A Schaefferian Sociology: The Social theory of Francis Schaeffer.
by
James Henson, B.S.W.
A Thesis
In
SOCIOLOGY
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved
Dr. Charlotte Dunham Chair
Dr. Jerome Koch
Fred Hartmeister Dean of the Graduate School
December, 2008
Copyright 2007, James Henson Texas Tech University, James Henson, December, 2008
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost I would like to thank my committee for their help and understanding in the process of completing this thesis. Dr. Dunham has been exceptionally patient and open to new ideas as my thesis gradually morphed into an entirely different paper than was originally planned. Her help and insight was invaluable throughout the process and I would not have completed it without her. Dr.
Koch offered guidance and insight that greatly changed the nature of what I was looking at with this thesis, making it much more interesting and worthwhile to pursue.
I greatly appreciate both of them.
I would like to thank Dr. Yung-Mei Tsai for consistently pushing me in his classes and opening new avenues of interest for me in my time at Texas Tech. I also appreciate his conversing with me on various topics, often outside the realm of what was pertinent to the issue at hand, I have learned a lot from him. The content analysis for this thesis would not have been completed without the help of Dr. Jason
Wasserman. His depth and insight allowed me to see past what were surface level ideas and find something more in the work I was reading.
I appreciate the friends I made in the program. I have never been part of a group as accepting and supportive of one another as they were. Coming in with little understanding of academia made their help invaluable to me and I liked them enough to marry one of them. That being said, I also thank Barbara for being a source of constant support in my life.
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My parents have tolerated more than any parent should have to from a child and I am appreciative of their patience. There is little doubt I would be in prison or the ground without them.
Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Julie Harms-Cannon for her years of friendship and support. She stopped me from dropping out of college years ago and was the reason I came to graduate school in the first place; without her the idea of a graduate degree would not have even crossed my radar. As the first teacher to truly take an interest in me as a student Julie changed the course of my life and I will always be in her debt for this.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... i ABSTRACT...... vi I. INTRODUCTION...... 1 Why Francis Schaeffer?...... 1 II. LITERATURE REVIEW / THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK...... 5 The Christian Right...... 5 The Battle for Secular Influence ...... 5 The Battle for Internal Control ...... 11 Variety in the Movement ...... 12 Stability Through Change ...... 14 The Christian Left ...... 15 The Christian Right and the Culture Wars ...... 17 The Historical War...... 17 Orthodox versus Progressive ...... 19 The Importance of Moral Authority...... 25 The Discourse ...... 27 War Zones ...... 33 The Christian Right in the Culture War...... 38 Francis Schaeffer ...... 41 The Life and Influence of Francis Schaeffer...... 42 Francis Schaeffer’s Belief and Philosophy...... 50 Problems and Inconsistencies...... 53 Impact on Christianity ...... 57 A Christian Manifesto ...... 58 III. METHODS...... 61 IV. CONTENT ANALYSIS...... 64 Overarching Structure ...... 64 Authority – God’s versus Human...... 71 Belief ...... 73 Foundational Decay...... 78 Impending Foundational Destruction...... 81 Diametric Enemies...... 83 Comprehensive Spirituality...... 85 V. ANALYSIS ...... 88 Francis Schaeffer’s Life and the Culture War ...... 88 Francis Schaeffer’s Philosophy and the Culture War ...... 91 A Manifesto for a Culture War ...... 93 Fundamental Conflict ...... 94 Rhetorical War...... 95 A Manifesto for the Real World ...... 99 Comprehensive Understanding...... 102
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The Social Theory of Francis Schaeffer...... 103 VI. CONCLUSION ...... 108 SOURCES CITED ...... 110
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ABSTRACT This thesis seeks to explore the role of Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer in the culture war as delineated by author James Davison Hunter through his influence on the Christian Right. After a brief examination of the history of the Christian Right and an exploration of Francis Schaeffer’s life and philosophy, the culture war as conceived by Hunter will be introduced and examined. Following this will be an in- depth analysis of Schaeffer’s work A Christian Manifesto. The paper will conclude with an analysis of Schaeffer’s overall role in the culture war and an examination of the social theory implicit in his work. The findings of this paper suggest that, through his status in the Christian Right, Francis Schaeffer has a significant impact on the culture war and, therefore, the landscape of American culture as well.
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Why Francis Schaeffer? Francis Schaeffer is hardly a household name. In fact, few outside of a specifically defined circle seem to have even heard of him. In contrast, names such as
Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tim LaHaye and Ronald Reagan all carry a high degree of recognition and may even be some of the most high-profile in the last century, certainly so if one is to limit his or her focus to the United States and even more so if the focus is further limited to what has come to be known as the
Religious Right. However, these high-profile names have more in common than a connection to conservative values in American culture; all were heavily influenced by the writings and philosophy of Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer’s influence in pulling
Christians into the political process had a transformative effect on the landscape of
American culture in multiple ways while his impact on specific individuals increased this effect tenfold.
The purpose of this paper will be to examine the impact of Francis Schaeffer on American society and culture, specifically in the context of the culture wars as delineated by James Davison Hunter while also providing a look at how this same culture war and society profoundly altered and affected him as well. A broader implication of this idea is the notion that the things we seek to affect often affect us in equal amounts and that acting as a warrior in any conflict sets one up to eventually
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become a casualty in it as well. This thesis will also propose the idea that Francis
Schaeffer was a social theorist and will attempt to delineate the framework of this theory.
The literature review/theoretical framework will begin the process of examining Schaeffer’s impact while also providing an examination of the context that helped to shape his worldview and ideas. The establishment of this context will be provided through an examination of the history of what has come to be known as the
Christian Right with special emphasis placed on such aspects as its influence, achievements, internal conflicts and the recent emergence of what is being called the
Christian Left. Beyond providing a contextual milieu to help better understand Francis
Schaeffer, this review will also serve to establish the Christian Right as a viable entity in the American landscape and, by extension, show just why Francis Schaeffer is worth studying. Following this examination of the larger context and environment of
Francis Schaeffer’s thought will be an examination of his life to provide a more personal milieu for his writings and philosophy. This will include a brief biographical sketch of his life and will examine the range of his influence on specific people, groups and society at large. Lastly, it will examine the beliefs and philosophical tenets that guided Francis Schaeffer’s writings and activism. This will provide a structure for the later examination of Schaeffer’s continuing impact on American culture while also laying the groundwork for the content analysis of his book A Christian Manifesto.
The next section will examine James Davison Hunter’s delineation of a new kind of culture war present in American society accompanied by relevant research
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performed by other authors. It will begin by following Hunter’s discussion of the roots of the culture war in order to better delineate why the current war is a break from the past. It will follow Hunter’s assertion that two broad trends, which he calls impulses, are what separates the differing factions as opposed to old divisions such as religious denomination. Next, we will examine the heightened discourse that has resulted from these new divisions and explore how this rhetoric further complicates the problem.
This will be followed by an exploration of the ideological and concrete battlefields of the culture war and will analyze what is to be gained and lost in each. It will conclude with an examination of the Christian Right in regard to the culture war. The purpose of this section of the paper will be to establish a context for an examination of Francis
Schaeffer’s activist work, A Christian Manifesto.
The content analysis examines Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto in regard to its major themes and ideas. A Christian Manifesto revolves around six main themes;
Authority, Belief, Foundational Decay, Impending Foundational Destruction,
Diametric Enemies, and Comprehensive Spirituality. Through these themes Schaeffer delineates an absolute concept of authority and uses this to explore the nature of the world at the time of his writing. He discusses the Christian’s obligation in dealing with an unjust authority that has been placed over them and the role of one’s spirituality in her or his life. The fundamental theme of this work is that of Christianity versus
Humanism as two worldviews that cannot and should not exist together. In relation to authority, Schaeffer sees the world as already dominated by a Humanist conspiracy that is only increasing its hold. Writing during the conservative resurgence of the late
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1970’s and early 1980’s, Schaeffer saw a brief glimmer of hope and uses his work to encourage people to seize the little opportunity they had to turn the tide. The purpose of this section will be to analyze A Christian Manifesto in terms of its applicability to the culture war of its time.
The final section of this paper will attempt to analyze Francis Schaeffer’s potential influence on the culture war in regard to the Christian Right and will delineate the social theory implicit in the work. It will start with an examination of his life in relation to the culture war and will explore the ways in which he impacted it and it impacted him. This will be followed by the role his philosophy and beliefs may have played on the Christian Right’s approach to the culture war, specifically in the light of
A Christian Manifesto as a handbook for fighting a culture war. Lastly, the thought of
Francis Schaeffer will be examined as a social theory through three major themes; the foundations of society, people in society and correcting social reality.
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CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW / THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The Christian Right The history of conservative Christianity in the United States is long and varied.
The modern day Christian Right is an ancestor of a much different movement that had its roots in the form of anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic movements in the period immediately following the Civil War (Wilcox, 1987). Since that time the movement has evolved from a reactionary attack on evolution being taught in the schools
(Diamond, 1995; Wilcox, 1988; Wilcox, 1987a) into a large advocacy group that utilized mass mailings to fight for moralistic reforms and finally into the politically savvy, well established, institutionalized political bloc that we know now (Moen,
1994).
The Christian Right has consistently struggled against what it perceived as a creeping secularization of the world on two fronts: externally in its attempts to maintain influence over secular culture and internally in its battle with mainline
Protestant churches over scriptural interpretation.
The Battle for Secular Influence The need to control or at least have a high degree of influence over secular culture has been a consistent driving force for the Christian Right. Much of the early history of the Christian Right was spent fighting evolution in schools and battling
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against any government obstruction to the propagation of the Christian Gospel
(Diamond, 1995). The early movement often allied itself with various other right wing movements, including more than a few overtly racist and outright fascist organizations that shared Christians’ fear of the Communist threat (Diamond, 1995; Wilcox, 1988;
Wilcox, 1987a).
The Christian Right came largely into the public focus through the humiliation of the Scopes Monkey trial where, though scoring a legal victory over the teaching of evolution in schools, they were set up as an object of ridicule in the eyes of the public
((Diamond, 1995). Despite the embarrassing nature of their portrayal the fact that the fundamentalist Christians had won the court battle was significant and signaled the beginning of their willingness to use the system in order to fight the system when they deemed it necessary.
Throughout the years leading up to their becoming a high-profile political entity the Christian Right was far from silent on issues of social and political import.
Members of the movement opposed diplomatic contact with the Vatican, ostensibly on grounds of the separation of church and state, fought federal money going to public schools and opposed Truman’s Fair Employment Practices Act, intended to reduce racial discrimination, on the grounds that it might force them to hire unbelievers
(Diamond, 1995). The National Association of Evangelicals often passed political resolutions at its national conventions such as official endorsements of the Unites
States’ military role in Korea and opposition to China entering the U.N (Diamond,
1995).
