July 9, 2009
links: faith, regret, and 77 days of fiction
- Amanda Coppedge interviews me on her blog about Once Was Lost, and about being a writer who is a Christian, but not a “Christian writer.” I expect I’ll be engaging in lots of conversations about this over the coming year, which is fine with me, especially if the questions are as thoughtful as Amanda’s.
- This link is kind of old, but I just discovered it: Frank Schaeffer (aka Frankie to evangelical insiders who saw him grow up next to his father, Francis) articulates his regret over being part of the movement that established the Christian Right as a political movement. The interview is not just about regret; Schaeffer does a crackerjack job of deconstructing exactly what went wrong and why, basically, the entire movement was/is in theological error. Coincidentally, I found this interview on the same day that Robert McNamara died. McNamara also publicly humbled himself in regret – in his case, for his role in the Vietnam War (if you haven’t seen The Fog of War, you should). In both cases, of course, the expression of regret or apology does nothing to change history or alter the fallout and in that way is dissatisfying, but it’s so rare for a public figure—or for that matter, anyone, in a culture that is so much about staking your position and digging in your heels—to say “I was wrong.” I like these examples of humility, and how it’s possible to change, evolve, and come to new understandings about things you once thought were absolute.
- The National Book Foundation has kicked off its “60 Years of the National Book Awards” blog: “The blog will run from July 7th to September 21st, starting with Nelson Algren’s The Man With the Golden Arm, ending with Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country, and including works by Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Alice McDermott. Discover lesser known but equally talented National Book Award Fiction Winners such as Conrad Richter, Wright Morris, and Robb Forman Dew. Then return here, on September 21st, you will have a chance to select The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction and win two tickets to the 2009 National Book Awards, the first time in its history the Awards will open to a public vote.” (I’m not sure I’m clear on that last point…) Anyway, add the blog to your feed and join in the discussion.
3 comments for this post
In this case of Frank Schaeffer’s, it is fake humility at best. If you know his history, he never sees an opportunity to slander, dishonor, belittle his parents that he does not like. He has been doing it for decades. And he is also engaging in revisionism of the facts of his life with his “apology.” He said he left the evangelical Christian right and repented of his so-called hate speech against abortionists. That is a lie. He left the evangelical right to join the Orthodox church and remained anti-abortion for many years there. And for those many years, he was trashing his father and mother every chance he got, even belittling his own mother’s looks while she was still alive. He is basically pimping the name of his father to make money and have a platform of his own while using it to constantly dishonor his parents, including lying about them. And yes, he did lie about his father. His father never advocated violence against abortionists.
And in the many years against Schaeffer he railed against the Christian evangelical right, abortionists, his parents alike, in the same hateful terms. Basically, now that he has joined the left, he has to discard his anti-abortion rhetoric but his hateful rants against Chrisians and his parents continue. I notice he listed those pro-lifers, from both Catholics and evangelical Protestants alike, since he railed against them in hateful terms for so many years. But he left out his own Orthodox church, despite the fact that it also teaches the pro-life position and also teaches abortion is murder. So he can claim to as he has done for years to be spokesman for the Orthodox Church (which before the last few years, he was militant pro-lifer, and that is contrary to his lie, for way long after he left his father’s movement) while denouncing his position without stating it as culprit he so charged other pro-life churches. It is hypocrisy at its finest.
If the left has to use Schaeffer as model of humility and of repentance from hate speech, then it is setting itself up for long time failure and folks looking at it as guillible. He will turn on your side and condemn everyone on your side when it suits him. He has done so to so many others, especially his own parents. And he has not refrain from his hate speech he also accused others of.
Let’s turn that on him- if folks say abortion is murder means it is hate speech and leads to murder of abortionists, then by his logic, to say pro-lifers cause the death of an abortion doctor (the first in 10 years), mean that he is engaging in hate speech against pro-lifers and any violence (and they do exist aplenty) is his own fault from here on out. Cannot have it both ways.
And if he is really sincere about his responsibility as he claims (which is really just an opportunity to win praise from the left AND belittle his parents one more time with cheapshots based on his never ending ways to find lies against them), then go surrender himself to the cops and have himself prosecuted for his own claimed role of causing what he says is terrorism. Otherwise, he is just a hypocrite, an opportunist, and someone who dishonors his parents in ways if folks do it to their liberal parents, you would be horrified and have no respect for that person.
And yes, if Chelsea writes a book about her Clinton parents the same way Frank constant write about his parents, I would no respect for her either.
Sara Reply:
July 12th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
@Daredevil, I appreciate the counterpoint. (And for anyone reading this post who wants to know more about what Daredevil is talking about, check out Os Guinness’ critique of Frank Schaeffer’s Crazy for God here: http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/marapr/1.32.html?start=1). I don’t think anyone can see one’s parents rightly, and would never take what a child says about his parents as objective truth. The older I get, the more I view my own critical thoughts about my parents with deep suspicion.
That said, what interests me most about the link I posted is the analysis, regardless of where it came from, of how religion and politics got so tangled in the particular way they tangled in the last quarter century or so (not that religion and politics haven’t been tangled since the dawn of time). It makes sense to me. Whether or not Frank is an opportunist or hypocrite, I can’t say one way or the other. The interview, at face value, and the ideas in it are my interest.
To me, the personalities and figures and names involved aren’t that important, because we can pretty much look at any wrong in the world and understand we’re all responsible. I mean, we’re all in the same boat. I’m a hypocrite and opportunist, myself, when it comes right down to it. In my case, though, no one really cares. Ultimately that’s between me and God, as Frank’s issues, whatever they are, are between him and God.
Sara –
I’d suggest that Frank Schaeffer’s book is an important book but not necessarily a good book or a pleasant book. He’s vengeful, he overshares, his book could have done with some editing.
That being said, the Os Guinness response was disappointing, too: unless I misread him he basically says he knew the elder Schaeffer better than his son did, that Schaeffer’s readers and fans already had a Francis Schaeffer they liked, so it was the younger Schaeffer’s responsibility to shut up, etc.
There is an element in conservative Protestantism/Evangelicalism (for lack of a better term) that seems to have fallen into the trap of believing that what a person believes or affirms or whatever is more important than how they behave, and Guinness seems to be appealing to that element. There’s a real shortage of transparency among idea leaders in that subculture, and this episode exemplifies this pretty well: none of this would be an issue if Francis Schaeffer had written a memoir with an authentic human voice dealing with the difficulties of being a celebrity conservative Christian in the 1980s, his attitudes toward his fellow travelers, his attitudes regarding art and self-expression, the difficulty of parenting while being a celebrity Christian, the difficulty of running a retreat, etc. Unfortunately that sort of thing isn’t done among conservative idea leaders; I suspect it says something really unpleasant about the movement generally, either about the leaders (because they have no inner life, or are fearful of admitting any unorthodox thoughts, or whatever) or about the rank and file (who wouldn’t tolerate feet of clay, moments of doubt, or what-have-you).
I don’t expect change, though; it seems like the very people who decry the poverty of the culture and the shortening of attention spans etc. rarely if ever speak in anything but soundbites, and honest memoirs and soundbites just don’t mix.