(Interview) How a founding father of the religious right lost religious faith and revised his stance on abortion.
Offline I caught this interview on NPR today and found it extremely interesting. In this interview, Frank Schaeffer explains how he formerly pushed vigorously for religious conservatives to get into politics and take up religious issues, especially the issue of abortion. He talks about how the religious right, which he feels like he helped create, grew into a monster that he no longer relates to. He explains how he voted democrat for the first time ever in this past election, how his stance on abortion has been revised, and how his feelings about religion have changed dramatically. I enjoyed it, and I thought there might be one or two people around the site who would enjoy it, too. Maybe?
NPR interview w/ Frank Schaeffer:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97998654
(Click the "listen now" above the photograph)
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
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I enjoyed it. Good stuff.
Very informative look at the formation of the Religious Right.
I'm glad someone else checked it out. I was afraid no one would because of the length. =]
I loved it when he started talking about how his feelings toward religion have changed. The part where he says it's difficult, if you've been raised all your life not knowing how to do anything else but pray and go to church and try to bring every conversation back around to god or jesus somehow, to later in your life imagine how to function without those things. I particularly enjoyed the part where the interviewer asked him why he converted to Greek Orthodox instead of just declaring atheism, and he said the following (quoting from memory):
"Even if I wanted to start being an atheist, my first impulse would be to ask God for help, so you can see the problem."
So instead, Schaeffer converts to Greek Orthodox where he can engage in an activity that is familiar to him, that he's used to, that feeds his indoctrination, and yet he doesn't have to participate in the "cult of personality".
That part of the interview made me extremely sad, hearing him explain how he was only able to partially remove the Jesus chip from his brain.
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
Yes, I thought that was an interesting perspective, too.
Still, deconversion tends to take a long time. Also, the guy is over 50, so it's impressive he's made such drastic changes in the first place.
I liked the part where he discusses the formation of the anti-abortion movement, and how, despite his misgivings, it morphed into a more and more right-wing driven agenda, culminating in the anti-homosexuality and other nonsense we see today. It explains a lot about how religious movements seem to have a life of their own. I've been reading and watching lots of stuff on early Christianity, and the parallels are very intriguing.
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Definitely. I agree completely.
I thought that was interesting. If I understood him correctly, the beginning of the erm... momentum (sort of a euphemism) of the religious right began with the issue of abortion, and he in particular was extremely active in stirring people up. But, as he suggests, only certain kinds of people can participate in heated activism in a way that is heated but not motivated by hate or bigotry. Unfortunately, heated activism is very appealing to people who tend toward bigotry. And so you get people like Falwell, who share your stance on abortion, but they bring with them a dose of bigotry, and then they start stirring up shit about completely different questions, like homosexuality, which the Schaeffers apparently had no objections to whatsoever.
What parallels to early Christianity were you thinking of?
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
Mainly how it started as a kind of 'spiritual' thing, out of compassion, but because it had a weak foundation to begin with, it morphed into a more-and-more dogmatic 'faith' based thing. There are also parallels with Marxism-to-Communism, which I mentioned in the RRS thread on Communism. When you have this 'intuitive' or non-rational foundation for something, driven by people's emotions rather than reason, then you almost inevitably end up with greater and greater radicalization and dogmatism. I personally hypothesize that any movement with a weak foundation will eventually turn into some form of dictatorship or theocracy (what's the difference, really?).
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I found it interesting to listen to him describing his severe compartmentalization of the world, and how he essentially had to filter the actual reality of the matter concerning 'Godless, damned America' being the opposite of what he expected through a variety of delusions he had to improvise for himself. Having emotionally invested so much into Jesus, he just couldn't let either contradictions between the world and his worldview or the lack of ethics of his peers correct his mind.
More saddening to me than the fact that he's clearly been permanently damaged by dogma is the obvious role his father played in doing it to him, and his clear unwillingness to see his father as anything other than the most decent and monolithic of men. Even upon having to acknowledge the domestic violence at home and the childhood indoctrination/brainwashing, the only conslusion that can be true to him of his dad is that he was a good man.
Big Brother did his work well.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
...there's an awful lot of what Schaeffer said that resonates with me. I may just have to pick his book up, sometime.
Conor