of God and spiritual life that claims the truth about God and righteous living can’t be found is despicable.
Just because most people who claim to have spiritual truth are frauds (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Pat Dobson, Richard Dawkins, etc.) doesn’t mean there is no spiritual truth to be found. And to not see by now that Barack Obama has not a shred of character (proof being that he has abandoned almost every campaign promise he made) is a sign of having almost no common sense. The future will clearly reveal that Barack will be seen as a big a scoundrel as Georgie boy. As are all career politicians. Look how Vietnam eviscerated LBJ’s great society reputation.
By WarrenMetzler on November 7th, 2009 at 2:40 am
First, I think you misrepresent Schaffer’s position, which, if I understand it correctly, draws a distinction between “truth” as an abstract, singular, concept and “truth” as that which we know to be true at any given time. Dogmatism is the belief that one knows the truth in a way that’s never subject to revision in light of new information.
Second, even the notion that “truth” is a singular set of propositions all of which are exclusively true is questionable. Perform a little thought experiment for me: stand at the North pole. Walk south for some distance, turn left and walk east for some distance, then turn left again to walk north until you get back to the North pole. You’ve just walked a triangle that has two 90-degree angles in it. Land Surveyors don’t use spherical geometry, but people navigating flights from Seattle to London do. And neither is “wrong” in any reasonable sense of the word.
Lastly, the desire to hold an elected office that confers any form of leadership is, itself, a serious character flaw. I’m not sure why we should expect President Obama to be any more or less susceptible to this same character flaw as any other politician.
By donjoe on November 8th, 2009 at 12:25 pm