Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Frank Schaeffer's Screed Against Evangelicals: Comments on a Recent Post

Frank Schaeffer leaves no doubt about how he feels with his recent blog post title Dear Evangelical Establishment (and Christianity Today Editors) Here's Why You ALL Seem So F--g! Dumb to Folks in the Real World Who Don't Understand "Evangelical Speak".  Frank's upset and this gets him emoting big time.  Here is how he starts his post:
Open any issue of Christianity Today magazine and scan the article titles and sub-headings in case you want to know why the Americanized, post-Billy Graham version of evangelical faith comes across as so fucking dumb.
You can read what it is that got Frank's bloviating emotions in an uproar.  I posted the following comment in response to his post.
 Richard Klaus • a day ago
I took you up on your advice...check any issue of Christianity Today to see the shallow stupidity of evangelicals. I checked the June 2016 table of contents and found the following items:

1. (Cover story) "Standing with Charleston, One Year After the Emanuel AME Church Shooting." Seemed like a reasonable and culturally relevant issue to cover.

2. "Meet the Man Behind the Bono and Eugene Peterson Conversation" This is in reference to a recent video when Bono and the translator of "The Message" spoke about the Psalms. Not everyone may be interested but I personally don't think Bono (or Peterson) is stupid.

3. "Faith and the Arts: A Fragile Friendship" I could only read the first few paragraphs (due to a pay wall) but it spoke of the greater openness among evangelicals to the arts. There was another Francis Schaeffer who wrote about such matters and I don't think he was stupid.

4. "A Unified Church is a Gospel Witness" This was about the increasing racial diversity in America and was a call for evangelicals to respond as agents of peace. Seemed to me like a relevant social issue and a wise call to interact with this reality in a faithful and wise manner.

Now someone may not be interested in any of these topics--current events, arts, racial harmony--or they make think evangelical efforts are not what they should be. But the fact of the matter is that evangelicals are engaging in the culture in intelligent and engaging ways--much more than 30 years ago. Frank's father had much to do with with this.

Moral of the story: Beware of the blinding sparks when Frank Schaeffer grinds his axe.