is the title of this MUST-READ rant by Frank Schaeffer. For those who do not recognize the name, Schaeffer's father was one of the founders of what we now know as the Religious Right in this country, and he write about his experience growing up in that family in the superbly written Crazy for God. This particularly post, the fourth and final in a series, is occasioned by Schaeffer's having participated in some Q&A at the premiere of a film in which he appears, the documentary "Hellbound."
Here's the first paragraph of the post:
With friends like this God needs no enemies. People “defending” God have completely screwed up America and our politics. And their version of “God” fucked up the first half of my life too. Yes, this IS a movie review as well as a theologically-induced PTSD-unhinged RANT. I could have been painting a picture. I could have been playing with my grandchildren. Instead I was talking about God because I’m in a movie about hell.
Please keep reading.
Schaeffer has become increasingly well-known in part as a result of his appearance on TRMS and other tv shows where he has offered his insights and expertise about the religious right.
He can be very pointed in what he says, and what he writes, for example:
Talking about hell in and of itself is a waste of time because if there is a “God” no one knows anything about him/her or it and they never will, let alone about what he/she or it will “do” about the “lost.” But there are people, lots of them, who think hell is real because it fits their kill-your-neighbor-if-he-looks-at-you-funny vision of “life.”
He is likely to piss-off a lot of people, and he doesn't care. A sentence like this:
Because I was born into a big time evangelical God business family (that I describe in my book Crazy For God about how it was very much like being born into the Mob and/or a nepotistic North Korean dynasty) even though I “escaped” — and have had a respectable career as a writer — my brain is still in captivity.
is not going to endear him to people.
And sometimes he will absolute infuriate some religious bigots (I think that is the appropriate word) when he equates them with their counterparts in other faiths, such as in this screed:
So let’s be clear: the line between rioting God-nuts in the Middle East trashing our embassies and killing our ambassador and our own God-nuts here who are worrying about hell and the human life of fertilized eggs and how to “heal” gay people of being created gay, while refusing health care to grownups, is so thin that there is no daylight between us. The “crazies” in the Middle East are you and me.
And there are other just as pointed statements that are well worth reading. Let me close by offering the penultimate paragraph of this post:
Want to know just how crazy all sides — including mine — in this “hell debate” are? Watch the movie “Hellbound?” and take a peek into the asylum that is housing the people who are destroying the world. They now own a major political party and are running a Mormon opportunist who believes in nothing and his Ayn Rand/Jesus/God-nut sidekick who believes in way too much and who wants to take what little the poor have away in the name of opportunity.
I think we might want to make Schaeffer's words widely known, even as potentially inflammatory as they may seem to be, because they cut right to the heart of things.
What do you think?