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The passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) by the Senate in 1972 brought the Christian Right fully into the political process. Led by Phyllis Schlafy the conservatives in the country decried the ERA as the first step of what would then be an inevitable slide toward same-sex bathrooms, the military drafting of women, the loss of alimony and the sanctioning of homosexual marriage (Ehrenreich, 1983;
Diamond, 1995). At this same time Gay Rights and abortion came to the forefront as well, uniting disparate and formerly warring religious factions in a common struggle, changing the face of the movement from one comprised of various autonomous groups into the mainstream of the Republican Party (Diamond, 1995).
It wasn’t long before Christian politicians were being elected and proposing many pro-evangelical measures. Through these successes the evangelical organizations began operating in the open. The Christian Voice grew from various anti-gay movements and began to print candidate report cards that “graded” people running for office based on their stance on various issues or their voting (Diamond,
1995). In its first year alone Christian Voice had a mailing list of 130,000, a
$1,000,000 budget and 16 members of Congress on their advisory committee
(Diamond, 1995). This success was impressive enough to spawn a backlash from groups formed specifically to launch a counterattack against the conservative agenda of the Christian Right. From organizations like People for the American Way to more liberal Christians the Christian Right was portrayed as being comprised of “hillbillies” pushing for a theocracy. The Moral Majority was accused of being an organization of
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white racists and Jerry Falwell was compared to the Ayatollah Khomeini (Moen,
1996).
The late 1970’s provided a stunning example of how prevalent conservative
Christianity had become. Between 1976 and 1979 a series of Gallup polls reported that one-third to one-fifth of the adult population of the country had had a “born-again” experience (Diamond, 1995; Wilcox, 1988; Wilcox, 1987a) with 1976 even being labeled the “year of the evangelical” (Diamond, 1995). Conservative Christian groups began to grow rapidly as their membership rolls swelled, allowing them unprecedented access to people and monetary leverage. The Christian Voice grew from various anti-gay movements and began to print candidate report cards that
“graded” people running for office based on their stance on various issues or their voting (Diamond, 1995). In its first year alone Christian Voice had a mailing list of
130,000, a $1,000,000 budget and 16 members of Congress on their advisory committee (Diamond, 1995). In 1979 members of the Conservative Caucus traveled to
Lynchburg, Virginia to talk with televangelist Jerry Falwell about using his large church which had television and radio shows as well as numerous clergy contacts to establish an organization of Christian voters. The Moral Majority was founded and within a year claimed 400,000 members and $1,500,000 in contributions (Diamond,
1995). It is important to note that both Christian Voice and the Moral Majority registered as non-profit, non-tax exempt organizations in order to be able to lobby legally and engage in electoral campaigning (Diamond, 1995). Pat Robertson’s group, the Christian Coalition, could claim 350,000 members, 750 chapters spanning all 50
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states, 200,000 subscribers to its bi-monthly newsletter Christian America, and an annual budget of $2.3 million just four years after its initial founding. It was very active in the 1992 presidential election distributing massive amounts of voter guides and working to recruit and train Christians to participate in politics. They supplied 300 of the 2000 delegates at that year’s Republican National Convention (Penning, 1994).
At the same time, the rise of the “electric church”, a network of televangelists and radio preachers, increased the visibility of the Christian Right to new levels. With
1300 stations, an audience of 1.3 million and profits estimated from $500 million up to
“billions” it didn’t seem to far-fetched when Pat Robertson claimed that they had
“enough votes to run the country” (Lienesch, 1982).
These votes came into play when the Christian Right tired of President Jimmy
Carter, whom they had an important hand in getting elected, and threw their allegiance behind Ronald Reagan. Their endorsement of Reagan’s candidacy brought an estimated 2 million new voters in 1980 (Diamond, 1995) leading to 10% of the population being able to be classified as Christian Right supporters during the 1980 and 1984 elections (Wilcox, 1987). The Christian Right continued to support conservative candidates throughout the 1980’s, with Pat Robertson himself actually running in 1988 and managing to raise more money than any other presidential candidate ever had up to that point (Wilcox, 1994).
If the Christian Right had scored with Ronald Reagan they hit the jackpot when George W. Bush was elected in 2000. Without a doubt the Religious Right had a hand in both his election and re-election, both times giving him over 70% of their
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vote. George W. Bush is not shy about his status as an evangelical Christian, something that greatly attracts those in the Christian Right. The Bush White House is full of people he chose for their strong religious background and is known for insisting on a “strong moral tone” in the White House (Berggren & Rae, 2006). Bush attributes his being able to quit drinking and using tobacco and his very presidency to his faith
(Berggren & Rae, 2006). Under the Bush Administration funding for the controversial
“abstinence only” sex-education programs has risen 50% and includes such media as a video produced and distributed by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization used in public and private schools in all 50 states (Rose, 2005).
As one can see, the Christian Right is far from the collection of uneducated yokels bent on destroying science and mathematics that many portray them to be. The full range of the influence of its constituents is hard to clarify completely as its reach has included such diverse areas as Cold War politics in South America (Diamond,
1995), support for nuclear proliferation (Falwell, 1997), schools where each prospective student must submit a “statement of salvation experience” and attest that they have accepted Christ as their personal savior before being considered for acceptance (Bentley, 1984) and even romance novels such as Harlequin Books “Love
Inspired” line (Darbyshire, 2002). The Christian Right’s drive to have an impact over secular culture has been largely successful.
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The Battle for Internal Control In connection with the need to control secular culture comes the need to control those within the ranks of Christianity as well. Due to this an equally fierce battle has been waged for control of how Christian theology and doctrine will be presented to the general public. The early Christian Right engaged in this battle with other Christians as the evangelical Christians comprising the Christian Right fought with the more liberal mainline Protestant churches over matters of liberalism in theology (Diamond, 1995; Wilcox, 1988; Wilcox, 1987a). The movement truly began to come into its own upon moving into the realm of radio broadcasting, eventually exercising a near monopoly over the airwaves thanks in large part to flamboyant preaching styles and innovative formats (Diamond, 1995).
Much of the history of the Christian Right has been defined by its feud with the more liberal mainline churches and denominations. In fact, one could effectively argue that the disagreement between these two camps is a driving influence in the cohesiveness and identity of the Christian Right itself. This disagreement has tended to center over issues such as the strictness of Biblical literalism and interpretation and social liberalism, with the Christian Right falling squarely on the conservative side across the board. The conflict has led the Christian right to ally themselves with the further edges of conservative, right-wing ideologies, often maintaining alliances with overtly racist and/or fascist organizations such as the Silver Shirts, a pro-Nazi group led by William Dudley Pelly, The Christian Nationalist Crusade headed by Gerald
L.K. Smith and Gerald B. Winrod’s Defenders of the Christian Faith (Diamond,
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1995). Communist smear campaigns were also frequently employed as a tactic to attack the mainline leaders and their followers, a tactic that continued well into the
1980’s when it was forced into irrelevance (Diamond, 1995).
Variety in the Movement Specifically defining the Christian Right is a difficult task as it is not the monolithic movement with a common cause and set of ideals it can appear to be. The general consensus tends toward the view that the Christian Right is not a single group but more of a collection of people and groups that share a socially conservative agenda in line with what they perceive to be Christian values (Feld, Rosier & Manning, 2002,
Lienesch, 1982). The major symbolic issues of this group tend to cluster around what they call “family” issues such as abortion, divorce, gay rights, feminism and religion in schools with pro-home schooling as a related cause (Feld, Rosier & Manning,
2002). Religiously the movement members all agree on issues such as the virgin birth, resurrection, and imminent return of Jesus Christ though many disagree on the finer points of theological interpretation (Lienesch, 1982). Because of this much of the cohesion of the movement has been more hype than actuality and has required the use of symbolic issues to motivate the masses to acquiesce to an uneasy alliance with other denominations. Symbolic issues serve to avoid the fact that the demographics of their constituents would normally predispose them to more leftist economic ideals
(Lienesch, 1982). Surprisingly, there have been times when the Christian Right was
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not even a socially conservative movement, such as when a majority of its members voted for socialist Eugene V. Debs in the 1900’s.
Beyond this there is a division within the ranks along the lines of socioeconomic status. On one side lies a smaller elite minority consisting of well educated professionals and activist while the majority of the group tends to fall into the lower and middle class range. These two sides do not always agree and there can be significant differences of opinion and belief between the leadership of the movement and the rank and file that make up its numbers and manpower; as in the case of making accommodations to become more politically palatable to a wider range of people as one group may favor toeing a theological line while the other wishes to make alliances with less than orthodox groups that desire a similar goal (Lienesch,
1982).
Beyond this lie issues of theology that many differ on. A significant issue pertains to the return of Jesus Christ, one of the pillars of evangelical belief. Pre- millennialism asserts that Christ will not return until the world has descended into chaos and crisis at which time he will set up a 1000 year benevolent reign. In contrast to this, post-millennialism states that it is the duty of Christians to work through the world to help bring about the millennium by bettering people and the world. One can see where these two views could come into conflict in regard to the worthwhile or worthless nature of engaging in the political process (Wilcox, Linzy & Jelen, 1991)
However, the struggle against those things “outside” of the movement may provide cohesion between these disparate groups and beliefs. It has been suggested
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that conservative Protestantism needs things to react to in its immediate environment, be they social, cultural or religious, and that this reaction helps it to carry on a dialectical relationship with its time period (Coleman, 2005).
Stability Through Change As the movement itself has evolved, the tactics it uses have as well, yet there is also an overall continuity to the movement as a whole as it maintains links with its past. This on going revision of what the movement is in relation to current events through a “dialogue” with the current time period helps the Christian Right maintain an amount of relevance over time. Through this process things certainly change but certain themes present themselves as consistent throughout, with anti-communism and education as two that are apparent (Wilcox, 1987, 1988). However, these have changed and evolved with the times to remain relevant as well as the fight against evolution has given way to fighting “secular humanism” and communism has been replaced with liberalism or socialism. Beyond these, new issues have emerged and taken the forefront with homosexuality and abortion leading the charge as the most important issues now.
The Christian Right of the 1970’s and 1980’s, though successful in many ways, was highly disorganized. This has changed as time has passed and it has reorganized itself with increasingly sophisticated ideas and rhetoric with which to attack their opposition (Green, 1995). Gone are the days of fundamentalists leading moralistic campaigns framed in the rhetoric of good and evil (Rozell & Wilcox, 1996)
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as they eventually realized that moral pressure was not much appreciated among the average person (Feld, Rosier & Manning, 2002). The rhetoric of the Christian Right is now framed in political terms; it speaks of rights and equal access rather than God’s law and the universality of their assertions. Rather than seeking to restrict the choice of others a new goal is to promote choice for all, within certain contexts. A pertinent example off this is Louisiana’s “Covenant Marriage Law” which allows couples to choose to impose barriers to an easy divorce on themselves when they marry (Feld et al., 2002). Essentially, much of the ideology has been replaced by a pragmatic willingness to compromise.
