A Response to Franky Schaeffer's book Crazy for God
Recently I came across an interview with Franky Schaeffer, the son of renowned Evangelical philosopher and teacher Francis Schaeffer. The interview was a brief segment on a cable talk show. If I interpret bias and slant with any degree of accuracy, this particular segment was positioned to malign and undermine what many call the “religious right.” I have read a few books of Franky’s in recent years so I was prepared for his “unique” read on the remnants of the Moral Majority but I was not prepared for the observable primal delivery of his rant.
As I said, I was prepared for the ideological placement of Schaeffer’s story but was not prepared for the emotive spillage that observably overshot the host’s intentions. I am sure she was rejoicing in the scathing and pointed barbs Schaeffer hurled at Evangelicals and yet at some point it seemed like his inner vitriol was not serving her audience. I can only imagine the stereotype many have about Evangelicals and Franky’s read certainly more than substantiated those existing prejudices. But the intellectual disdain many project on Evangelicals is much more ideological and an underlying distrust of religion in general than some personal encounter with the shadow side of faith. Schaeffer’s bearing was noticeably tense and restless. His speech was flighty, inordinately intense and blunt.
Schaffer’s latest book Crazy for God was undoubtedly the impetus behind the producers booking Franky and he wasted no time in cutting to the chase. The Rachel Maddow Show host branded as “mind over chatter” so her preferential style of dialogue is low key and riddled with humorous irony. There was no humor in Franky’s weigh in and the irony was probably lost on most with the exception of a few disaffected Evangelicals. But Franky kept on.
He was a man on a mission and he did not merely wade into the water but belly flopped off the high dive and called Evangelicals “the village idiots” of the religious world and called the eschatological fiction of LaHaye & Jenkins’s Left Behind series a dangerous narrative that allowed this particular enclave to demonize most of the world and elevate their own status in God’s eyes. I knew this was much more information than Maddow needed or wanted but Franky has never been one to fit into any molds. He kept on.
It appeared that at some point she just relented to his denunciation and let him go as his deep-rooted loathing seemed over the top even for her most ardent Evangelical and Fundamentalist haters. This was a rage & woundedness that was aimed at someone and something beyond mere political & ideological differences. This was a profound & uneasy disclosure for reasons I would have to explore to begin to empathize let alone understand or critique.
The cable news world is a pimp for authors, politicians, activists, and specialist of all ilks. It sets the stage for the worst in all of us to emerge and Franky was used as a shill like so many others who take their Wharholesque 10 minutes of fame with an unbridled zeal and unabashed self seeking. It is equally & somehow voyeuristically fascinating. We are drawn to the seething edge of another’s wounds. It touches something locked away in our own unspoken diatribe. We listen to “the other” for we feel the same rage. We feel the same confusion.
From the opening response to Rachel Maddow’s initial question it was apparent and palpable that this was a man working out his life on camera. This may be the attraction with reality TV. We get that in many cases the unscripted nature of the program releases a subterranean tributary that can cascade a person into a deeply human experience right before our eyes. This is not acting. This is real. And I could see that happening with Franky. The host touched a rivulet most likely hidden until the convergence of Franky’s emotions, the awareness of millions of viewers, and the years of desiring a platform converged & his invective became a tirade. Deeply animated and direct, Franky was not talking to Rachel or her audience. He was talking to his supposed perpetrators. He was talking to his father’s shadow; his mother’s idealized sense of calling and purpose. He was working out in front of humanity the role of being a son to parents who loomed large on the historical landscape especially for those in the Evangelical camp.
I am sure her producers were aware of Crazy for God’s premise and felt Schaeffer would offer up a reasoned and balanced view of this group. I am sure their hope was he would deliver a substantial wound to the heart of the movement. That is what cable does best. Set up the court, pick the jury, judge the accused and offer a verdict and then hang them openly. This is daily fare for this genre of news spectacle. But Schaeffer was having none of it. His emotional and intellectual biorhythms were on a different lunar cycle and he was going to deliver his testimony regardless of the jury. This was a man who wrote a book ostensibly about his feelings regarding this group called Evangelicals and specifically his life as the son of a famous couple in Francis & Edith Schaeffer. Rachel and producers brought him on to articulate his position and critique of the Christian right and although his vitriol certainly splashed on to anyone in that vicinity, his fury was directed and intended for more than an amorphous faction in the world of religious pluralism. This was a man who more than estranged from his past was now actively speaking out against their dangerous ideologies and openly bore upon his soul the scars of their abuse. He needed no baiting. He needed no clarification of his regard for this group. He was angry and he knew why.
