Ex-Evangelical Denounces Michele Bachmann & Calls Christian Reconstructionist Politics "Anti-American"
DemocracyNow.org -- August 17, 2011
Amy Goodman interviews Frank Schaeffer
Former evangelical Christian, Frank Schaeffer, whose father’s writings and work played a key role in the religious development of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. Frank Schaeffer recently wrote an article titled "Michele Bachmann Was Inspired by My Dad and His Christian Reconstructionist Friends -- Here’s Why That’s Terrifying." Schaeffer’s father was Francis Schaeffer, one of the nation’s most influential evangelical Christian theologians and philosophers in the 1970s and 1980s. In a recent profile in The New Yorker magazine, Bachmann reveals she entered politics after watching Francis Schaeffer’s film, "How Should We Then Live?" The film was directed by his son, Frank [...]
H/T to Christian Dem in NC for the direct YouTube Link
Link to this DemocracyNow Video and Transcript.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Well, when she [Michele Bachmann] was at Oral Roberts Law School, founded by someone called Herb Titus, who then went on and worked for Pat Robertson and the 700 Club and founded a law school for him, she was unwittingly being trained by one of my father’s closest disciples who had been at his ministry many times. And Herb Titus and my dad and people like Rousas Rushdoony and other founders of the Reconstructionist movement, or the Dominionists, because they want to take dominion over the earth, including American politics, really believe that the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights should be replaced by what they regard as biblical law.
[...]
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Yeah, that piece is on AlterNet right now, and I wrote it because, actually, what you just heard Michele Bachmann say there was a well-rehearsed, planned, bare-faced lie. In 2006, she made it very clear she went into law school because her husband told her to. She ran for politics because her husband told her to. And she used the word "submission."
You have to understand, in the evangelical circle she comes from, there’s a whole movement called the Quiverfull movement, which is about having a full quiver of children, no birth control, lots of kids, five kids, 24 foster kids, whatever—homeschooling, train your kids at home, take them out of the public school system.
[...]
Now, with a wink and a nod to her own audience watching her on Fox Television, she’s basically saying this:
"Look, you know that I know that you know that when I say "wifely submission," that’s the world I come from. However, we’re trying to win a national election here, so I’m going to soft-pedal this."
And, of course, they’ll let her get away with this godly lie for the greater good, which is to insinuate herself into mainstream American politics as a radical anti-feminist coming from the far right fringe of even the evangelical movement. There are lots of evangelicals that don’t sign onto her view on so many issues, and this would be one of them. But for purpose of the election and thinking forward to maybe getting the nomination from the Republicans, she has to tell these well-rehearsed lies to somehow soft-pedal this extreme background she comes from.
Michele Bachmann Was Inspired By My Dad and His Christian Reconstructionist Friends -- Here's Why That's Terrifying
Bachmann's radical right-wing influences include the most extremist figures in the history of the religious right.
by Frank Schaeffer -- AlterNet
[...] America has a problem: It’s filled with people who take the Bible seriously. America has a blessing: It’s filled with people who take the Bible seriously.
How does this blessing coexist with the curse derived from the same source: the Bible? The answer is that the Bible is a curse or a blessing depending on who is doing the interpreting. Sometimes belief in the Bible leads to building a hospital. Sometimes it leads to justifying perpetual war and empire building. Same book -- different interpretation.
If the history of Christianity proves one thing, it’s that you can make the Bible “say” anything. When you hear words like “We want to take back America for God!” the 21st-century expression of such theocratic ideas can be traced back to some of my old friends: the Reconstructionists.
AMY GOODMAN: Frank Schaeffer, in Ryan Lizza’s piece in The New Yorker about Michele Bachmann, he writes that Francis Schaeffer "was a tremendous philosopher," according to Bachmann, quoting. Bachmann said, "He wrote marvelous books and was very inspirational." Again, Francis Schaeffer is your father. Talk more about where you come from, because you embraced what your father believed. You, yourself, were a well-known evangelical leader --
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: -- before you, well, turned against it all.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: Well, you know, my own journey is one where I had to confront the fact that we were simply wrong on a whole number of issues.
[...] that fathers pass on the mantle to their sons or families, or at least the mailing list. I was following in my dad’s footsteps, as someone in my young twenties. But from about 1984 on, and certainly by 1990, I had jumped ship.
And I guess I can just put it this way: it struck me, in many areas, but one principally in terms of politics, that the religious right that I was part of is fundamentally anti-American. They hate this country. They wrap themselves in the flag, but they hate America as it is: the America that embraces gay people, is multicultural, is a homogeneous society that seeks to incorporate all races and ethnic creeds into its culture.
The America they love is the, quote, "Christian America" that they keep harping back to, that people like Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, etc., all want to take us back to. But it’s an America that never existed and certainly doesn’t now. And I think it was just that sense of alienation from my own culture, my own time and place, that began a train of thought that, in the end, took me very, very far away, [...]
in a nutshell, it’s just I happen to not be an anti-American person.
Thanks Frank Schaeffer. I used to be a fan of your father's books too. He was quite the writer-philosopher-preacher, back in the New-Age day. And he left quite a legacy, eh?
But I too cherish the tenets under which America was founded.
Here's my updated take on these tricky topics:
If God wants to set up his 'Kingdom on Earth' -- maybe he should have stuck around, to direct the process.
Til then we've got this huge, complex mass of Humanity -- aka the Multitudes -- that we -- and the Planet -- have to contend with. You know, that whole Be Good Planetary Stewards gig.
Afterall it's terribly hard to "find that kingdom of heaven within" -- when you're constantly battling the lack of Jobs, the lack of Shelter, the lack of Security, the lack of Food.
The lack of basic human compassion.
Charity (and helping the Least Among us) should NOT be a political football -- this Christian/Progressive Principle SHOULD BE a Fact of Life.
They are the Foundations of 'Promoting the General Welfare' upon which America was built -- This concern for our fellow citizens and the Nation as a whole, are the very basis of America's Constitution
-- THAT very America, that the Religious Right would like to Dismantle and sell off, and then to rebuild in their own Old Testament image.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. These belong to everyone in America.
-- It does NOT say: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Religious Mandates into every aspect of American's Lives ... And even into the lives of the Non-believers, and those of other faiths.
America was founded on being Open to all faiths, creeds, traditions -- and also the lack thereof.
It is Individual People that matter in America. Or at least it should be.
Afterall all THAT is how the Founders, designed it. ... with Liberty and Justice, for ALL.
America should NOT become a 'Closed Society' -- which requires a secret handshake and weekly password -- to gain entry into their exclusive Club ...
Didn't the Founding of America have something to do with, breaking the bonds of Religious Tyranny?
... something about the pursuit of Freedom, and individual respect, for all its citizens ... as I seem to recall ...