The Christian Left A relatively new development in the American evangelical community has been the emergence of what many have dubbed the “Christian Left” (Hall, 1997), though they themselves prefer to be called “Red-Letter Christians” (Campolo, 2006).
This movement has emerged from what many see as the Christian Right’s abandonment of the teachings of Jesus to focus on economic and moral issues at the expense of the poor and disenfranchised of the world (Hall, 1997). The differences between the so called left and right wings of the evangelical movement are apparent in the focus of the organizations that embody the ideals of the new left. Groups like the
Sojourners, Bread for the World, Evangelicals for Social Action and Justlife focus on issues such as repressive governments, United States foreign policy and imperialism, nuclear power, prisons and the American way of life itself as opposed to the tried and
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true issues of schooling, the family and communism that dominate the discourse of the
Religious Right (Hall, 1997). The views of those who would align themselves with one side or the other are also very distinct. The Christian Left and Right differ profoundly on women’s rights and roles, pornography and potential laws against it, sex education and condoms in schools and homosexual rights (Hall, 1997). The only issue of this sort with any agreement between the two camps is that of abortion, an issue which seems to unite fairly disparate religions quite regularly (Hall, 1997). The new Christian Left tends to blame social and political factors for the plight of the poor whereas the Right blames the poor themselves and opposes government intervention to help them. The two also disagree profoundly in regard to environmental protection
(Hall, 1997). Not surprisingly, the Christian Left self-identifies very nearly completely as liberal or moderate in their political views while the Christian Right is almost equally as self-identified as conservative with these views being respectively reflected in their party affiliation (Hall, 1997).
Demographically the Christian Left is made up of mainline Protestants and
Catholics though it does have a significant number of evangelical Christians as well, while the Christian Right is almost exclusively evangelical (Hall, 1997). Both groups are politically active and exhibit similarities in income, sex, age, education, occupation types and even college majors (Hall, 1997).
Religiously there are a few similarities between the camps in regard to religious commitment and their religion having an impact on their politics. Beyond these things get more difficult as there are vast differences in understandings of
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Biblical literalism and the purpose of the church with the Christian Left being more likely to see the church as needing to focus on social justice whereas the right believes the focus needs to be on individual morality (Hall, 1997). Despite the less strong adherence to Biblical literalism, the Christian Left does overwhelmingly still view the
Bible as authoritative.
The Christian Right and the Culture Wars James Davison Hunter’s Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (1990) discusses the ongoing dispute between opposing entities in American culture while advocating a new demarcation of division between them. The argument of Hunter’s book hinges on the idea that America is engaged in a culture war that has implications in the everyday, concrete world in which we live.
The Historical War Hunter delineates the progression of the culture war through American history where it started with tension between Protestants and Catholics and later expanded to include Jews, Mormons and, to a lesser extent, any other non-Protestant religious group that made its way into the country. The dispute between Protestants and Catholics may seem odd to those of us used to them being almost interchangeable in their stances on public policy and candidate support, but the battle between them involved many aspects of society and culture from schools to politics and led to various laws being passed, usually to the detriment of the Catholic minority (Hunter,
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1990). Judaism has also had difficulty making inroads into America as the dominant
Protestants wavered between seeing them as God’s chosen people and the people who killed Jesus. Mormons were also subjected to harsh discrimination, including the lynching and murder of their founder (Hunter, 1990). The essential underlying element in all of these is the struggle between the dominant, entrenched group (Protestants) and the new minority (all non-Protestants) attempting to establish its own place in the culture (Hunter, 1990). However, over the years a growing sense of tolerance has emerged between these once antipathetic groups and we have the seemingly interchangeable nature we are accustomed to expect from them. However, the culture war has yet to dissipate. It is Hunter’s thesis that the culture war is as prevalent and contentious as ever but the mode of battle and the distinction between the opposing sides has changed radically (Hunter, 1990).
Cultural conflict between the groups involved in the historic culture war has always revolved around things that had a sense of “the ultimate” to them, issues involving “basic commitments and beliefs that provide a source of identity, purpose and togetherness for the people who live by them” (Hunter; 42). There was however, also an overall unity beneath what they were fighting about. The foundation, based on
Judeo-Christian ideals and principles, was essentially the same and the fight involved theological or interpretational discrepancies above this foundation. It is a fundamental change in this shared foundation that is the source of what Hunter believes to be a new cultural war in the United States (Hunter, 1990). The new battle is between sides that have entirely different worldviews and which do not agree on the basic assumptions
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anymore, creating a culture war over what the root of moral authority is in a society.
When the differences consisted of mere theological nuance this was not an all- destroying cleavage and they had clearly articulated sides and divisions, but this too has changed (Hunter 1990).
Orthodox versus Progressive The new culture war cuts across many of these former ties and thus removes many of the clear cut delineations while also destroying the common base. This new culture war is based on what Hunter calls “polarizing tendencies or impulses” (Hunter;
45) that most people tend to lean toward but are fully embodied by the spokespeople on the either side (Hunter, 1990). He calls these opposing sides the “impulse towards orthodoxy” (Hunter; 43) which is embodied by “the commitment on the part of the adherents to an external, definable and transcendent authority” (Hunter; 44) and “the impulse toward progressivism” (Hunter; 43) in which “moral authority tends to be defined by the spirit of the modern age, a spirit of rationalism and subjectivism”
(Hunter; 44). Those on the orthodox side are bound to historic traditions while those on the progressive side tend to remake historic faiths to suit the needs of contemporary life (Hunter, 1990). A key point pertains to the realignment of public culture one can see through the definition of these “impulses. As discussed above, the battles of the past were based on doctrinal or theological issues and were contained within the blanket of Judeo-Christianity as Protestants battled Catholics or Jews (Hunter, 1990).
Now however, the culture war has not only spilled over into new, more fundamental
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battles but has created new alliances and severed old ties as groups and people begin to line up and form alliances with those that hold their shared vision of moral authority. Added to this is the fact that new groups of moral conviction are emerging as well, with the fastest growing being that of the secularists, a group best described as
Humanists, in which the foundation of moral authority rests on human wellbeing as the ultimate goal and ideal. These new developments have led to the collapse of the
Judeo-Christian consensus (Hunter, 1990). This collapse was precipitated by and continues to be perpetuated through a disagreement over the fundamental moral truths that will guide us as a nation as we are faced with new intellectual and social problems. The fact that the discussion has moved beyond a common language and has created new alignments is novel.
A key point in understanding the new culture war is to avoid the tendency to classify it as a battle of conservatives versus liberals. While it may be true that most in the orthodox camp tend toward conservative values and most in the progressive camp to liberal, viewing this division as the sum of the sides would be a mistake for two reasons. There is a high degree of exchange between the people and ideas in both camps which blurs lines and makes it difficult to assign dichotomous labels to either one of them without destroying much of the nuance of the perceptions. Beyond this is the fact that the labels “liberal” and “conservative” are purely political and the dispute goes far beyond mere political divisions. Political beliefs are apt to compromise whereas cultural beliefs and fights over what is Truth are not, and this is key in the discussion (Hunter, 1990).
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Evangelical Christians make up a large part of those studied in regard to the culture wars. The potential shift of evangelicals to a more middle ground has been examined by researchers, including Dale McConkey in a 2001 article entitled
“Whither Hunter’s Culture War? Shifts in Evangelical Morality, 1988-1998”,
McConkey sought to answer the question of whether or not those who identify as evangelical Christians have softened their stance on such issues as women’s roles, homosexuality, non-marital sex, birth control, abortion, suicide and euthanasia.
McConkey sought to answer whether or not evangelicals are leaving the socioeconomic margins and if their morality was becoming more liberal; he wanted to know if the culture war might be dissipating. The results showed that while the newer generation of evangelicals is more liberal than the generation previous to them they are still more conservative than the average American. While still remaining on the socioeconomic margins there have been minor shifts in evangelical morality in certain areas. There has been a small shift to the left in regard to women and homosexual rights though the evangelical respondents still greatly preferred traditional marriage arrangements. They were also more open to suicide and euthanasia but showed no change in regard to abortion and non-marital sexual relations. The author suggests that while there is still most certainly a gap between the orthodox and progressive impulses that it is more complex than Hunter allows for and that the term “standoff” may more suitable than war for the current cultural conflict. Another proposed problem with the concept of the two impulses was examined by Nancy J. Davis and Robert V.
Robinson. The authors found Hunter’s orthodox versus progressive framework applied
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to only certain issues; namely those of schooling, sexuality, reproductive rights and the gendered division of labor, essentially issues of the family (Davis & Robinson,
1996). The authors found that most Americans occupy a middle ground and asserted that religious belief needs to be on a continuum instead of a dichotomy and that religious orthodoxy does not influence a person’s views on governmental efforts to reduce racial and economic inequality.
In regard to the above articles’ criticisms and Hunter’s culture war it seems that the flexibility of Hunter’s impulses has not been taken into account strongly enough. Hunter’s proposal includes a degree of flexibility and he makes note of the fact that these are not hard and fast categorizations and that many that fall within a certain impulse will hold views that may be contrary to many others within the same impulse group. While there may be a need for a more complex set of categories within the two impulses the overall categories seem salient. Hunter also addresses the fact that most Americans tend to reside somewhere in the middle of the extremes on issues, pointing out that it is the people who shape the discourse that hug the margins of the extremes. This will be discussed below in further detail.
The root of these new alignments can be traced back to the feud between the mainline and fundamental members of the Protestant faith (Hunter, 1990). As the
Industrial Revolution brought new social ills and problems to be dealt with the church responded by attempting to provide for these problems, which created a shift in the focus from saving souls and combating vice to one of the social gospel. This did not sit well with many adherents and a backlash came in the form of a movement to return
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to the fundamentals of the faith with an emphasis on scriptural inerrancy and thus the battle between the mainline or liberal Protestants and the fundamental or evangelical
Protestants was born. It is a battle which has been decidedly in favor of the fundamental camp for quite some time now (Hunter, 1990). This feud may have burned itself out or settled into a relatively quiet battle had it not been for two reasons; a decrease in denominational loyalty and a concomitant rise in parachurch organizations, groups with a specifically focused goal or agenda be it social, political or theological. The waning of denominational loyalty weakened what had been a strong impact of denomination on worldview and allowed for parachurch organizations to step into the gap and gain strength as their decidedly partisan nature and agenda was more suitable to people recently free from the broad dictates of their specific denominational orthodoxy. While these parachurch organizations have always been around in one form or another their power and influence at this current time is novel and this increase, along with the denominational drift sowed the seeds of the new alignment as intra-faith division has increased along the lines of the impulses for orthodoxy and progressivism (Hunter, 1990).