It has been my experience that five minutes of cable generally gives me just enough data to create more confusion surrounding an issue. But in Franky’s case I think I got his message loud & clear. This exchange or depositing if you will was not ideological or even theological at its core. This was penance and grief work all rolled into one. This was a man conflicted and the cable news format gave him just enough windows to open a storm of unrehearsed and misdirected accusations. A sacred sorrow offered up in the profane setting of infotainment becomes dramatic display and it was in that light that the entire segment became seared into my mind. As soon as I was near a bookstore I bought the book. I hoped its examination might give me insight into this man’s interview which became his soul’s deposition, a declaration of revenge and reconciliation poured out as proof that this group called Evangelicals were more than bothersome. Some of the people responsible for much of the current town hall angst and outrage were insidious and ultimately unredeemable. It was the delivery of that ultimate verdict that touched some long silenced sting harbored in my own soul. That night I saw myself in Franky & it longed for its naming.
Recently an acquaintance released a book entitled The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. I was immediately drawn to the title and knowing what I think know of this man, surmised there would be some comfort in his journey into the spirituality of questioning. In retrospect, I imagine my thoughts were drawn to David Dark’s writing because I knew his observations would bring respite to my weary quandary filled soul. I was drawn to Franky’s Crazy for God for totally different reasons. There was a pain and unresolvedness in this man’s life and writing that beckoned the darker ghosts of my own past. While David Dark’s work was personal in part, its thrust was culturally interpretive and theological. He is a master at drawing together seemingly disparate and paradoxical happenings and issues and weaving them into an acceptable account. In The Sacredness of Questioning Everything there was a man who was offering a grid or flexible net if you will for holding & addressing the questions of life.
Schaeffer’s intent and delivery were far more amorphous and disquieting. Franky’s writing seemed more confessional, almost like a Christian tell-all. It is a hard book to categorize, if one even needs this assistance, and even harder to lay down after you picked it up. I read the book in two settings. That should tell you something. I devoured the book and on nearly every other page found myself nodding inwardly, smiling outwardly, making notes along the edges of the paragraphs in solidarity, disgust and occasionally experiencing a deep sense of violation. Franky’s, his parent’s and even my own boundaries seemed to be tossed aside for some odd confessional expedition meets witch hunt. I was not sure who or what he was pursuing at times but I felt the sweat on his temple, the heavy breathing of the chase, and the final resignation of discovering once again it was his own soul he met in the lonely darkness of acrimony and resentment.
What I did glean from Schaeffer’s work was insight into the man. I am not sure that was his intention but I felt his sorrow and grief on every page. I sensed his questions that by now had become encrusted and calcified into some inner posture he deemed intellectual and aesthetic. This was art he was offering up I am sure he announced to his inner critic. Maybe it was or is. I don’t feel qualified to assess that but much of the manuscript seemed like a man defending his current self-protected and defensive position on life, faith, and his past. Here was a man at odds with himself over the explanation of his life. Stuck on anger, his tears were held for fear of once again being abandoned. Here was a man whose very victimhood shamed him even more and upped the ante on condemnation. He was stuck in the victim-punishment stage of life & couldn’t get out.
I can imagine Franky’s editors working relentlessly to discover some over arching narrative or life message that connected all the pages but for me the book was nearly like a confessional diary. There was no admission of guilt but page after page of embedded denial. This was a man who was working out his life on the page and his inner dislocation made the spatial nature of his writing lack context and humanity. It was not robotic or clichéd but fragmented and emotionally scattered. It was if his history was still held hostage somewhere in the universe & he was imagining what it might look like but unsure of its authenticity. And oh does Franky desire authenticity. He wants his artistic confessions to be redemptive for their honest appraisals of life, love, sexuality and the burden writers have to tell the “real” truth. Yet there was something persistently unsayable that was holding his soul’s voice at bay. There was something unacknowledged that pushed him to and fro looking for the missing conversations. He was broken but not broken open.
