Franky Schaeffer Derides Christianity as “Stupid”

Once a self-identified founding member of the American “religious right,” Franky Schaeffer now says that “religion is dumb” and “man made.” Although Schaeffer grew up among some of the most influential evangelicals of the twentieth century, and worked as one of them during much of his adult life, he now believes the Bible is a fraud and that Christianity teaches “misogynistic” practices.  

Schaeffer, the son of the late evangelical theologian, philosopher, and founder of the L’Abri Fellowship, Francis Schaeffer, discussed his newest book at the Kansas City Public Library on September 27, 2011. His recent book, Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible’s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics–and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway tells the story of Schaeffer’s conservative Christian upbringing, and how his mother, Edith Schaeffer, is “a woman who’s better than her theology.” Her theology is that of the “religious right” that Schaeffer now hates and the book tells the story of how the religious right has supposedly ruined America, as politics have “been folded into ‘bring America back to God.’” More broadly, he said, the book’s message is to “not make generalizations about each other,” because there are many people just like his mother among evangelicals.  

The problem, Schaeffer explained, is belief with certainty. “Certainty kills,” he explained,“no one ever bombed an abortion clinic or a mosque after yelling ‘but I could be wrong.’” That example he said, “sums up the difference of my philosophy now and where I would have been speaking 35 or 40 years ago to you about all my certainties of who the bad guys are and who the good guys” are. Now he believes, with seeming certainty, that the Bible is the “unauthorized [biography] about the deity” written by “bronze age schmucks who were finding ways to control their wives and daughters … who in hindsight were trying to say ‘see? God made us do it so it’s ok.’”  

“Life is not long enough to conclude anything, it’s only enough to try your best along the way,” Schaeffer said, and further, “if salvation is correct doctrine, then everyone is lost.” To those who hold religious beliefs he said, “believe me, you will someday reach a point where you know that was dumb.”  Schaeffer said his life, “for better or worse, worse mainly, happens to intersect the rise of the the religious right in America, which also happens to have ruined the United States.” He believes a deity exists, and accepts some select moral teachings from Christianity but, “Jesus had to be separated in my mind from a political movement before I could even consider looking at the teaching again as anything but an appendage of a system that failed.”

Schaeffer presented his views as an alternative to the opposing views of “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and orthodox Christians. “Secularism” is not the answer, he said, it “is not what it’s cracked up to be,” but also, “it’s not God’s fault that there’s dumb stuff in the Bible.” According to Schaeffer, we are not “stuck with the stupidity of Christianity,” but are free to create our own conception of God, reality, and morality. Not believing in the Christian God “doesn’t mean that a God that loves me … and created love and personality and relationships in a universe that otherwise would be dark and cold isn’t out there.”  

For many years a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Schaeffer believes that “the God of the Bible [is] distinct from any deity that might be out there, he, she or it.” It is dogmatic belief in the Bible and the God of the Bible that, according to Schaeffer, has ultimately caused “the rise of the religious right and the decline of the country it has so impacted.” He claimed there is a “direct relationship between the religious right” and “what’s happening worldwide with our economy right now,” because “the people who are in Congress are ideologues” driven by “theologicized politics.” This is problematic because “when you put a theological twist on anything, the person who disagrees with you is therefore lost” and in disagreements, “you’re not mistaken about abortion or tax policy, you’re an agent of Satan.”

Schaeffer claimed he neither sides with the right or the left because he has “seen the same blood in your eye fundamentalist zeal in both camps.” In the end of his talk, he was at least somewhat consistent, and said “if you disagree with me, you’re not going to hell, you’re probably right!”