Within the Protestant faith both sides of the culture war are represented fairly well, this is also true in regard to Catholicism and Judaism.
Gay, Ellison and Powers (1996) found that there is significant division among even conservative denominations like Southern Baptists, among others, on some “pro- family” issues such as premarital sex and gender roles. However, they also found that on issues concerning extra-marital sex and homosexuality these same groups are
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profoundly homogenous in their disdain. This fits in with Hunter’s assertion that there is a high degree of interchange between the views of the people in the opposing camps and helps to further break down the perception that a strictly dichotomous division point is needed.
The phenomenon of the Religious Left is relevant to the culture wars and is examined in an article entitled “A Congregational Remapping of the Culture Wars” by
Dale McConkey. This new emergence in Christian America takes the seemingly anachronous approach of a strict adherence to Protestant theology while emphasizing social action and service to others that would be classified as leftist by many. This emergence destroys many old dichotomies involving the religious and the liberal while also bringing the issue of tradition into play; for many this Religious Left is a break from tradition while those among the Religious Left see themselves as returning to a tradition of Christian social action and ethical behavior. With their dedication to
Biblical authority and traditional values, this new emergence may be a new category in the culture wars that can bridge the opposing impulses, an Orthodox Progressive wing perhaps.
This division within denominations and faiths has lead to several new realities.
The first is that the dispute over theological modernism has given way to one about the fundamental issues of life and the institutions we create and maintain. People are organized in their unhappiness, this is not a multitude of separate groups of complainers (Hunter, 1990). The second new reality is what Hunter calls the “New
Ecumenism” as different religious and moral groups are working together across
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traditional faith lines toward common goals. These new alliances are pragmatic couplings based on the pragmatic need to marshal resources and to combat alliances forming on the other side of the battle. While powerful they are tenuous as different ideologies come into contact but groups on both sides of the culture war justify them based on the need to survive. Progressives need to survive the conservative threat and the orthodox need to combat the secular humanist threat (Hunter, 1990). However, the orthodox are less likely to form alliances due to their greater focus on theologically rigid standards of what is and is not acceptable (Hunter, 1990).
The Importance of Moral Authority Differing perceptions of moral authority pose a difficult problem for groups needing to coexist in a society. For the orthodox moral authority is transcendent, concrete and absolute for all situations and circumstances. For many it is revealed by
God and is therefore unchanging and timeless. Even the secular orthodox have a transcendent authority to which they hold, a kind of natural law if you will, and while it may not be God this unites them with their religious brothers and sisters-in-arms
(Hunter, 1990). Those of the progressive bent have a much more malleable sense of moral authority, a non-absolute, evolving truth that must be interpreted through contemporary issues and the individual human experience. Even those that adhere to a
God-centered faith see the truths that emanate from the divine as needing to be seen through the lens of current times and current problems, they are conditional and relative (Hunter, 1990). This resymbolizing of traditional ideals provides continuity
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with the past and helps to provide roots and therefore legitimacy. Rational arguments and logic also play a decisive role as means to determine the proper moral choice in a situation (Hunter, 1990). Overall, it is the individual experience that is the ultimate determinant (Hunter, 1990).
In public discourse each side emphasizes their vision to the detriment of the other and truth and falsehood fall to the wayside as history becomes a tool of ideology used to advance their particular end which translates into standards of evaluating the
American identity and its role in the world (Hunter, 1990). This is once again not an issue of liberals versus conservatives as these groups are not working from the same moral discipline at all, they are different ideas of what are moral imperatives and how community life should be conducted (Hunter, 1990). It is based on “allegiances to different formulations and sources of moral authority” (Hunter; 118) and thus supersedes politics as moral authority as the grounding for all individuals and this is what allows for the unity across traditions and the division within them (Hunter,
1990).
A key point stems from this moral authority as the new culture war is not a difference in opinion or a clash of philosophies but pertains to the fundamental ideals people live and shape their lives by. This encompassing, fundamental nature leads to the culture war, though being fueled by elites and activists on either side, to spill over into the everyday, concrete world we all live in. An arid philosophical discussion it is not. The effects of this culture war affect the institutions of the world such as education, the media law and politics (Hunter, 1990).
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These new lines are of great significance as we move into a new era where those who tend toward the progressive and those who tend toward the orthodox find that they have more in common with those that share the same impulse than they do with many members of their own faith. In Hunter’s conception this points to the obsolescence of the sweeping nature of Christianity and the Reformation and to the
Enlightenment as the new history defining event (Hunter, 1990).
The Discourse All ideological battles involve a discourse between the opposing parties and a culture war is no different. In America the discourse is largely idealistic and the line between the sacred and the earthly is continually blurred by a discourse of absolutes and transcendent qualities with little nuance between them. This casts an epic glow over the discourse of the culture war as both sides struggle to define what these things will be. With the advent of the information technology revolution numerous disparate and formerly unacknowledged groups have been given the keys to join in the fray, creating what may be one of the times of upheaval and change mentioned above. As both sides engage on the battlefield of public culture the battle increases in intensity and it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we are not talking about right and wrong or good and evil, but about the battle for control of public reality. The focus must remain on this and Hunter is particular in pointing out that there are very sincere and well meaning people on both sides of the divide and that, in general, everyone is fighting for what they believe to be best for the future of the nation.
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As the culture war is not merely an abstract concept the battles fought within it have very real results and goals. These goals ultimately center on a struggle for control of public and, by extension then, private culture (Hunter, 1990). These domains of struggle are called “spheres of symbolic activity” (Hunter; 53) and are “areas of human endeavor where symbols are created and adapted to humans’ needs” (Hunter;
53). The activity of creating and adapting symbols helps us to arrange and categorize our lives to give meaning to them. Private culture involves categorization and arrangement in one’s personal world. This meaning helps to provide one a place in the bigger picture and helps one know how to deal with the trials and tribulations that come in one’s private life while helping to order behavior in relationship to others
(Hunter, 1990). Public culture does so for the larger sphere one resides in, be it the community or nation or any of the levels between. It provides the symbols that contribute to group identity and the collective myths which not only define the past but provide a path for where the group is heading (Hunter, 1990). These two spheres are not independent but influence each other as the public culture greatly regulates the private while private claims make their way into the public culture (Hunter, 1990).
Historically one voice dominates this discourse of claims, creating a hegemony for which everyone is expected to adhere if they wish to fall into the bounds of acceptability, and thus the right to control the public culture is to be greatly desired if one is to have a continuity between their public and private spheres (Hunter, 1990). In
America, faith (conceived by Hunter as embodying all belief systems) is the key to the public culture and collective myths have always held a strong sway over secular
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conceptions of what this public culture should be (Hunter, 1990). Faith not only tells people where and how to fit in, but where and how they should fit in, it is not only the is but the should be as well. Hunter states that faith and culture are completely linked
“by elucidating a broader cosmology or world view; faiths not only link the symbols of public culture with the symbols of private culture, they also infuse the symbols of each sphere with universal if not transcendent significance” (Hunter; 58). Thus, faith is exceptionally important in creating the fundamental ideals by which we order our existence which makes it not only the wellspring of our passions but the focus of them as well (Hunter, 1990). This faith is not limited to traditional theistic conceptions and belief systems but encompasses the collective myths that people embrace as a society.
The ideals these myths delineate as being essential to their particular society are of the utmost importance.
The creation and perpetuation of these myths and ideals is almost exclusively the province of the elites of society. The public discourse is largely their discourse as they have access to the tools to do so whereas the average person does not and is largely left out of the mix (Hunter, 1990).
The intellectual elite are influential but tend to be overly abstract and inaccessible for the general public and thus the new culture war is largely the product of what Hunter calls knowledge workers. This label applies to everyone from lobbyists to activists to journalists and the clergy, pretty much anyone with access to a group to hear them out (Hunter, 1990). In most cases the disputes between the elites are not divisive enough to profoundly affect public culture. However, in times of upheaval or
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tumultuous change the rifts become much larger and people divide into camps along lines of those supporting tradition and those advocating for change. These groups struggle against one another until a new consensus emerges and things return to what is the new normal (Hunter, 1990).
However, Lindaman and Haider-Markel (2002) found that on many issues elite opinion differs greatly from that of the masses with the elite often being united on issues that those they supposedly represent are divided on and vice-versa. In their examination of gay rights, environmental protection, pornography and gun control the authors found there to be correlation on the polarization of the issues between the elite and their constituents on only gun control and environmental protection. This suggests that there may be a need to examine a division between the general public and those that voice the opinions in the popular discourse as it seems that the people do not take cues from the elite as quickly as Hunter may think.
Regardless of a possible disconnect between elite and public opinion, a defined moral clarity is important for a nation as it sustains its identity, dictates what is just and therefore law, and helps fill the need for heritage (Hunter, 1990). This makes the demand for symbols to unite around important and the ability to control what they are very desirable as it can bestow or revoke the legitimacy of what one stands for
(Hunter, 1990). The realignment of the contenders has created an open warfare for this control and while this could be accomplished through discussion and debate the antithetical nature of the opposing views makes this unlikely, thus the discourse has become contentious (Hunter, 1990). The fundamentally different structures of the
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competing visions and the high stakes of the battle have led to tactics and methods that seem unethical and more apt to create problems than solve them but are effective none the less. An essential element in this is to create an enemy for people to unite against by creating an image for the opposition and accusing it of various distasteful actions while also building a positive image for one’s own side (Hunter, 1990). Both sides portray the other as extremists bent on an aggressive agenda in order to set them apart from the “average person” and establish them as outside the bounds of acceptable thought. The next logical step is to craft one’s own image as the opposite, the defenders of the sacred who stand in the breach ready to protect the symbols of what is right such as the family and the founding ideals (Hunter, 1990). Not only does one side need to claim the high ground, they must also relegate their opponents to the low road to be successful in having sole claim over the symbols of legitimacy (Hunter,
1990). As a result of the differing visions and this caustic discourse both sides see the other as intolerant and aggressive. All of this hostility along with the nonnegotiable nature of dogmatic thought leads inevitably to exclusion by both groups and bigotry emerges. Though probably more prevalent on the orthodox side due to the nature of their claims there is also a tendency toward absolutism on the progressive side as well as tolerance becomes the credo that brooks no questioning and intolerance becomes intolerable (Hunter, 1990). At the end of the day the dispute is over competing dogmas but to hear the participants tell the story it is a battle of good versus evil and tolerance versus intolerance, a natural result of a battle for very high stakes and of such large scale.