Upon completion of the book and a reviewing of the cable show it struck me as to the extremely embedded sense of innocence lost in Franky. This was a man who sorely wanted to believe but had way too much information to the contrary to allow that act to emerge without major grief. All through the book I felt an overwhelming sorrow even in the segments meant to be joyful or titillating. The placement of certain memories and reminiscing moments felt forced and arbitrary. None of the emotional vignettes dug deep enough into a larger “we” to give me a sense he knew I was just like him. In fact, I felt what may be the core of unacknowledged arrogance in writing on many of the pages. Arrogance is a posture my own soul knows well. I find it riddled throughout my journey, always standing at the threshold of every new healing. Each time I put forth my suffering as mine & mine alone. Each time I build a story out of my pain that gives me the right to demand of life some kind of repayment. Each time I weary my soul with ego and wounded demands for justice. It was Franky’s damaged soul that bore his conceit. It was his early emotional impairment that kept him self-absorbed, looking for himself in himself. He must discover the artist his parents could really love and admire. He must.
As one who identified with much of his hurt, I did not identify with his victimhood. Still a casualty, Franky’s naming drained a deeper beauty his soul has to offer but here-to-for remained untapped. It seemed clear to me why his biographical historicity tied him to his shadow. This was a man who relived over and over again the lack of love, the disloyalty and self seeking of his parents and adults while he was left to his own childhood and teenage devices. This was a man still standing outside the camp (L’Abri) waiting for the father to run to him or at least call out to him. This was a man whose childhood was ignored in the larger callings of zealous believers who assumed God would cover all the bases of child rearing while they attended to “higher” matters.
Reconciliation is an infrequently preached message in the churches I have attended over the years. Evangelicals believe in salvation and that act is imbued with such restorative power in regards to one’s life in & towards God, it may be seen as the only volitional act a Christian need ultimately do in this life. In other words, reconciliation has already taken place so any of the unresolvedness, the questioning, the sense of loss and imperfection are minor irritations at best and should be ignored to get on with the real stuff in life.
Throughout the book, while Franky raged against Evangelicals, there arose in me a deep sense of ambivalence. I have spent a life time with “these people.” Of course I feel a kinship with the friends and families with which I worship. Of course I feel a deep sense of agreement around theological and cosmological issues of life and faith. We are in fact fellow Christ followers. But Schaeffer’s tirade touched some long ignored or buried emotional uncertainty regarding my place in this community. I too have often felt uneasy and unsure about my identity and likeness to this enclave that spoke into so much of the culture wars. Often I have felt a deep embarrassment and even sadness in the demeanor & rhetoric of my brothers and sisters as they spoke to the world without the camp. Many times I gave them a pass on how they dealt with a person inside the walls of faith as it were while castigating with stridency someone on the “outside.” Just the metaphoric choice of the word walls tells me something as I read back this blog. What are we keeping in and what are we keeping out?
In recent months since a new president has come into office, I have been alarmed at the tenor of what I have come to call “political speech” by self proclaimed Christians. Fueled by media ideologues and town hall meeting chaos, a lot has been said by those referring to themselves as Christians and would most likely call themselves the Christian Right. I have found the spectacle of this emerging troubling to say the least. So often the vitriol seems to belie the very heart and posture of the Gospel and our Lord Jesus Christ. But….this is my family: weird uncles, judgmental aunties, and dysfunctional brothers and sisters. It is all part of loving and living. I know my own bigotry and fear so I offer up as much grace as I am given and open to receive.
But Franky is a brother too. Well at least to me he is. He may feel estranged, he may feel abandoned, he may be full of questions he no longer even acknowledges, but he is still a brother. These observations and assertions contained in this writing may very well be as much for me as Franky. I too know the nagging sense of unease and dislocation. I am as well the son of a larger than life father who was an author, preacher, and ministry leader for thousands of people. During my childhood years I seldom saw my father as he was ensconced in ministry, preoccupied with the challenges of shepherding the flock. My mother, of course felt called to assist him, so my sister & I raised ourselves: literally. I get the chill of a large man’s shadow. I get the loneliness of being forgotten after everyone else has been comforted. I get the seeming emptiness of waiting outside the camp longing for my name to be called and sadly never hearing that calling. At least by my parents.
