This December I finally got around to reading Frank Schaeffer’s Crazy for God (2008). It was worse than I expected, and I didn’t expect it to be good.
In some ways it is well-written (or perhaps well-re-written by his editor). Although it swarms with filthy language, it occasionally presents lucid commentary on his famous family and the evangelical world they lived in. On the other hand, it suffers from the mixed up mind of a man who was always immoral but nevertheless was taught that he was a Christian. His own wickedness attracted others who were like him while blinding him to the biblical Christianity he could have enjoyed and furthered.
Messed up by his weird parents? Probably. I wasn’t there, but he relates that his father suffered from extreme mood swings and routinely quarreled with his mother, even to the point of throwing flower pots or bruising her arms. His mother had her own aberrations, detailing sexual information and testimony to the young boy (and his sisters). Both parents being famous and busy, they neglected Frankie and he largely reared himself, acquiring almost no education until they sent him from their home in Switzerland to a boarding school in England. His education progressed little even then, hampered by dyslexia (and disguised behind his natural brilliance and talent).
We “knew” Franky (as it was spelled) back in the ’80s when he was an antiabortion firebrand. That is, I and the Christian Activists around me read, watched, and listened to Franky’s material. It was commonly acknowledged even then that he was a jerk, but he was our jerk and we were glad that he scared and enraged the enemy. We did not know the depth of his hypocrisy as he describes it in this memoir.
The book suffers from Schaeffer’s lack of education. He thinks he has an inside track to the truth because he was there when it happened, but even that attitude betrays a lack of historical perspective. He simply repeats what leftist haters say about “fundamentalism” because he, like they, doesn’t know the real history of the movement. He takes a swipe a Charles Colson, accusing him of faking conversion in order to get out of prison — which anybody knows is false if they actually research the question. It’s an accusation that can only be made by supposing that someone would do that. Twice he accuses James Dobson of being a demagogue who plays people for suckers while dominating and manipulating them; but I recall that even Gil Moegerle, former co-host of Dobson’s radio program, couldn’t find much of anything to complain about when he wrote his attack, James Dobson’s War on America (1997).
All of which is to say, this book is simply unreliable because Schaeffer himself is unreliable. Actually, he says as much in the book, but considers it to be a point of honor because he’s so honest about his deceitfulness and so enlightened about his confusion. Not surprisingly, most reviewers agree with him because they, too, labor under delusions of what Christians must be like and they swallow whatever he feeds them, bubbling out praises for his honesty and insight.
He does say some good things, but little that couldn’t be found elsewhere in a presentation where the learner doesn’t have to wade through Schaeffer’s vulgarity and breathe its sickening odor. He could have told the truth while still respecting the human dignity of his readers — but guys like this have been so far gone for so long, asking them for common decency is like asking a Bostonian to speak with a Southern accent. He would consider such a request both unreasonable and demeaning.