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.
Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were very much like things pastors on the right say too.
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.
Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.
Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:
"If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable."
And this:
"In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union...."
Then this:
"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..."
I'm not saying if I agree with Dad here or not. My point here isn't about Dad or Rev Wright's words but about the double standard applied to judging them and using them to smear Obama.
Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."
My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.
The hypocrisy of the right attacking Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. When my late father and I were the guests of Jerry Falwell at Liberty Baptist College, Falwell said to us quite casually and seriously, while speaking of the "homosexual problem," that: "If I had a dog that did what they do I take it out and shoot it." And when it came to saying God was damning America he and Pat Robertson sided with the 9/11 hijackers by saying the terrorist's actions served America right and were God's punishment. Yet John McCain went to Liberty Baptist College and spoke for Falwell, in order to "mend fences" with the Religious Right. He said he no longer believed that Falwell was "an agent of intolerance." And Rudi Giuliani gladly accepted Robertson's endorsement. So much for the Republican "mainstream."
This cuts left too. Fair is fair. So where are the clips--playing incessantly next to Hillary Clinton's picture--of her antiwar friends and Bill Clinton's fellow draft dodger members of the New Left, cursing and damning America during Vietnam War protests and since? The company that Bill and Hillary kept in the late 1960s through the 1970s was defined by damning America and sometimes by rooting for the North Vietnamese. Clinton said he "loathed" the military. We still made him commander in chief.
Anti-American spewing also comes from left wing white preachers. Read the fiery sermons of the late Episcopal bishop of New York Paul Moore, Jr. who raged against America.
Want to play this smear-by-association game? Okay, while McCain was a prisoner of war a bishop in his church was rooting for McCain's torturers. Episcopal Bishop Moore, in his autobiography, Presences: A Bishop's Life in the City, wrote that the end of the Cold War had left the United States "like a wounded rooster crowing on the top of the dung heap." Blaming "corporate greed and lust" as well as "unbridled nationalism" for manufacturing causes for war, Moore cursed America as often as he served communion.
If we want to get really silly let's ask this: McCain is an Episcopalian so where are the clips of the anti-American rantings of Bishop Moore and not a few other Episcopalian pastors and bishops, next to McCain's picture? How can McCain be a member of that denomination?
Look, McCain's bishops, Obama's pastor, or my dad were all part of a tradition that taken in context is very American if crazy at times. Theologically based ranting and especially preaching, is a style of communication with its own cadences that is easy to mock and/or twist-by-sound-bite.
And all this is a massive and deliberate distraction. Yet I think there is reason to hope. There are decent people out there who have refused to go along with the smear-by-association campaign. Mike Huckabee defended Obama and even his pastor. McCain said we can't blame Obama for his minister's words. Not everyone on the right is stooping as low as the Clintons and the right wing media scavengers.
I think Obama is worth fighting for. History has thrown America an unlikely lifeline. Do we have the decency, the sense, the last glimmer of sanity needed to open hearts to change?
Obama offers civility in the midst of a national bar fight. Obama speaks in complete sentences, well-turned paragraphs, offers thoughts with intellectual depth, nuance, humility and compassion. Obama is a reasoned essay cast before sound-bite swine who seem ready to tear anything that falls into their sty to shreds.
By providence or blind luck, we are being given a second chance. In Obama our founders appear once again stepping from the mists of time to offer a wayward great, great grandchild an opportunity for redemption. But everything is turned on its head. Good is called bad. The greatest things about Obama are used against him, decency and transparency are mocked.
Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back
FrankSchaefer.com
Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times best selling author. The Los Angeles Times described Frank's writing as, "A rich brew of cross-cultural comedy." The British newspaper the Guardian says: "funny and wonderfully observed."
Frank is a survivor of both polio and an evangelical/fundamentalist childhood, an acclaimed writer who overcame severe dyslexia, a home-schooled and self-taught documentary movie director, a feature film director and producer of four low budget Hollywood features Frank has described as "pretty terrible," and a best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction.
Frank's three semi-biographical novels about growing up in a fundamentalist mission: Portofino, Zermatt, Saving Grandma have a worldwide following and have been translated into nine languages. BABY JACK, a novel about service, sacrifice and the class division between who serves and who does not, was published in October of 2006.
USA TODAY said of BABY JACK;
"The reader marvels at how Schaeffer makes this concise chorus of social conviction moving and memorable..."
Frank's latest book is a memoir, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back has been acclaimed widely. Jane Smiley writing in The Nation (Oct 15, 2007) said: "Crazy for God offers considerable insight into several issues that have bedeviled American life in the past thirty years, and... when taken in conjunction with [Frank Schaeffer's] other works (notably the Calvin Becker Trilogy, Portofino, Zermatt and Saving Grandma), it gives us not only a handle on the mess we are in but also quite a few laughs..."
Joel Brown, writes in the Boston Globe (December 18, 2007) "That Crazy for God isn't just another James Frey-style memoir of personal dysfunction becomes clear with the subtitle, it's alternately hilarious and excruciating."