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The discourse itself is actually more polarized than America itself. Though most Americans hold moderate opinions, in the culture war there has been a profound collapse of the middle due to a number of reasons. The discourse is conducted by elites on both sides leading to polarization while the issues they are talking about are important enough to warrant a solution and to make it difficult for anyone to feel it is safe to waver on them for too long. On top of this, the American public just likes to have a show to watch and the increasingly hostile discourse certainly provides this, while an inherent dislike of non-mainstream voices makes sure to keep the same contentious people in the spotlight. Lastly, this discourse takes place in the media which also serves to intensify and embed the polarized opinions to make them seem a normal part of the structure of our nation (Hunter, 1990). This same media encourages quick, concise and attention-grabbing sound-bites and leaves no room for well- reasoned arguments necessitating a further move toward whichever side one supports in order to avoid being lost in the mix. In short, there is a demand for superficiality if one is to accomplish anything in the culture war (Hunter, 1990).
However, these two competing visions present the image of a new dichotomy and begin to have a very real effect on reality. According to Hunter these new alliances show an “institutionalization and politicization of two fundamentally different cultural systems” (Hunter; 128) and this leads to a place where concessions and honest debate are nearly impossible as the ground-level ideals and language are entirely antithetical (Hunter, 1990). As concessions are not likely the argument continues with each side trying to acquire new ways to beat the other, yet this is
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difficult as both sides appeal to science, precedent and theology and both are supported by them, leading to each becoming not just a moral vision but a dogma all its own (Hunter, 1990). This is complicated even more when one considers the fact that not only are these oppositional conceptions of the sacred but the fact that the mere existence of the other is viewed as a desecration of the sacred by the opposing group
(Hunter, 1990).
When everything is said and done the core issues that drive both sides and the rhetoric surrounding them outgrow the organizations and people advocating for them and become defining forces in public life (Hunter, 1990). However a person may choose to align themselves with a cause they must struggle against this strong current if they wish to define themselves in their own way within the culture war, if they do not they will find themselves swept to one side or another (Hunter, 1990).
War Zones History itself is contested territory in the culture wars as both sides vie for control of its interpretation in order to have sway over which direction the country is
“supposed” to be headed in and to legitimize their cause through it. Thus, both sides interpret history differently and it becomes a part of their ideology. On the side of the orthodox the evangelical Christians are the most prolific in this interpretation and though they may disagree on the specifics the general idea is held in common. The key interpretation of American history is that of the divine intervening to create the nation.
This sets up the founding documents as divinely inspired and instills a sense of
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wonder in the balance of freedom and justice supposedly inherent within them
(Hunter, 1990).
In the context of the orthodox, freedom refers to being free of tyranny and the support of free enterprise, a linking of economic and spiritual freedom. Justice in this context refers to Judeo-Christian morality and righteous living. All of these things together necessitate a future in which America continues its expansion as it spreads justice and liberty across the globe (Hunter, 1990).
The progressive vision, on the other hand, does not see a divine hand in
America’s creation. Because of this the founding documents are seen as evolving through interpretation in light of contemporary circumstances. Freedom refers to human rights and diversity and justice as equality and the end of oppression with economics being central to this happening (Hunter, 1990). The future of the nation in this vision consists of a new course for America, one of justice and equity and of fixing the inequality our wealth has created (Hunter, 1990).
Justice and freedom figure prominently in both visions but are inverted in actual understanding and practice, for the orthodox freedom is economic in the form of individual enterprise and justice is social in the form of righteous living (Hunter,
1990) while in the progressive vision freedom is social as individual rights and justice is economic as equality (Hunter, 1990).
The struggle also goes beyond these symbolic, abstract ideas and has an effect in concrete ways. The main fields of battle in the modern culture war are that of the family, education, media, law and political elections (Hunter, 1990), with each
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functioning as a symbolic field in which each side pushes for their own interests and attempts to gain concessions while trying to keep their own losses to a minimum
(Hunter, 1990).
The family is the most contended and conspicuous field of the battle as the reference point for the fundamentally different points of view. Embedded within the conflict over the family are issues such as authority, legitimate sexuality and what actually constitutes a family, with many groups potentially being left out of the basic building block of society (Hunter, 1990). The family in relation to evangelicals is a much studied topic with varying results. In support of Hunter’s thesis is a study which examined the parenting manuals produced by conservative Christian organizations and found that Protestants are the “standard-bearers for ‘traditional’ hierarchical and authority-centered parenting models” (Bartkowski & Ellison; 12). The authors showed that one’s ideas of Biblical literalism and concerning whether or not humanity is inherently sinful will have a profound impact on how one raises their children. This illustrates another gap between the orthodox and progressives in regard to the battlefield of the family. However, Bartkowski also found that there is a lot of debate among evangelicals in regard to the traditional patriarchal family structure as well.
While patriarchy certainly has its supporters among evangelical Christians it seems that there is also a strong contingent pushing for a more equitable arrangement between spouses under the ideal of “mutual submission” to one another. While one could say this is a strike against Hunter’s thesis it can also be seen as an example of the new alliances and divisions Hunter discusses.
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Education is the next level up as the primary means of reproducing the group identity and therefore doing much in the way of determining the future course of the nation. This contest is waged starting with the elementary schools and carries on up through higher education as various faiths found their own colleges and universities while other orthodox groups secretly send activists into classrooms to look for liberal bias in the lectures. In regard to public schools “secular humanism” is the primary evil the orthodox see themselves facing while the progressive wing tends to deny that it even exists. That battle over schools has led many of the orthodox faithful to be quite active in school politics or to home school their children (Hunter, 1990).
Media and the arts bring the aspects of free expression and speech into the fray as well as the fact that the media not only reflects reality but helps to shape it. This issue of whether something is artistic or obscene very much brings absolute truth into the equation as two groups from different cultural milieus attempt to assert their own opinion onto the other. The orthodox has been very active in this area with boycotts targeting the advertisers who support things they deem offensive. Attempts at censorship such as attempting to purchase all the copies of “The Last Temptation of
Christ” in order to prevent its airing have become widespread. It is, however, important to note that the orthodox are not the sole censors, there are those that wish to censor on both sides of the divide (Hunter, 1990) as one can see with issues such as hate-speech laws and the picketing of certain churches.
Law has become especially important as the new culture war’s antithetical ideas are difficult (perhaps impossible) to sort out through reasoning or discussion.
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The religion clauses in the Constitution are of particular import here as the definition of religion is crucial with the progressives favoring a functional definition that defines religion by what it does whereas the orthodox prefer the substantive definition that relies on what religion is (Hunter, 1990). The fight over the relationship between the church and state is ever present, though the real issue is not the potential removal of religion from the discourse but of how high the wall between church and state should be. In general, the progressive side prefers a high wall while the orthodox tend toward wanting a rather low, permeable separation between the two (Hunter, 1990). The main goal of this battle for both sides is to win the ability to determine which rules will be used in settling moral conflicts as those that set these rules will have a tremendous advantage in fighting the fights (Hunter, 1990).
Lastly, electoral politics serves as more than a way for people to choose lawmakers, it is the citizens’ opportunity to embrace or reject what are ultimately symbols of our national identity (Hunter, 1990). An interesting new emergence examined by Karen Kaufmann involves the diverging views of men and women with subsequent new party affiliations being demonstrated by females. Kaufmann found that issues involving women’s, reproductive and homosexual rights are increasingly holding importance in determining party identification for women. While these issues are somewhat important for men the issue of social welfare trumps them in regard to party identification. Kaufmann claims that this undermines the idea of competing moral visions as being the driving force in the culture war as women are roundly more religious yet less conservative than men (Kaufmann, 2002). However, Hunter defines
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faith to encompass any belief system so religiosity does not necessarily predispose someone toward orthodox tendencies. Beyond this, these issues certainly have a moral component in them. Issues of equal rights can certainly be seen in moral terms while the issue of reproductive rights seems to exist almost exclusively in the moral realm.
For men the issue of social welfare can easily be cast in moral terms whether one supports it or not.
In support of Hunter’s thesis is a study that examines the major issues involved in choosing a presidential candidate to vote for. In recent years religious and “family issues” have come to the forefront for conservative voters, eclipsing all other factors in importance (Hammond, Shibley & Solow, 2000). This supports Hunter’s idea of the divisions residing in things beyond mild theological arguments and doctrinal differences and dealing with fundamental issues, in this case, family values.
The Christian Right in the Culture War The Christian Right in the context of Hunter’s culture war was discussed rather extensively in his book though mostly within the bounds of the “impulse toward orthodoxy” (Hunter, 1990) and not in its own right. Many of the more specific aspects of the Christian Right fit well with Hunter’s thesis and illustrate various points of it quite well.
The Christian Right’s union with the Republican Party over the “family issues” very much represents one of the new alliances Hunter discusses. While there is a high degree of compatibility insofar as the defense of traditional values and ideals is
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concerned, there is also much room for conflict between the two groups. That they were able to meld so well is a testament to the powerful nature of the potential threat of losing the culture war and, to some degree, a testament to the power of Francis
Schaeffer’s influence and writing.
The variety within the Christian Right is also indicative of the influence of the culture war as various groups that normally remain somewhat separate coalesce to fight a larger threat. The “real-world” nature of the battle shows in their astute awareness of the line between church and state and their ability to walk as close to it as possible in order to assert their agenda on the rest of the populace. Abortion seems to be a key issue here as it is elsewhere, bridging groups that have little else in common such as the Hispanic evangelicals and the conservative Catholics (Schaeffer,
2007). The actual makeup of the Christian Right seems to play into an aspect of
Hunter’s thesis as well as the small, well-educated, professional and activist elite falls into the class crafting the discourse for a majority of less educated “troops” (Lienesch,
1982) to follow. However, it also illustrates the disconnect between the elite and the masses as many of the “followers” did not support the leadership’s decision to compromise in order to be more successful in the political realm (Lindaman & Haider-
Markel, 2002).
The pre and post-millenialist doctrines offer another interesting aspect to the culture war. On the one hand is the idea that two groups with seemingly disparate points of view can agree and work together under the banner of the orthodox despite doing so for very different reasons. On the other is the idea that two groups within the
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same faith tradition may belong to different impulses, one to the orthodox the other to the progressive. It seems likely that the orthodox would tend toward the
Premillennialists belief as both Robertson and Falwell subscribe to it (Wilcox, Linzy
& Jelen, 1991) as does Tim LaHaye, if his Left Behind books can be believed to represent his viewpoint. Further research could be instructive as to whether or not there is a significant difference in the viewpoints of pre and post-millenialists.
