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Francis Schaeffer's Legacy
In a "short take" posted on Alternet the day after the last national election, Max Blumenthal credited the outcome of the election to reaction against gay marriage and the legacy of Francis Schaeffer. He said:
In many ways, the evangelical crusade against gay marriage is the latest outgrowth of the ideas of evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer is the intellectual godfather of the evangelical movement; in the 1970's Schaeffer penned "A Christian Manifesto" and "How Should We Then Live," bestsellers still unknown outside of Christian circles which articulated the evils of relativistic secular humanism through the lens of cultural and intellectual history. Secular humanism had resulted in a daily genocide of unborn babies in America's hospitals, Schaeffer argued, and evangelicals should vent their outrage by making politics their focus. His analysis resonated with a new, highly educated evangelical class which had rejected the premillenialist doomsday theology of preachers like Oral Roberts in favor of an aescetic lifestyle and a hyper-politicized agenda which stressed putting the country under the control of biblical law.
By the early 1990's, Schaeffer's teachings had spawned the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and provided an ideological structure for influential evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell and Rev. Rob Schenck, who is John Ashcroft's former pastor. Today, with Operation Rescue and Moral Majority leaders in congressional offices and the White House, gay marriage has replaced abortion as the issue propelling the next wave of the evangelical grassroots. |
There is no doubt that Schaeffer was instrumental in awakening an evangelical reaction against abortion and he was not shy about denouncing homosexuality. Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's chief political action committee, also credits Schaeffer with pushing evangelicals to political engagement.
Land, however, does not openly acknowledge ties between Schaeffer and Christian Reconstructionism nor does he mention Schaeffer's influence on militant anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue.
R. J. Rushdoony, the godfather of Reconstructionism, and Schaeffer were colleagues and students of the presuppositional apologetic of Conrnelius Van Til. Rushdoony is often quoted by Schaeffer as an authority on "biblical law." Schaeffer's "A Christian Manifesto" reads like a call-to-arms for a militant form of Christian Reconstructionism.
There is no doubt that there is a direct link between the militant rhetoric of Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto and the militancy of anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue.
Those desiring a fuller understanding of the influence of both Schaeffer and Rushdoony on militant anti-abortionists should read Jerry Reiter's Live from the Gates of Hell: An Insider's Look at the Antiabortion Underground and Frederick Clarkson's Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.
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