At the end of Franky’s book he haltingly attempts to wrap his bitter grief into a yet to be realized encounter with awe and wonder as embodied by the Greek Orthodox Church. Most of the book is void of spiritualizing and in the final moments he seems to reach out for a life line, a home for his hungry heart. Although on the edge of this world of faith (or so it seemed) he does feel it calling him into this deeper metaphor out of which God will make Himself known. At this point in Franky’s life, the Father seems so distant and aloof.
All through the book & ostensibly his life, Frank and his parents bonded around art. They spent most of intimacy’s currency at museums, art shows, nature walks, and late night free flowing discussions with hundreds of “cultural creatives” that frequented L’Abri back in the 60’s and 70’s. It makes sense to me that he has spent a life time trying to be the artistic genius he needed to be to call out the desire in his parents he so longed to foster and embody. My first encounter with Francis, his father, was in the series of lectures entitled “How Then Should We live?” Single handedly that series offered to baby boomers an aesthetic life line to a Church still under the shadow of iconoclasm. We had no pictures to go with our stories. We had no images to serve as doorways into metaphoric grandeur. We were a people of famished imaginations.
Franky was raised on beauty. Franky was encouraged to picture his world with wonder. Franky was subtly told to be Van Gogh or Picasso while I was told to be Wesley or Moody. Franky took on himself all the reticence and personal sense of dislocation his parents had with words, theology, and propositional truth and unknowingly deemed it a small burden to displace or carry. He had no idea what it would cost him some years down the road as an adult. During the “Moral Majority” period Franky and Francis discovered the shaky bond and sense of community shared by famous Christians who had much too lose in being misunderstood or deemed liberal. This was certainly not about beauty or goodness for that matter. This was about truth, who understood it, who could offer it, and ultimately who could own and defend it. This was an iconoclastic tearing down of secular images and had little or nothing to do with Franky’s early idyllic years at L’Abri discussing faith, values, art history and aesthetics. This was about power and the direction of a nation.
Franky got taken to school. This was Evangelicals meets the Great Evil One –Liberalism! This was a cosmic smack down way more heady and full of ego that Franky was groomed to endure. It appears he is yet to really embrace the duplicity here in the historic retelling and naiveté about his own motives. This neglected or unfinished inner work usually fosters revisionism of the highest order. But maybe he has unveiled his own duplicity and that is the rub. How can he forgive himself for leading his own father directly into the very center of the storm that could destroy his father’s legacy of art and beauty and root his primary historical influence in the rancor of the culture wars and the political infighting of a Church capitulated to nationalism and an unspoken desire for power and control?
As my own story nudges me towards winter, much like Schaeffer, as a writer, I am trying to fill in the grief on memories held for decades. My guess is that Franky longs to be a “writer” specifically because he has way too many pictures in his head and not enough language or purposeful language to make sense of what he has seen and experienced. He is still back at L’Abri chatting with the forces and gods of change as if they were visiting for the weekend and he could ultimately hand them over to his father after he charmed them with his wit and creativity.
And his father did have words. His father did have some boundaries, some theological foundations, and some bottom line ways of naming he would allow to form and inform him of the ultimate truth. Franky does not remember that part for some reason. I do not know why.
I am haunted often by Wittgenstein’s statement,” Language precedes reality.” I take that to mean the arduous task of naming, renaming, and thickening the very way we speak about ourselves, others, and the world in which we live is essential to navigate any awareness of ourselves and the world. Words surely matter. Throughout the book Franky speaks over and over again of the need to write, the struggles of being an author and the desire to become a better writer. He is beginning to grasp the price his soul paid for the cultural wars in which he served. Much like a soldier coming back from war with traumatic stress so powerful it crowds out the normal everydayness of the world, Franky seems unable to be truly present. He is always caught up and lost in some grandiose narrative hanging above his life. Like an alien abduction, he has been captured and held hostage. During the Moral Majority years he was able to live above earth’s atmosphere in this grandiose idealized world of untested ideas which were going to change the world. But that excursion into messianic political answers had very high price tag as well. He may have just been longing to be with and around his father and thought promoting his father during this time would be a way to draw close and be desired by his parents.
