Frank Schaeffer dishonors his father (yet again) for Obama

Via Vox Nova's resident Obama-devotee (Gerald Campbell) we hear the latest screed by disgruntled, wayward son Frankie Schaeffer against his father, the late, great Evangelical apologist Francis Schaeffer, entitled Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" But When My Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero (Huffington Post March 16, 2008):

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr. . . . Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.

Perhaps, perhaps not -- Frankie brings before the Huffington court "a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto":

If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.

[and]

There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...

There's a third passage Frankie offers in which his dad considers parallels between public schools in the United States and the Soviet Union where "the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively" and where "all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden" -- but I think Francis' illustration is hardly objectionable and perhaps even true, depending on degree to which one's local public school is ruled by secularism.

So let's focus on those two passages where Frankie suggests his dad advocates the "violent overthrow" of the United States.

It helps to read the passages in context, and this can be done simply by the wonderous power of Google. (Frankie's excerpts will be in red) -- pages 117-118:

There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate. The Christian is not to take the law into his own hands and become a law unto himself. But when all avenues of flight and protest have closed, force in the defensive posture is appropriate. This was the situation of the American Revolution.
[...]
A true Christian in Hitler’s Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state and hidden his Jewish neighbors from SS troops. The government had abrogated its authority, and had no right to make any demands.

This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion. [...] Christians must come to the children's defense, and must come to the defense of human life as such. The defense should be carried out on at least four fronts:

First, we should aggressively support a human life bill or a constitutional amendment protecting unborn children.

Second, we must enter the courts seeking to overturn the Supreme Court's abortion decision.

Third, legal and political action should be taken against hospitals and abortion clinics that perform abortions. [...]

Francis Schaeffer goes on to advocate putting pressure on institutions that provide abortions by introducing legislation cutting off taxpayer funding. He also supports non-violent civil disobedience and picketing of the abortion clinics (I believe this would be the "fourth" front).

Little wonder, that such proposals would appeal to Christian conservatives.

The next sentence is contained in a separate chapter:

It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God’s law it abrogates it’s authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation to such a tyrannical usurping of power. [p. 131]

The appropriate response entails not just the pursuit of political and legal actions and the use of mere words, but the provision of Christian alternatives:

Those who have responsibility as Christians, as they live under Scripture, must not only take the necessarily legal and political stands, but must practice all the possible Christian alternatives simultaneously with taking stands politically and legally. . . . [to] show that there are Christian alternatives. In Whatever Happened to the Human Race we stressed this in regard to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia of the old -- that Christians must not only speak and fight against these things, bu then must provide the Christian alternative. [p. 133]

With respect to abortion, Francis cites as a positive example the establishment of crisis pregnancy centers. He goes on to criticize as utopian those who provide ONLY the alternatives and neglect to take the appropriate legal and political measures -- and likewise believes it wrong and incomplete to pursue political-legal policy without adopting Christian alternatives.

Again, here is the second quote, in context:

“If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force, and if there is a vigilant precaution against its overreaction in practice, then at a certain point the use of force is justifiable. We should recognize, however, that overreaction can too easily become the ugly horror of sheer violence. [p. 106]

What kind of force is Francis Schaeffer envisioning, then, to counter the forces of secularism and the culture of death?

At this point in history, protest is the most viable alternative. … after all the normal constitutional means of protest have been exhausted, then what could be done? At some point, Christians could refuse to pay some portion of their tax money. Of course, this would mean a trial. Such a move would have to mean the individual’s choice under God. Happily, at the present time the Hyde amendment has removed the use of national tax money for abortions, but that does not change the possibilty that in some cases such a protest would be the only way to be heard. One can think of, for example, tax money going to Planned Parenthood . . .

Francis Schaeffer goes to advocate resisting entanglement and interference with the secular state through home-schooling or private [religious?] schooling.

Guess which party leans on the side of home-schooling and vouchers for private schooling?

* * *

To be sure, Francis meditates on that which compelled our founding fathers to revolt against the British ("the people, if they find their basic rights systematically attacked by the state, have a duty to try and change that government, and if they cannot do so, to abolish it") and what might constitute "the bottom line" for Christians as well:

"If there is no final place for civil disobedience, then the government has been put in the place of the Living God, because then you are to obey it even when it tells you in its own way to worship Caesar. And that point is exactly where the early Christians performed their own acts of civil disobedience even where it costs them their own lives. [p. 130]

But I think this is a far cry from the caricature of his father that Frankie provides, cobbled together from a straw man of quotations. I'll leave to the reader to judge whether those criticizing Jeremiah Wright are pursuing a "double standard."

Related

• Regarding Obama's former pastor and James Cone, the racist theologian who influenced Wright, see Rod Dreher's The insanity of "black liberation theology" Beliefnet.com. March 17, 2008). If Pastor Wright cites Cone as an influence, than he is nothing like Francis Schaeffer.
  
• "Fathers and Sons: On Francis Schaeffer, Frank Schaeffer, and Crazy for God" - Os Guinness (Books & Culture, March/April 2008)
  
• Jaded: Frank Schaefer 35 Years Later, by Philip Blosser (Pertinacious Papist) November 3, 2007.