Jeff Sharlet (a contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine) reviewed Crazy For God in The New Statesman (Oct 29 2007). He wrote: "Crazy for God is a brilliant book, a portrait of fundamentalism painted in broad strokes with streaks of nuance, the twinned coming-of-age story of Frank and the Christian right."
Mr. Schaeffer, you certainly deserve all the possible kudos, but what a tragedy to have such a father. I am a father myself and I think of my son every day. In all his rants, your father did ahdd he ever thought about you? Had he ever thought...
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Mark Sashine (51 articles, 19 quicklinks, 244 diaries, 3462 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 8:23:39 AM
Re: Violent actions against the government is plainly stupid and without any understanding of our Constitutional processes. The simple logistic point is..., if you can arouse enough citizens to make a statement for change against the political government..., through violence..., you can most certainly briong together the same number of concerned cityizens to organize for a legal and peaceful revolutionary change from the present political/corporate stranglehold on our civic and economic institutions..
Talk democracy. Organize for its implementation... Rational thought provokes rational change. Violence promotes more violence, and the political stste has all the "violence" machinery to destroy any shortsighted, half baked plans to bring back..., as many call for..."Power to the People," a slogan which has no substance because the "people," beginning in early colonial history..., and in the time of the inauguration of our Constitution...We, the People, NEVER had control of the government. This control has always rested with those who owned the best and most economic features of the then growing United States.. G.Washington himself, was one of the largest land owners in the new America..., acquired through the manipulation of the French lands through his use of the military during trhe Fr./Indians Wars. We need new institutions We can acquite through the present political processes... Organization for a new Democracy is in order. Well?
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Wally (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 13 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 8:39:07 AM
For centuries the religious nutcases have preached their hatred of humanity, their constant raving against everything human but war, oh! how they love war, how they love suffering, it puts them in the limelight you see. There they are in their gowns and funny hats giving all who are daft enough to believe their blessing, many are homosexuals as has been proven on many occasions but they attack other people with the same orientation.
They have a set of rules called the Ten Commandments which they are not required to follow, no sir otherwise there would be no death penalty would there, rule number 6 isn't it. Then there's the Love Thy Neighbour but these same people praise the young people they've coerced into invading another country causing the death of thousands upon thousands of neighbours.
If I had my way every religious leader would be put in prison until s/he learns to live in harmony, we could release the thousands of black US citizens who are there simply to prevent them voting.
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douglas kay (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 83 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 8:55:20 AM
Thank you kind sir for telling the truth to Americans because God knows they haven't heard it much lately. The media has gone hog wild over Obama's preacher's snippets like they have never heard anything of the kind before. FOX is the most ignorant, racially motivated media of all times. And the others (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC) seem to follow without even questioning the material. If anything comes from FOX, people with half a brain should investigate it thoroughly knowing the scoundrels and imbeciles that work for that station.
Thank you once again and there are "good media people" left in this world believe it or not. But it seems like all the Woodward and Bernsteins have been gagged by the neocon world elite.
But you give me HOPE! Bless you and your father because God knows, he was telling the whole truth.
babs
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b2008 (4 articles, 2 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 43 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 9:00:19 AM
it seems to me from my vantage point here in Northern Europe, is who was right in his analysis of, e g, US policy in Southwest Asia - Jermiah Wright or Barack Obama ? Whose analysis will underlie a possible war on, say, Iran - in the event that Bush/Cheney don't make the question academic in a new version of October (more likely August) Surprise....
Henri
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mhenriday (0 articles, 11 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 150 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 9:07:01 AM
It takes a tremendous amount of courage and humility to admit even to a single person that you were wrong, and that a famous and beloved father was wrong. Yet you have done so in a book, for the whole world to see! I highly recommend your book to one and all and applaud the important point you are making here that the double standard the media is applying in Obama's case is irrational and shameful.
Your father's example is an excellent one, and I'm sure that many examples could be found in the rants of Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, etc., etc., that would be almost as bad as the Rev. Fred Phelps, with his God hates America (for not hating gays) campaign. Yet Republican office-holders are never made to answer for the idiotic wrantings of these allies of theirs even though they are infinitely more visible than Rev. Wright ever dreamed of being prior to Obama's candidacy.
As for the merit of Rev. Wright's comments, I'm not sure that intelligent patriots, as opposed to the superficial kind, should condemn him. IMHO what this great Republican president said about the person of the president applies equally well to our country as a whole:
"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. ex-president Theodore Roosevelt in an editorial in the Kansas City Star", May 7, 1918
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
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Ray Dubuque (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 9:28:11 AM
Major Gen. S. Butler IMHO it takes a hell of a lot of gall to question the patriotism of a U. S. Marine General who in his 33 years of service to his country and earned more medals and honors than any other Marine in our nation's history (to that date at least). Now THIS is what he thought of the policies that his country had asked him to pursue and enforce during his illustrious career:
"War is a racket. . .
It may seem odd for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent 33 years in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force --the Marine Corps -- . . . I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12.
I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903 . . . "Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best that he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents". S. D. Butler
"Butler understood the more honest function of the Marines (and U.S. foreign policy in general) was to forcefully maintain structures protecting the haves from the have-nots." { from www.VeteransForPeace.Org/military.htm}.
