Leaders are rarely what we perceive them to be. The more we get to know them, the more we are disillusioned. I have experienced my fair share of disenchantment with religious leaders and I am sure that I have certainly burst some bubbles myself.
Rarely, however, does one both experience disillusion and yet increase in one’s respect for an individual. This occurred to me as I read Frank Schaeffer’s memoir of growing up in the household of Francis and Edith Schaeffer. I learned things about Francis and Edith that are shocking and painful to consider. At the same time, in spite of their obvious shortcomings, I grew in my respect for them.
Francis was known for his keen intellect, philosophical interests, and cultural engagement. Edith was known for her unique combination of piety and sophistication. The American evangelicals served as missionaries in Switzerland’s L’Abri, opening their home to all spiritual seekers.
Francis possessed a vicious temper and was prone to depression, regularly contemplating suicide. Edith was “a high-powered nut” (38). Her extremely high standards and uncompromising stance made her difficult to live with. “My mother saw her mission as nothing less than repairing the image of fundamentalism” (18). She sought to do this through exquisite high teas and good food, reading classic literature, and the enjoyment of classical music. Repeatedly, Frank conveys the impression that Edith’s spirituality was beyond anyone’s reach – and that’s exactly the way she liked it.
Frank does a good job of representing the mood, outlook, and mission of a fundamentalist home.
I heard the word “dark” a lot while growing up, and most of the time it was other people’s spiritual darkness that was being spoken of. There was a lot of that around. People, places, history, villages, cantons, whole continents were filled with spiritual dark or spiritual light, depending on what they believed about what we behaved. If they agreed completely with us, then they got the rarest of accolades: truly kindred spirits. (27)
Frank compares this passion for purity and sense of separation from all dissenters, reflected in fundamentalist language and life-style, to church-splits and American hubris:
Fundamentalists never can just disagree. The person they fall out with is not only on the wrong side of an issue; they are on the wrong side of God….
A church split builds self-righteousness into the fabric of every new splinter group, whose only reason for existence is that they decide they are more moral and pure than their brethren. This explains my childhood, and perhaps a lot about America, too.
The United States is a country with the national character of a newly formed church splinter group. This is not surprising. Our country started as a church splinter group…
America still sees itself as essential and as destiny’s instrument. And each splinter group within our culture—left, right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular—sees itself as morally, even “theologically” superior to its rivals. It is not just about politics. It is about being better than one’s evil opponent. We don’t just disagree, we demonize the “other.” And we don’t compromise. (30, 31)
Refusing to compromise in a “dark” world leaves one with only one option: to witness to the “light”:
Everything we did was to be a witness. (To “witness” was to “share Christ”; in other words, talk about your faith in hopes that you would convince the person listening to convert. To witness also meant to live in such a way that people would “see Christ” in you and want to convert because your life was so admirable.)
People’s eternal destinies hinged on a word or tiny event, maybe on no more than an unfriendly look. (27)
Frank draws attention to the fundamental paradox behind his parents' ministry: “We were outsiders doing everything we could to be mistaken for insiders, so that we could be accepted by the insiders and then convert them to being outsiders, like us, until everyone became an outsider and therefore we got to be insiders forever!” (52) He continues: “What I never heard Mom or Dad explain was that if the world was so bad and lost, why did they spend so much time trying to imitate it and impress the lost?” (53)
In spite of their shortcomings, Frank praises his parent’s compassion, sincerity, and sacrifice. The Schaeffers were open to all visitors from all walks of life and points of view. Frank recalls the Schaeffer’s openness to homosexual seekers:
My parents’ compassion was sincere and consistent. And they never allowed belief to make them into bigots. I grew up in a community where homosexuals (the term “gay” was not in use) were not only welcomed but where my parents didn’t do anything to make them feel uncomfortable and regarded their “problem” as no more serious (or sinful) than other problems, from spiritual pride—a “much more serious matter,” according to Dad—to gluttony And I never heard any of the nonsense so typical of American evangelicals today about homosexuality being a “chosen lifestyle.”
My parents weren’t given to calling their friends liars. So when our friends who were homosexual—Mom was always open, as was Dad, about which students were or weren’t gay— told my parents that they had been born that way, not only did they believe them, but Dad defended them against people who would judge or exclude them.
Dad thought it cruel and stupid to believe that a homosexual could change by “accepting Christ”—or, for that matter, that an alcoholic could be healed by the same magic. Dad often said “Salvation is not magic. We’re still in the fallen world.” (77)
To this day, Frank remains influenced by his parent’s example of faithfulness and love:
I saw that my parents’ compassion was consistent. Their idea of ministry was to extend a hand of kindness, and to truly practice the rule of treating others as you would be treated. It was such a powerful demonstration that it gave me a lifelong picture of what Christian behavior and love can and should be.
