Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer

I recently finished a memoir by Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God. He is the son of Francis Schaeffer, a unique and at one time an extremely influential evangelical teacher, speaker, author, and self-made intellectual and pop culture critic. Francis Schaeffer died of cancer in 1984.  I once attended a conference put on by Schaeffer's ministry, L'Abri, a retreat center whose home is in Switzerland. Schaeffer was there, with his trademark European knickers, goatee and a noticeable scowl. The conference was an interesting, if unusual, combination of Biblical literalism and course in the Humanities. Great European art, philosophy, music, and literature provided the content, all of it presented with respect and enthusiasm but also run through a Christian evangelical filter that pointed out the historical trajectory away from God at the core of things. At its peak L'Abri, in its home space in Switzerland, attracted artistic and celebrity luminaries from England and America, not to mention large numbers of wandering, seeking hippies. Many were converted and became workers at L'Abri, some left their artistic careers to "serve the Lord," but however it might have affected people it was a cultural phenomenon that fascinated and drew in a generation of 60's kids and later became a major force in laying the foundation for the modern Christian Right. At the center of that development was none other than Frank Schaeffer, who grew up under the shadow cast by his famous father and mother, Edith.

I couldn't put this book down. Not only is it a gripping story of the background to the Christian Right's explosion on the political and cultural scene, it is a story of faith and self-awareness lost and found and lost and found again, with the two poles moving in and out of one another as the drama of Frank's life unfolds. He describes an incredible life, charmed and seemingly cursed at the same time, a child growing up in an atmosphere of missionary zeal and religious absolutism often contradicted by his own humanity and questioning, not to mention his father's rages, episodes of spousal abuse, and personal love for the art and culture he publicly questioned and even warned about.

But Frank is not one sided. His father was also compassionate and stood for justice when it mattered. His mother had wanted to be a dancer in her youth but did not pursue it out of a sense of obligation to God and the saving of souls. He writes of his father's deep love for art and speaks of a several week trip he took with him to Italy when he was 11 or 12 to visit all the museums and churches they could fit in. His father became light and relaxed, unlike the overly serious intellectual evangelist he was known in public to be. On that trip, he notes, his father never said grace at a meal, reveled in the art, and left his Bible at home. When Frank visits his mother in her 90's she dances to the music she once condemned, beautifully, gracefully he says, and she appears radiant and at peace with not a mention of the old pieties she used to routinely pronounce.

It is clear that Frank overdosed on religion and couldn't escape it. He was nearly smothered by it. His intensity, intelligence, intuition, and talent for painting and writing, not to mention a natural sense of rebellion against inconsistency and absurdity, could not co-exist with a narrow fundamentalism, even if his parents were moving personally toward a broader view of the world. So it is ironic that Frank and his father ended up on the road together promoting two feature documentaries put together largely by Frank. The first one emphasized his father's intellectual tour through the Humanities but it also included, at Frank's insistence, the first serious public campaign against abortion and Roe vs. Wade in its last two sections. It is still being shown and studied in evangelical circles today. The two of them went around the country presenting the documentary to huge crowds, holding forth on big intellectual themes and finally encouraging activism against abortion at the political level. They were ignored by people outside of the evangelical subculture, but anyone near that subculture couldn't avoid the Schaeffers. They were the stars and the ones to listen to. They carried the intellectual weight and had the communication skills to rally thousands to the cause. The world had to be saved from itself. The rhetoric was, from the beginning, extreme.

Frank has left all that now and this book is his confession. It is remarkably honest, wonderfully written, funny, at times blunt in its sexual descriptions, and at the end very moving. There is much love in it and just as much despair. Frank tries to say what he sees without romanticizing it. He doesn't spare anyone, including himself.  If others saw his parents as the best of saints, he tries to see them for who they really were, flawed but caring human beings.

The greatest casualty of this book is fundamentalism and the American subculture built upon it. Frank sees its shadow, the underbelly of ambition, pretense, startling insanity, and corruption. And he knows what he's talking about. It was his milieu. These were people he spoke with, stayed with, in whose jets he flew around the country, and who hired him to speak at their rallies and to appear on their television and radio programs. When he was young they would be guests at his parent's home. He saw them up close, away from the cameras. I need to point out that he is talking, not so much about the followers, but the frontline leadership of the evangelical movement during the last 40 years.

Frank Schaeffer today is a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, a place he can come and go, take in the beauty of faith so it can feed and not starve him. He can "serve the Lord" by being himself, now a writer and painter. He heads his last chapter "Peace."

At the end of the memoir I thought he came out in a place of grace and beauty. He has found acceptance. He has returned to himself. All of the impossible absolutes are in the past. There is nothing to live up to, only being who he is, loving his family, being a better husband and father (he, too, was abusive in earlier years, even to one of his children). His "service" to the world is simply to offer himself, his writing, his art, his confession, his truth.

We may take from it what we will. There is certainly a lesson here about what healthy religion is and is not. Religion can be very crazy and life-denying, often when it is most intense and too serious about itself. God can be the most neurotic of pursuits when we ignore ourselves and our inner passions to serve an ideal that comes from someplace other than our own souls. A God who tells you to be something other than who you are is probably not God at all. If that seems provocative, then read the book. You might be convinced, but maybe you won't. Maybe it's better to give it all up and save the world. But I doubt it.