It is clear in retrospect he had little to no inkling as to the impact the culture wars would have on him, his father, his father’s legacy and his own role in that chronicling. The book is in part repentance to or at anyone who saw Franky’s divided energy promote his father & this view of the world he now believes malevolent and crazy. The gathering of all these Evangelicals with political aspirations much more deeply entrenched in their theology and cosmology than he, used both Francis and Franky. The Falwell’s and the Robertsons knew why they were there. They had counted the cost, prepared for the battle and had the inner resolve and financial resources to weather the battle. Francis was an unwilling and unwitting shill while Franky, according to his own words, saw the opportunity to expand his father’s reach and regarded the “movement” as a potential carrier of the Schaeffer brand. By his own admission he was sorely under qualified and overwhelmed by the real reasons this convergence of men & mission were involved in political and faith movements. He and his father were seemingly both willing but would only later discover their dangerously moldable naiveté.
I have been privy over the years to quite a few famous people most of which were Christians. As an employee of a Christian music and book publishing company and then later a public relations marketing analyst, I was in part involved in many pseudo events that hyped themselves as real moves of God. I am still, much like Franky, walking quietly upon the old ground looking for land mines and the lives my complicity may have sold religion in a box. So I am fully aware of what American consumerism and faith can create when a few things in the mix go wrong. Fame and the projection of countless followers and admirers feeds the ego but starves the inner man. I have yet to meet one person of prominence who did not pay a huge price for having their deepest personhood monetized and every personal moment carry a spiritual responsibility that was just too heavy for any adult to carry let alone a small child or teen. So many celebrity Christians I know become addicted to the adrenaline rush of being “messianic” and larger than life. It is usually not the vices against which they preach that become their nemesis but the more subtle insidious movement of the heart that sees itself as special, anointed, above, the golden child. After all, whose ego would not experience a great rush of self adulation that then haunts us as we spend more of our lives looking for the same scenario, with the same or similar people, all seeing us as high and lifted up? When we are doing things for “God” the ego rush is ignored as all involved are diverted from the duplicity of their fallen nature. There is indeed a big part of the heart that desires God be glorified and lives be changed. But in my experience, the grandiose planning of huge undertakings appears to always have some degree of the broken and false self emerging. As one deeply spiritual psychologist said,” Our accomplishments become our pathology. “
So it is not if, but when. I have yet to see a movement emerge without some significant compromise taking place within those in the lead or to their families in the next generation. Franky and many like him raised by larger than life parents live their lives holding their breath. The heroic platforms created by these movements are stratospheric and demand a high degree of self forgetting and sacrifice. As valiant as the momentary sacrifices feel, the pay off of power and notoriety never bring a softness or deeper humanity to the soul. It barbiturates the very part of the heart needed to be a child, humble and open to love. So those at the top become numb. And, their children learn to ignore the parts of the soul unnecessary to the grander vision, the cause, the healing of a nation. So the quiet, behind the scenes, ordinariness needed to explore the inner landscape of the soul sinks back into shadows. As a leader in this messianic vision you can’t let down your guard. You can’t let anyone see you cry. You work and work to become the now gigantic idealized shadow the movement projects on you and expects you to sustain and animate for the cause. There is no turning back. The only way out is death or defection.
Crazy for God, if anything, is a conversation with the forgotten soul, now, for the first time saying out loud what has been unsayable. The times always demand a spokesperson or advocate. The baby boomers were exiting the church in groves during these years and conservative Christianity needed an acceptable apologist to fuel the counter culture’s ferment. Given the shear enormity of his father’s shadow, the convergence of his father’s love of truth and his growing book sales (Franky was selling books as well) it all seemed to make sense on some mysteriously odd level. Franky not only jumped on board but fueled the fervor with grand and seemingly noble marketing plans to build the Schaeffer Empire.
But what seems providential and right at the time often in retrospect is wrought with grandiosity, hidden agendas or worse yet, a mutual unspoken agreement of most involved to use the moment as a stepping stone for each and every person at the table. This goes on all the time but no one ever calls each other out as the complicity brokers the deal and paves the way for mutual exploitation of the critical mass. Most intuitively know that gigantic emergent moments of power and notoriety never last. The wisdom of the world nods inwardly communicating to each other's shadows that redemption will be sought after the fact but while the battle rages and the energy is high, take no prisoners and keep as much of the booty as you can. This has been my experience and I am still repenting. I indeed project this onto and into Franky’s epic journey of the soul. He may discover something much nobler but I think not.