As discussed briefly above, the newly emergent “Christian Left” or Red-Letter
Christians pose a difficulty for Hunter’s thesis. One could certainly say that the new lines of alliance and battle are applicable here as a mass movement of Christians aligned with causes that many would associate with secularists and liberals is a new development. However, the fact that the Christian Left is comprised of evangelical
Christians dedicated to the authority of the Bible is difficult and certainly seems to place them within the orthodox camp, especially once their similarity to the Christian
Right regarding abortion is considered. One could argue that the Christian Left’s tendency to believe in less in Biblical literalism represents a sort of “reserving the right” to re-symbolize aspects of their faith if needed, which would be another characteristic of the impulse toward the progressive.
In all, the role of the Christian Right in the culture war is a continuation of its desire to wield influence over secular culture, especially in the most important areas of this culture. The division between the conservative and more liberal Christians is illustrative of the culture war’s destruction of old alliances and the creation of new boundaries where one’s impulse is more definitive than one’s religious preference.
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Lastly, as explicitly discussed by Hunter, Christians are the primary interpreters of history for the orthodox and are largely responsible for the continuing characterization of the United States as divinely inspired; something that figures prominently in the writings and philosophy of Francis Schaeffer. Beyond this the writings of Francis Schaeffer were a major impetus for the Christian Right to enter into the culture war in more specific arenas, most notably in the issue of abortion.
However, his push for Christianity as a comprehensive system of life also included action in multiple areas as well.
Francis Schaeffer The above examination of the Christian Right is filled with familiar people.
Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Pat Robertson are all household names and hold prominent places in our cultural consciousness. Even less visible players such as
Ralph Reed and Paul Weyrich are well known to many within evangelical and political circles. However, there are few people more influential in the formation of the Christian Right than Francis Schaeffer who, despite selling over three million books, being regarded with the likes of C.S. Lewis (Capps, 1990) and having a profound impact on the formation of the Christian Right as a political entity seems to be largely unknown outside of evangelical circles. Schaeffer, along with his son Frank, was instrumental in helping push the largely apolitical Christian Right into the political arena through a film tour, speaking engagements and his books. In his book
Crazy for God: How I Grew up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious
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Right, and Lived to Take All (or almost all) of it Back Frank Schaeffer recounts his life growing up with Francis Schaeffer and documents their rise and move into the world of the evangelical right. The life story and personal behavior of Francis Schaeffer is not what one would expect from one of the central architects of the Christian Right and Schaeffer proves to be a much more complex individual than many who invoke his name would have you think.
The Life and Influence of Francis Schaeffer Born in Philadelphia (Schaeffer, 2007) to working-class parents who regarded book-learning as a waste of time and thought preachers were free-loaders (Burson &
Walls, 1988), Francis Schaeffer seems an unlikely candidate to have become one of the most influential Christian intellectuals and preachers of the last century. His childhood was not a privileged one, spent selling ice off of a cart to help his family get by and one that resulted in a knife wound to the face that he bore the scar from for the rest of his life (Schaeffer, 2007). The major change in his life came when he mistakenly picked up a Greek philosophy book and read it along with the Bible and decided that philosophy provided only questions, not answers, and that the Bible provided the opposite (Burson & Walls, 1988).
Despite his parents wished Schaeffer was an exceptionally intelligent child and wound up not only attending college (where he held Bible studies for his dorm mates and agreed to make sure drunk ones made it to bed so long as they attended church with him) but seminaries as well (Burson & Walls, 1988; Schaeffer, 2007).
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Schaeffer met his wife while standing up to a Unitarian minister in front of a group he was speaking to and she had to step in and help him, providing clear intellectual arguments to support her perspective and seemingly sparking an idea that held in Schaeffer’s philosophy of apologetics for the rest of his life (Burson & Walls,
1998). As his spiritual life progressed he became enmeshed in the growing dispute between the fundamentalists Christians and their more liberal mainline contemporaries, with Schaeffer eventually winding up on the side of the
Fundamentalists in matters of spiritual authority (Burson & Walls, 1998). He eventually wound up moving to Switzerland where his real purpose seemed to assert itself.
Francis Schaeffer was something of an evangelical rock star throughout much of his life. L’Abri, the mission he and his wife Edith founded in Switzerland in 1955, was visited by Timothy Leary, Billy Graham and Gerald Ford’s son among others
(Schaeffer, 2007). Schaeffer and his wife met with Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush
Sr. and stayed at the White House on several occasions and he carried on correspondence with the President of Senegal. People like James Dobson, Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson all cite Schaeffer as a major influence as does the founder of Operation Rescue (a militant anti-abortion group) (Schaeffer, 2007). On the other side of the spectrum one can see Schaeffer’s influence on many that the Christian
Right would vilify. Apart from Timothy Leary; who told Schaeffer’s son “If I thought your father is typical of other Christians, I’d reconsider my position” (Schaeffer; 79)
Schaeffer influenced the likes of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page who received a copy of
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Schaeffer’s book Escape from Reason from none other than Eric Clapton and deemed it “very cool” (Schaeffer; 211). During L’Abri’s heyday Schaeffer served as sort of
Christian guru for the hundreds of hippies who passed through its doors with many staying for long periods of time. He believed that the Beatles and Bob Dylan were doing God’s work by preparing people’s hearts in “pre-evangelism” and “tearing down the wall of middle-class empty bourgeois apathy” (Schaeffer; 212) and that it was the job of Christians to provide the answer after these things had fallen. Schaeffer even attended a Jefferson Airplane concert and, while refusing it himself, helpfully passed a joint down the line for others (Schaeffer, 2007).
The question of how to reconcile these two seemingly different roles, hippie guru and founding member of the Christian Right, is valid and a look at Schaeffer’s life provides much of the answer. While very progressive in many ways Francis
Schaeffer was also a fierce defender of Biblical inerrancy and conservative
Christianity; Schaeffer regarded the liberalism that was creeping into the mainline churches as a tragic mistake. This mistake was also one Schaeffer took somewhat personally as J. Gresham Machen, whom Schaeffer considered his friend and mentor, was fired for speaking out against the liberalization of the church (Schaeffer, 2007).
Yet Schaeffer was also more balanced than many in his approach to people. He believed in dealing with people on their own level and understood that using Bible verses to prove a point when dealing with someone who did not believe the Bible to be true was an utter waste of one’s time.
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He was well read and had a profound love for art and music. He wished to be a cultural intellectual rather than a theologian and could hold his own in conversations with people from many walks of life and with varying levels of education. Schaeffer’s views on homosexuality and race stand out as amazingly progressive even today.
Homosexuals were welcome at L’Abri and no one was allowed to make them uncomfortable in any way (Schaeffer, 2007). Schaeffer believed them when they claimed to be born homosexual and defended this to others who might think contrary.
He called it “cruel and stupid” (Schaeffer; 77) when others asserted that homosexuality could be “cured” through the acceptance of Christ (Schaeffer, 2007).
The fact that Schaeffer maintained these beliefs in the 1950’s is even more astounding.
Schaeffer was also well before his time on issues of race, making a point to tell his children that he would support their marriage to a non-white person, once again a revolutionary perception in the 1950’s. There seems to be no one whom Schaeffer did not welcome to L’Abri. People recently out of prison, the mentally ill and single mothers all found a place at the Swiss mission (Schaeffer, 2007).
Schaeffer’s move from Swiss missionary to evangelical intellectual heavyweight began with his writing. Though they were never truly poor, for a very long time the Schaeffer’s lived a meager existence at L’Abri. However, once
Schaeffer began writing things began to change dramatically and by 1968 he was on the brink of becoming one of the most well known and influential evangelicals on the planet, though his content matter was far from the usual.
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The definitive move into fame occurred at the prompting of Schaeffer’s son,
Frank and involved a series of films made with the support of then-future Surgeon
General C. Everett Coop (Schaeffer, 2007). While Schaeffer could certainly not be considered pro-choice, his son held militantly anti-abortion views, views shared by
Coop.
These, along with an interest in film-making, led to the creation of two documentary film series entitled How Should We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? respectively. The first, How Should We Then Live? centered on the thesis that Western culture, art, democracy and freedom can all be traced to a
Christian foundation that was currently (and still is) under attack by Humanism. How
Should We The Live? was a huge success seen by thousands of people across the
United States and is still used in thousands of Christian high schools, colleges and seminaries worldwide and propelled Schaeffer to the forefront of the evangelical world (Schaeffer, 2007). The films served to elevate “human life issues” to the forefront of the evangelical movement and became the watershed between Christian and non-Christian society.
Beyond this, Schaeffer’s films served to help bring the evangelical right and the Republican Party together through Congressman Jack Kemp, who ran as Vice-
President in Bob Dole’s bid for the presidency, and his wife Joan. Kemp saw the potential an alliance between the Christian Right and the Republican Party held and began to bring others on board. Schaeffer and his son, for their part, were among the first to tell evangelicals that God “wanted” them involved in politics and Roe versus
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Wade became their platform to illustrate this while also bringing in Hispanic
Pentecostals and helping pull many Roman Catholics into the Republican Party
(Schaeffer, 2007). Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto, the focus of the next section, inspired the aggressive picketing of abortion clinics on a large scale leading the ACLU and pro-choice groups to invoke the RICO act to break up protests, further entrenching the idea of fundamental values being under attack. A Christian Manifesto’s first year sales totaled 290,000 and is still a frequently cited book among evangelicals (Capps,
1990; Diamond, 1994, 1996). The Schaeffers began advising Republicans on how to woo the evangelical vote leading Reagan to contribute an article to a pro-life journal which spun into a book which helped evangelicals begin to see the Republican Party as “theirs” (Schaeffer, 2007). Apart from the political scene Schaeffer lent respectability to people like Falwell, Robertson and Dobson through his intellectual credentials and was brought in as a sort of “hired muscle” to fight theological liberalism and lend weight to firings of those not conservative enough in various
Christian institutions and organizations (Schaeffer, 2007).