My parents were not advocating compassion that someone else would carry out with tax dollars, or at arm’s length, but rather they opened their home. The result was that those gathered around our table represented a cross-section of humanity and intellectual ability from mental patients to Oxford students and all points of need in between. My mother and father marshaled arguments in favor of God, the Bible, and the saving work of Jesus Christ. But no words were as convincing as their willingness to lay material possessions, privacy and time on the line, sometimes at personal risk and always with the understanding that if they were being taken advantage of, that was fine, too. (134)
This level of sacrifice was not easy for Francis. Francis did contemplate suicide. “He sometimes spoke in detail about hanging himself. I went through my childhood knowing that there were two things we children were never to tell anyone. The first was that Dad got insanely angry with my mother; the second was that from time to time he threatened suicide” (138).
Some of Frank’s fondest memories of his father involve hiking with him, enjoying creation together, or watching his father deeply enjoy art or music. In these rare moments, he “saw Dad as he might have been, free of the crushing belief that God had ‘called’ him to save the world” (205).
Frank takes responsibility for his father’s catapult into the fundamentalist spotlight: “If it hadn’t been for me, Dad’s reputation as an evangelical scholar—a somewhat marginal but interesting intellectual figure—would have remained intact. As it was, my absolutist youthful commitment to the pro-life cause goaded my father into taking political positions far more extreme than came naturally to him” (265). It was Frank’s desire to be a film-maker that prompted him to film two successful video series featuring his father, thus bringing Francis to the American evangelical forefront.
At first, Francis did not want to speak out against abortion for one simple reason: He did not want to be identified with a “Catholic” issue. Francis also did not identify with American fundamentalists. He considered fundamentalist leaders to be uncultured fools. For example, the producer of Frank’s first film demanded that he edit out some of the best footage featuring Michelangelo’s David. The reason: David’s genitals were showing. The producer was adamant, “We can’t have this for a Christian audience. Christians won’t rent it.” Francis muttered, “We’re working with fools” (270).
Francis also “disagreed with the Bible-thumping approach that quoted verses (usually out of context) about the sacredness of life” (78). Instead, he sought common ground. “Dad always He believed that you argued on the merits of ideas that both sides could agree on—for instance, on what the genetic potential of a fetus was, or what direction we all can agree that we want society to go in” (78).
Frank still remains pro-life in his views but his treatment of the topic is more nuanced and complex. He laments “single-issue politics” because it “deforms the process and derails common sense. It facilitates the election of leaders just because they are ‘correct’ on ‘my issue’” (347). He continues:
It seems to me that by demanding ideological purity on abortion (and other single issues as well), both parties have worked to eliminate the sorts of serious smart pragmatic people who make competent leaders. What we are left with are those willing to toe the party theological line, who are talented at kissing the asses of their party’s ideologues, raising money and looking good on TV, but not much else. (347)
He concludes:
I want to live in a society that is willing to struggle with these balancing acts. I want to be in a society that values human life, because I am human, and far from perfect, and I want to be valued.
What I don’t want to live in is a culture that makes sweeping and dismissive secular or religious “theological” one-size-fits-all decisions that oversimplify complex issues. (353)
Eventually, Frank left fundamentalism and was received into the Orthodox Church. He offers this as his reason:
When I left evangelicalism, it certainly was not because I was disillusioned with the faith of my early childhood. I have sweet (if somewhat nutty) memories of all those days of prayer, fasting, and “wrestling with principalities and powers.” We might have been deluded, but we weren’t unhappy. And there are a lot worse things than parents who keep you away from TV, grasping materialism, and hype, and let you run free and use your imagination.
I think my problem with remaining an evangelical centered on what the evangelical community became. It was the merging of the entertainment business with faith, the flippant lightweight kitsch ugliness of American Christianity the sheer Stupidity, the paranoia of the American right-wing enterprise. The platitudes married to pop culture, all of it … that made me crazy. It was just too stupid for words. (389)
Frank’s memoir is touching, painful, bitter, sweet, playful, serious – in short, it embraces the full spectrum of human experience. His memories regarding his parents are sobering and yet offered with great respect. “We were earnest and my parents were sincere. Dad had a vicious temper. Mom was a high-powered nut. But so what? Given the range of human suffering, I had a golden childhood” (38).
Frank recognizes that not everyone will be pleased with his candid memoir. Some will resist viewing Francis or Edith in any sort of negative light. This is sad. The Schaeffers are human, just like the rest of us. And knowing and accepting this makes their lives and influence that much more authentic and significant.
But, having been raised in the home of an evangelical superstar, Frank knows the paradox of leadership and the reason behind it:
And the less one knows about the “holy” people we follow, the better. One of the mysteries of human need is that religious leaders must become more than the sum of their fallible, sometimes awful, parts, because other people need them to be more. This does not make the religious leader a hypocrite; it just shows that the rest of us are desperate. (103)
Quotes excerpted from 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 by Frank Schaeffer
© Richard J. Vincent, 2007
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