Certainly the complexity, intentions, and broad ranging historic implications are open to dialogue and interpretation and Franky seemingly has no one in his world to proffer a counter balance to the now re-emerging Christian Right that is hauntingly similar to the Moral Majority of Franky’s heyday. It is out of the eerily similar moment in time that Franky emerges from the darkness of his own exile and begins to shout at the top of his soul. “This feels crazy! Does loving God make you this way? Is this what He demands?”
On a personal level, indeed, his complicity to the ultimate role he and his father played in the birth and character of the Moral Majority is going to be hard if not impossible to untangle. He has no ear or proximity to his cohorts of those activist days. (read Os Guineess’ review of Crazy for God for some great insight into Franky’s version of those times) Franky has long ago changed clothes, his name, his birthplace and created a new persona. He will not be that man. But alas, he is that man on some level and the book reveals the remnants of the ego still longing to be desired by the ones who matter most- his father and mother. For this conundrum of the heart I give much compassion and stand alongside in solidarity as he enters the dark and dangerous waters of contrition and the search for the beloved within. How could the son of one of Evangelicals most celebrated philosopher teachers come up with words to make sense of his father’ life or more prophetically the impact of his father’s life on him? For this is the naming we all avoid-our own. How long must we attempt to name our parents grief? How long do we wander from experience to experience longing for an inkling of ourselves strong enough to offer reconciliation?
So how will Franky get reconciled? Does he even want to be? If grief is a part of that process I would say he does not want reconciliation at this time. The grief is too large. Much larger than his father’s shadow. The sorrow he wears is his own unnamed presence. He is not present to himself. It is apparent in his writing. What struck me in his work were the awkward transitions from historic remembrances to emotive interpretations of those happenings. The subtle nuances of experience that should ground the author and the reader in the recollection were scattered to and fro much like his grief. This book was a quest. This book was a purging. This book was longing out loud. I get that. I get the voyeuristic obsession we have with each other’s need of reconciliation. We are all longing to belong. Franky has no home, has no people, has no place he can be broken or whole for that that matter. He is still wandering, still on a quest his father did not finish, still trying to name his father’s longing, answer his father’s questions, offer up his father’s dreams. And he is angry and tired. It was Franky’s unnamed state of the heart that called out to me. We men do anger better than sadness. I wonder if a resident sadness is necessary for our humanity to be soft and approachable? When I know my sadness I am present to others. When I am detached from my need for longing and yearning, for a place to disappear into my own beloved brokenness, I bear the weight of my family’s unresolved story, my nation’s constant yearnings and my world’s sense of being disconnected. After all, on a good day, that just might be part of the reason Franky got involved in the grander vision.
When I enter my own grief, sit in it, let it roll over me, my weeping is worship. My sadness is sacred. My tears are a cleansing. That night while I watched the cable interview I cried. I cried for Franky, for his father, his mother, for the larger extended family of Evangelicals who have been raised on picture-less words, and ideas without a beautiful story. I cried for countless disaffected believers who feel lost in the shadow of idealized leaders who struggle to be super human to everyone including their children.
Franky bears a doubly confounding destiny as he was offered the balance to this group’s shadow (Evangelicals) in his father’s work and life, but alas, he did not get tradition, foundation, and words as protectors and ideas as reflections of the mind of God. He mistook his father’s shadow as his light never doing his own work to reunite that space within himself. In many ways, the light side of his father seems crazy and disconnected as he now attaches it to the seeming darkness and shadow of the Moral Majority and movements like them often take on dark and demogogic energies. His anger towards Evangelicals is his unfelt sorrow for what he did not get from his relationship with them. They could not give it for they did not have it to give. Ironically both groups looked to Francis, the father, for his balanced embrace of truth, beauty and goodness. It appears neither really got the blessing.
Franky is a museum without a curator. He is an art show without an artist. I on the other hand, see myself welcoming myself in Franky. I picture late night discussions where I walk alongside the young boy and father him like his father did not and tell him he matters. For that is the burden he carries. He wonders if God even cares about his sadness. I can imagine in words for Franky and say whole heartedly, “He does Franky. He does.”
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