I’m not very familiar with leaders of the Religious Right, but according to scrolling Yahoo! headlines tonight, another evangelical leader recently came forward in an interview on NPR to say that he is changing his views on gay marriage. He later amended that to say that he supports civil unions. Since then, he has stepped down from his leadership position because members say he does not represent their values anymore.
I just hate it when religious organizations become exclusive.
The Right doesn’t have a monopoly on “family values.” It’s a lot easier for gays to live in families when they are married. Meanwhile, the Constitution is our (the nation’s) founding document, not The Baptist and Reflector.
Where the notion of anti-stewardship came from, I do not know. As a child, I was taught by all of my Southern Baptist kinfolk to take care of the earth. Now doing that is out of line.
The Devil appears as an Angel of Light, as they say. Of course, those who believe this may then accept devils as angels & mistake real angels of truth for devils.
I’m not clear on what happened to make conservation “too lefty.” I think there was a sort of anti-environmentalist backlash that coalesced by 1990, & the GOP somehow decided that they were a way to get votes. Thus, to be conservationist gradually became not “conservative,” which is bizarre–but became promulgated by influential partisan voices. But that’s just the impression I got.
There is a religious type that sees conspiracies everywhere (I was really messed up as a kid by exposure to Jack Chick & such) & can be readily deceived that groups like Greenpeace, etc., are (ohnoes) pagan!!! This is of course the sort of malicious misrepresentation put forth by someone with an axe to grind or consumed with his own conspiracy theories (a bit like this post, actually )–but some people buy into that readily.
We could perhaps begin with James G.Watt, R.Reagan's Secretary of the Interior- "A left-wing cult dedicated to bringing down the type of government I believe in."
His full name is Francis August Schaeffer, just like his father. It appears that he’s not even Francis August Schaeffer, Jr. or Francis August Schaeffer II. He’s always referred to as Frank Schaeffer or Frankie Schaeffer.
Probably because they were properly Francis August Schaeffer IV and Francis August Schaeffer V.
Frank used to bill himself as Franky Schaeffer V, most notably as director and/or producer of How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, a “documentary film series” starring Francis Schaeffer (and C. Everett Koop, later Reagan’s Surgeon General; though to judge from the quick search I did to refresh my memory, he’s seldom mentioned now when the series is discussed).
I’m wondering now how much influence this series may have had on the politicization of the Christian Right c. 1980.
(Side comment: did anyone else think that the elder Schaeffer’s L’Abri Fellowship was vaguely cultic?)
I just read Crazy For God. Frank Schaeffer himself does characterize L’Abri as having been vaguely cultic. He also thinks there was a lot about it that was really wonderful.
Also, as Shaeffer tells it, those two documentary films were part of what got the ball rolling as far as the politicization of the right.
Where have you been? The secular left has been imposing it’s agenda for centuries. Slavery, women’s suffrage, integrated schools, we just keep coming. Whatever your sacred cow is, we’ll get to it eventually. We’re never satisfied, we never tire, and we always win in the end.
Tom~ captures precisely what I’d intended here. Prior to those meetings, fundamentalism and evangelicalism had existed as two distinct movements among conservative Christians – neither with much political clout nor the motivation to seek any. They together gradually changed that, with Falwell, a powerful speaker whether you agree with him or not, as the initial major public voice, joined later by people from Allen Keyes to Pat Robertson to Paige Patterson.
And one’s opinion of who pushed what agenda is a matter of opinion. I stated mine, erroneously interjecting attitude into what was intended as a summary of historical fact.
Actually, I believe it’s a four-generation family name sequence. IIRC, “Francis Schaeffer” is the son of Francis A. Schaeffer Jr. and is himself Francis A. Schaeffer III; “Frank(ie) Schaeffer” is Francis A. Schaeffer IV. And by and large neither uses the postnominal Roman numeral, distinguishing father from son by the Francis/Frank(ie) dichotomy.
)–but some people buy into that readily.