We should never confuse the truth with hate, yet it often seems appropriate for those in power who profit the most in war to confuse the two.
The good general had no political agenda. Only the truth in observation. That made him no friend of those who lie and would enjoy seeing that lie go on forever. Ironic too that beyond the Revolution, the Civil War and WW2, the later of which being a war to end fascist tyranny, we are left only to look around a few decades later and realize we have become (or perhaps we've often been) the very thing we have so adamantly and philosophically detested.
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Michael Shaw (7 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 329 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 2:36:28 PM
A life long Dem here, one who wants candidates vetted. Matters not where the facts come from. This is our Presidency, and we do not want incompetence...we have had that with George W.
OBAMA is right behind Geotge W.
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SA McMahon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 10:13:32 AM
I can't see how anyone would be capable of following the incompetence, or better still the intentional abuse of power wreaked upon us by this current administration. To suggest Obama would follow in Bush's footsteps is not only unrealistic, speculative and presumptuous, it is unfair. Obama hasn't even been elected yet and already some are trying to compare him with George W. Bush. In my view the closest thing comparable to Bush would be Mussolini, along with the same type of military backed corporatism Italy experienced in the late thirties.
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Michael Shaw (7 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 329 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 3:58:37 PM
I'm for seeing a gradual, steady, and long-term reduction in the number of religious politicians, period. I really don't care about faith, ethnicity, nationality even, just get a little air-space in there between the old representative government stuff and the religious stuff. White, black, latino, rich, poor, I don't care, there's a 'fundamental' disconnect, here. Make it a permanent one.
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truthtruffle (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 94 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 10:36:14 AM
We Still Have a Constitution in NO Need of Violent Overthrow
"Radical" Christians, although not particularly advocating a violent overthrow of the US government, often "fret" (and somewhat hope) that it will come to that, I think because they want to self-identify with George Washington and the Sons of Liberty who vouchsafed the liberties we now enjoy.
The biggest flaw in that argument, however, is that we now have a Constitution that protects those liberties, despite how we might think they are not on occasion being protected. Whether it's Jeremiah Wright or Mr. Schaeffer's father, this type of advocacy is wrong.
Jeremiah Wright is correct on some issues, but his solutions hold very little water.
Thank you for speaking out against the sins of your father.
The fact that our "forth estate", the Media is primarily used to "inflame" the public and they fail to point out the hypocrisy of the right attacking Obama, while they have no problem allowing the right to use religious leaders to attack US citizens.
Falwell's attacks - serious hate speech, regarding the "homosexual problem" was repeated over and over as if it was moral, true and valid. It was HATE speech meant to inflame.
When he said, "If I had a dog that did what they do I take it out and shoot it." Pat Robertson sided with the 9/11 hijackers and was given, "moral authority" to speak. He should have been dismissed, but instead, the Main Steam media parroted his remarks, with very little condemnation.
It is rarely pointed out that John McCain went to Liberty Baptist College and spoke for Falwell, in order to "mend fences" with the Religious Right. John McCain, condones this "Hate speech" and he is not called out on it.
Rudi Giuliani accepted Robertson's endorsement.
And much of what Reverend White said, while inflammatory, also had some core truth to it. I disagree with his "God Damn America" statement, but I do not disagree that we live in a country divided.
We live in a country with have and have nots.
We live in a country where there are rich and poor.
We live in a country where many of those that do the back breaking work do not share in the "wealth" of the country. Where wealth is sucked out of individual's and small communities and concentrated into the hands of a minority of the "ownership" class.
We moved created a "slave" class. Where the owners of society reap handsome benefits, where the working classes, work more, get less, and when they cannot work any longer, they are "disposable".
Minorities and those on the fringe of society, are easily disenfranchised. The poor have always known that they do not share in societies prosperity. Now the middle class is eroding from the bottom up.
The main steam media could be pointing out the destruction of our society, but that is down the rabbit hole.
Instead, the concentrate on those things, like Rev. White's comments, that inflame and divide.
That way they can keep the focus off of the important issues of our time, our disintegrating society.
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August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 442 comments)
on Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 11:12:37 AM
Pastor wright is as American as any one can imagine. To be American is to stand up and speak up against the wrongs we do.
The extremist talk show radio hosts led by Sean Hannity, Riley, Limbaugh and Beck are feasting on it and sadly, and shamefully, we do not have ulgy talk show hosts on the sides of the moderate Americans, who are the majority of Americans.
These hosts do not represent America, but the fanatic binge.
Is that recent Rasmussen poll RASMUSSEN POLL: McCain Now Leads By Double Digits:that show McCain leading both democratic candidates. One of the top issues at hand is the Wright Sermon. That and the second amendment turmoil in Washington. Both events are deemed as strikes against Obama.
The neocon race card is in full swing as you suggest. This poll may well be an indiction that the smear campaign is working. Of course one day in May does not a presidency make or break. But if this trend continues my only observation would be we are the dumbest electorate in the world.
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Michael Shaw (7 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 329 comments)
on Monday, March 24, 2008 at 11:16:07 AM