Much of what was happening came at the expense of L’Abri and Schaeffer’s happiness. Though certainly a conservative Christian in regard to abortion and Biblical inerrancy Schaeffer’s more progressive views and frugal lifestyle came into conflict with many of the things he was now confronted with. He moved to the right under the influence of those around him and in the whirlwind of fame and influence. L’Abri began to unravel as Schaeffer created an oath to Biblical inerrancy that everyone had to sign. One son-in-law refused, tearing his family apart (Schaeffer, 2007). In private
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Schaeffer was dismissive of many of the public faces of the evangelical right calling them “these idiots”, “plastic”, power hungry” (Schaeffer; 300) and resenting that they were “using our issue to build their empires” (Schaeffer; 300). He called Jerry Falwell
“really disgusting” (Schaeffer, 315) after the latter told him he would shoot a dog that did what homosexuals do (Schaeffer, 2007). Schaeffer was also opposed to the even more right-wing members of the evangelical right such as Rousas J Rushdoony, a
Christian Reconstructionist whose program called for the execution of homosexuals and adulterers and whom Schaeffer regarded as “insane” (Schaeffer; 333). In the end
Schaeffer felt that the evangelical world was led by “lunatics, psychopaths and extremists” (Schaeffer; 335) and felt that “if our side ever wins America will be in deep trouble” (Schaeffer; 335) but felt obligated to continue in order to fight what he saw as the murder of millions of innocent children.
The contradictions in Francis Schaeffer’s life do not end with the divide between his remarkably progressive and strictly conservative viewpoints or his working with people he saw as incredibly detrimental to the world for the sake of a cause. The personal life of Schaeffer also bears signs of a more conflicted individual than his modern day followers would have one believe; as is evidenced by the voluminous amount of hate-mail received by Schaeffer’s son upon the completion of
Crazy for God (Schaeffer, 2007).
One very pertinent and troubling aspect of Francis Schaeffer’s personal life is his abusive behavior towards his wife, Edith. Though a happy couple and very much in love by all accounts, Schaeffer experienced bouts of rage, especially once the
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pressure of being a well-known teacher and speaker began to weigh on him and this resulted in overtly abusive behavior against Edith, including physical abuse
(Schaeffer, 2007). Relatedly, Schaeffer also suffered from bouts of depression, going so far as to frequently detail ideas of suicide by hanging himself. These issues were prevalent in Schaeffer’s life and serve as a contrast to the confident, confrontational defender of traditional faith in showing a person very alone with few people to truly confide in. The abusiveness ended abruptly upon Schaeffer’s diagnosis of cancer leading him to apologize and take responsibility for it.
Another formative and important aspect of Schaeffer’s life involves what Edith called his “year of doubt” (Schaeffer; 100) over modern Christianity’s ignoring of charity and grace (Burson & Walls, 1998).During this time that Francis Schaeffer took himself back to agnosticism and almost gave up his faith entirely, spending hours in
L’Abri’s hayloft searching his belief to determine if it was a tenable one (Schaeffer,
2007; Burson & Walls, 1998). Though Schaeffer did eventually come out the other side of this doubt with a renewed belief that his faith was the true faith this period does lend credence to his claims that Christianity must also be a rational, believable set of tenets one can live by (Burson & Walls, 1998).
Francis Schaeffer died on May 15, 1984, at the age of 62, six years after discovering he had cancer. Ronald Reagan himself wrote Edith a letter of condolence,
William Buckley made note of his passing in the National Review, Jack Kemp inserted a note on him in the Congressional Record, a member of Parliament thanked him for
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his dedication to the pro-life cause and Time magazine called him “a leading evangelical scholar” (Schaeffer; 340).
Francis Schaeffer’s Belief and Philosophy The core of Francis Schaeffer’s belief can be found in a fundamentalist
Christianity; a dedication to the factual and inerrant nature of the Bible, the deity of
Christ and his death as atonement for sin along with his resurrection and eventual return as a matter of fact (Burson & Walls, 1998). He believed that our basic problems come down to a moral divide between humans and God as our sin had separated us from our creator and that no number of good works could atone for this, thus making
Christ the only way to heaven. While much of his life and behavior was very progressive and he believed firmly in holding what he called holiness and love in equal balance much of his philosophy hugs both margins of the conservative/liberal continuum. Schaeffer not only believed that Christ was the only way to heaven but that even those who had not heard the message were doomed to hell by way of the fact that they would be judged by the moral code inherent in humans, the self-apparent proof of a creator in the very universe itself and by the standard they held others too.
When they inevitably failed they would be condemned for eternity. He saw the increasing relativism as the major threat of the future and emphasized the importance of an objectively existent, absolute Truth that applied across the board.
Schaeffer’s first book, The Escape from Reason, attacked middle class values without a Christian foundation as worthless and argued that the foundation itself had
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been forgotten, something that would be a prevalent theme in his writings. Schaeffer actually agreed with the Hippies assessment of what ailed American culture but disagreed with their solution (Schaeffer, 2007), while Schaeffer wanted to see people rebel he wanted them do so with a purpose. Schaeffer began speaking to different groups on an increasingly regular basis as his stature in the evangelical community grew, though, once again, his content was not always what many were expecting to hear. At one engagement Schaeffer took aim at the administration for refusing to alter plans to build a new wing in order to save a group of trees (the trees were saved)
(Schaeffer, 2007).
Schaeffer also believed that most people will choose security over freedom and that this would lead to a new fascism, a process that was being accelerated by an abandonment of the absolute truths of life, leaving a vacuum to be filled. A major insight Schaeffer developed involved the generation gap of the time and the problem of quoting Bible verses to people who did not believe in the Bible, an insight that would bring many evangelical leaders to L’Abri to learn from Schaeffer (Schaeffer,
2007).
Francis Schaeffer’s Christian philosophy was rooted in a deep understanding of and love for culture, more specifically Western culture. Schaeffer believed that
Christianity had been off track ever since it’s inception, corrupted by the Humanism of the Greeks. This influence was removed during the Reformation, a revolution he attributed to the influence of Northern Europe (Schaeffer, 2007). However, much of this correction was thrown off by the Enlightenment when Humanistic principles
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became set in the cultural consciousness (Capps, 1990). This lack of a true Christianity left a massive vacuum for those seeking spiritual aid and led to the propagation of nihilism and its assorted “inevitable” results such as hallucinogenic drugs, surrealistic art and the “non-rational” religions of the East (Capps, 1990). Much of the Northern
European Reformation ideas were intrinsic in the founding of the United States, in
Schaeffer’s conception. Thus Schaeffer, though writing in a very global sense, focused on the United States in A Christian Manifesto (Capps, 1990).
Schaeffer firmly believed that a Christian philosophy and apologetic must be presuppositional, rational, relational and plausible (Burson & Walls, 1998). It must be presuppositional in that one must understand that people filter things through a specific lens and one must address this; one cannot pretend that everyone approaches things from the same side. Beyond this, Schaeffer encouraged his audience to make
Christianity their lens, to filter everything through the Bible before taking a stance or choosing a side on an issue (Burson & Walls, 1998). Schaeffer, in what was a revolutionary assertion at the time (and still is to a large extent) also believed that
Christianity and its defense must be able to stand up to outside critiques and must move beyond thinking that an internal consistency was all that was needed to make it a valid belief system. This rationality required that science be not reviled but embraced as a method of proving the legitimacy of the Christian faith (Burson & Walls, 1998).
Schaeffer’s belief in a relational apologetic is reflective of his compassionate nature in that he demanded that people remember the idea that they were to believe that each human was created in God’s image and therefore automatically instilled with worth
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and value. This led him to craft a philosophy that attempted to understand and empathize with people’s plight rather than judge them for what could be perceived as sin (Burson & Walls, 1998). Lastly, Schaeffer wanted a plausible Christianity; if this was not possible he advocated its dismissal as a relevant belief system. In Schaeffer’s mind Christianity offered the only comprehensive worldview that allowed for all races and cultures and this lent it plausibility and this was what he wanted conveyed in his works (Burson & Walls, 1998).
A prevalent theme in Schaeffer’s work regards the absolute. Schaeffer felt there is an inherent absolute moral law and authority and felt that many of the problems in the world stem from society’s loss of an acknowledgment of this. He was against the modern materialist conceptions of the universe and science and felt that the move away from the absolute had destroyed humanity’s moral compass. This absolutism led him to weigh all aspects of the world against the absolute Truth of
Christianity as he saw it (Schaeffer, 2007). In fact, a dedication to the absolute Truth of Christianity in the form of a dedication to Biblical inerrancy was what Schaefer saw as the watershed issue of the faith, with everything else falling to secondary status
(Burson & Walls, 1998). He believed that to accept Christianity one had to accept this; and all of his work followed from this central belief (Burson & Walls, 1998).
Problems and Inconsistencies Despite Schaeffer’s demand of submitting Christianity to secular standards of verification and his much higher than average (within evangelical circles) standard of
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philosophical reason and logic, there are profound difficulties with much of his overall work in the form of internal and external inconsistencies.
The first of these can be seen in his views on predestination and may inflict what is a fatal crack in his overall philosophy. Schaeffer was a major proponent of one’s salvation, and therefore there eventual eternal residence in either heaven or hell, being predetermined from birth (most likely before birth) (Burson & Walls, 1998). For
Schaeffer this was a necessary corollary of an omnipotent, sovereign God; there could not be a question as to where a person would wind up in the afterlife and be an all- knowing God, the two are mutually exclusive. This was also an affirmation of the
Westminster Confession of which Schaeffer was a believer. There is a compassionate aspect in this predestination as Schaeffer primarily saw it as a means of reassuring believers worried that they may have “lost” their salvation through some sin or another for as they had been “chosen” by God they could not be “un-chosen” unless God had made a mistake. In Schaeffer’s words: “After becoming Christians by accepting
Christ, we learn that God the father has chosen us. The Christian could be lost again only if the first person of the Trinity, the father, failed” (Burson & Walls; 62).
Schaeffer saw this aspect of Christian theology as something for the already initiated and not as a tool for evangelizing and was careful in the words he used when talking about it, choosing general terms over specifics such as predestination or election
(Burson & Walls, 1998).
However, for this hardline approach to salvation as predetermined Francis
Schaeffer was also fiercely opposed to Christianity being seen or labeled as a
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deterministic faith, a designation he derisively attached to the more Eastern religions and to materialist science. The contradiction in his thought is obvious at this point though he did attempt to reconcile it through what some label a “libertarian freedom” view of free will. Libertarian freedom states that “much of reality is part of a causal chain, but some human actions are the result of real, legitimate first-cause choice between two or more live options” (Burson & Walls; 67). The problem here sets in when one contrasts this with his deterministic view of salvation as the only way to allow for an omnipotent and omniscient God. A hard deterministic view of the universe sees all reality as being contained within a causal chain and that everything has essentially already been determined by what has come before it (Burson & Walls;
67), this leaves no room for free will choices. This would not be some much of a problem had Schaeffer not been dedicated to fighting the materialist science conception of an impersonal universe and against the liberal viewpoint of sociological and psychological causes contributing to people’s behavior and place in the world.
Thus Schaeffer asserted that while our salvation was predetermined and unchangeable as we were made in God’s image we have free will and are “first cause choices” unto ourselves. The contradiction here is obvious, even Schaeffer acknowledged this and did not try to reconcile it. He instead falls back on the idea that since both are scripturally dictated both must be true, mutually exclusive or not. However, this is not an example of Biblical inaccuracy or contradiction in Schaeffer’s mind but an example of God’s unfathomable power and therefore all the more reason we should live in awe of his power (Burson & Walls, 1998).
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This contradiction would be a problem for any philosopher but it poses a triple threat for Francis Schaeffer’s work due to his own criteria for what constitutes an acceptable argument and by way of one of his own fundamental tenets of apologetics.
Schaeffer’s most potent weapon when discussing something with a nonbeliever would be to let them lay out their entire belief system piece by piece and then addressing the contradictions inherent within it. By allowing for such a profound contradiction to lie at the heart of one of the most important questions of Christianity Schaeffer created a potentially insurmountable problem for his apologetic. Secondly, Schaeffer held very tightly to the Law of Non-Contradiction as being important in his and all philosophical work; his view on predestination is a clear violation o this. Beyond this, this difficulty violates Schaeffer’s need for apologetics to be rational and for Christianity to be subjected to the same rigors as science and other facts; in any other instance this contradiction would kill the idea. Lastly, Schaeffer’s convenient use of one argument for one notion of free-will in one situation and a completely different notion in another brings his objectivity and critical thinking into question and, as the questions of salvation and free-will are central to the Christian faith, creates a problem for his entire philosophical structure, especially in light of the fact that Biblical inerrancy was his central thesis.
Another problematic aspect of Francis Schaeffer’s philosophy involves a leap in reasoning, and quite a large one at that. Why there is something instead of nothing is a central question of philosophy and theology. In Schaeffer’s work this question has only three answers; that everything came from nothing, that everything came from and
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impersonal source or that everything came from a personal source. He dismissed the notion of everything coming from nothing on the basis of it being an impossibility unless one is allowed to sneak some kind of matter or energy into the equation which nullifies the “nothing” aspect of the argument (Burson & Walls, 1998) though he did not seem to address where God “came from”. The impersonal source model was also unacceptable to Schaeffer on the basis of humanity’s uniqueness and the fact of humanity’s existence (Burson & Walls, 1998), the first questionable leap in this argument as the very fact that humanity is here could be taken as proof that we are a possible outcome of the universe unfolding. This aside, the elimination of these two possibilities leaves the personal source as the only possibility for Francis Schaeffer.
However, even if one is to accept that the universe was created by a personal, interested deity of some sort this does not constitute proof that the Bible is true or inerrant. Beyond this is the fact that there are many faith systems that have a creation/creator component to them that could account for Schaeffer’s personal creator. While he seems to believe these other faiths have already been sufficiently dealt with through exposing their inconsistencies, the above discussion seems that this same argument is capable of destroying his own belief system as well, clearly a problem.
Impact on Christianity Schaeffer’s impact on Christianity is as complex and varied as the man himself. His overt influence on the Christian Right has been detailed above though
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there is also a deeper level that goes beyond pushing people into the pro-life cause where Schaeffer’s legacy can be seen in underlying philosophies. Schaeffer’s notion of making Christianity palatable on an intellectual level can still be seen in such things as the push for creation science to be taught in the classrooms and the vast multitude of literature of an intellectual nature in Christian bookstores. At the same time, his dedication to Biblical inerrancy is still apparent in the fundamentalist movement still afoot in the United States and abroad and his argument that America is a Christian nation and that Western culture is a product of Christian ideals is a mainstay for the
Christian Right to this day.
A more surprising place that bears the mark of Francis Schaeffer’s influence is the emerging Christian Left discussed above. Many of Schaeffer’s ideas about the balance of love and holiness, environmental concerns and Christianity as being relational are readily apparent within the movement.
While it is impossible to say that these things are a direct result of Francis
Schaeffer’s life and work it seems safe to assume that with the height of his profile, the breadth of his work and the range of his influence that there is at least of little of him in them.
A Christian Manifesto Francis Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto, written in 1982, presented an intellectually driven, well reasoned catalyst for many Christians to enter into the social and political fray of their time, especially in relation to abortion. This book marked a
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profound turn from spiritual to political matters for Schaeffer by carrying on the work begun by his films in a format more easily accessible to a broader range of people.
In a narrow sense it is a polemic against abortion, an issue Schaeffer saw as leading to an eventual disregard for human life in general. However, in a larger sense it is one of the first volleys in the ensuing battle against “secular humanism” so many fundamentalist Christians still see as the primary threat to their way of life.
A Christian Manifesto was a profoundly influential book, both directly through its definition of abortion as a watershed issue for Christians and indirectly through its influence on many people who went on to influence the American cultural landscape.
The idea of abortion as a watershed issue can be seen in its inspiring of Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, a militantly anti-abortion group. Terry himself has even been quoted as saying “If you want to understand Operation Rescue, you have to read
Schaeffer's Christian Manifesto."(Hamilton; p7).
Indirectly, A Christian Manifesto has impacted the world through its readers.
Pat Robertson considers it among his favorite books and it profoundly influenced Jerry
Falwell’s decision to move into the political and legal realm of American life
(Hamilton; 1997).
Many factors influenced my decision in choosing A Christian Manifesto for content analysis for this thesis. The primary reason involves its place as Schaeffer’s most “action-oriented” work, thus making it the most suitable for a sociological discussion. The entirety of A Christian Manifesto is dedicated to elucidating a framework for acceptable political action, civil disobedience and outright rebellion for
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the Christian to engage in when conditions dictate the necessity. Without a doubt, there is no shortage of spiritual and theological discussion in the book, but they are all directed towards justifying the central theme of the book.
A second consideration involves the time it was written in Schaeffer’s life as an example of his radicalization through his opposition to abortion and as a result of his affiliation with the Christian Right as this has parallels with Hunter’s culture wars thesis. The Francis Schaeffer of A Christian Manifesto is markedly different from the one who held all night conversations with hippies and wrote a book about preserving the environment. The same man who said that "one of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative," (Hamilton: 9) here trumpets the small window of opportunity the conservatives have to turn things around. He also reverses his stance that "Patriotic loyalty must not be identified with Christianity”
(Hamilton: 6) by equating America and its democracy as growing forth from God.
These radical changes in Schaeffer’s conception as he moved further to one side in order to have his voice heard is a pertinent example of the polarizing influence of a culture war.
Lastly, A Christian Manifesto was used for this thesis because it was the first and most frequently mentioned of Schaeffer’s books I came across and the mention of it in an article is what led me to learning about Francis Schaeffer and his impact on the modern world.
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CHAPTER III
METHODS
The method of content analysis for this paper consisted of a stair-stepping series of conceptualizations of ideas in A Christian Manifesto moving from broader generalizations up to more and more specific concepts.
The initial phase of content analysis involved a reading of the work in its entirety in order to get a grasp of the overall picture of Schaeffer’s argument and ideas. My initial thoughts were that Schaeffer was somewhat misinformed and quite possibly a little crazy, as a cursory reading of his material without an understanding of his background and previous works predisposes one to this thought. The first reading of this work left me with a picture of Francis Schaeffer as very close to a Pat
Robertson or Jerry Falwell type character; rigid, dogmatic and one who conflates the notion of Christianity with democracy and therefore with the United States. It helped me see where the idea of Francis Schaeffer as a proponent of dominionist theology originated and made me wonder how someone so extreme in their thought and proposed action had escaped my notice thus far.
The next phase of my content analysis involved re-reading A Christian
Manifesto and writing a short, one sentence summary of each paragraph in order to try to capture the general ideas and overall thematic structure of the book. I attempted to encapsulate each paragraph within itself, leaving in only the essential meaning of what
Schaeffer was trying to say. Phrases like “pietism limits the divine’s influence” and
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“liberal theology confuses the issues” allowed me to succinctly grasp Schaeffer’s intended purpose for the paragraph. This allowed to develop a more detailed understanding of the flow of Schaeffer’s argument on a chapter by chapter basis as well as giving me a better look at the book overall. However, this technique also gave undeserved weight to certain ideas, as one could read the summary “humanitarianism versus humanities versus Humanism” as a relevant conflict when in fact it is merely
Schaeffer defining his terms.
The next step took the previous step further as I again tried to characterize each paragraph but to do so in three words or less in order to start getting at the actual concepts rather than specific ideas of the book and hopefully be able to by pass exaggerations of importance like mentioned above. This moved the process from one of summarizing the book in “sound bites” to beginning to get at the actual concepts of
Schaeffer’s writing as I wanted to move past the surface level summary of the book to the framework that it was strung on. This technique allowed me to move from summaries that explicated Schaeffer’s direction or argument to concepts that tied in with the overall theme of the book. Using the above example again this technique moved the humanitarianism versus humanities versus Humanism from its surface level context to one explaining how many people fall into the “trap” of Humanism by mistaking it for something else through semantic similarities.
After this I attempted to establish concept categories that better embodied the three word phrases and, at this stage, were no longer limited to the chronological order
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of the book. This process left me with 157 separate concepts in need of organization and consolidation, leading to the next step.
After establishing a large number of potential concept categories I was able to consolidate them into more coherent categories through combining and subclassifying them. Of the 157 potential categories there were many that were very easily assimilated into another broader category or heading. For example, Schaeffer’s depiction of Humanist tyranny, hate, censorship, hegemonic tendencies and basic ignorance easily fit under the heading of “Humanism” for the purposes of defining its role in A Christian Manifesto. When paired with the easily definable category of
Christianity these two were assimilated under the heading of Belief as this is a major concept of the work. Other categories came about through less direct methods. The heading regarding Comprehensive Spirituality involves not only a call for Christians to internalize the concept through having Biblically based values infused throughout every aspect of their lives but also an external aspect that involves action against things that run contrary to this value system. Therefore, this category spans both
Schaeffer’s calls for adherence to Biblical values and the “how-to manual” portion of the book where he advocates for action.
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CHAPTER IV
CONTENT ANALYSIS
While an underlying theme of the book is certainly anti-abortion, Schaeffer touches on many issues which this section will attempt to breakdown and analyze.
Overarching Structure A Christian Manifesto revolves around six primary concept categories:
Authority, Belief, Foundational Decay, Impending Foundational Destruction,
Diametric Enemies, and Comprehensive Spirituality. Through these ideas Schaeffer creates a schema that carries one from the “correct” foundations of who one should respect as authority and why and what one should do when an improper authority asserts itself. From this he illustrates what he perceives to be the current situation in which this has already happened as the essential elements of our society slowly decay and point toward a looming collapse of freedom. This is further carried into showing that compromise is impossible as the two entities struggling for control are utter and complete enemies with no hope of reconciliation. Lastly, steps toward fighting this dire situation are elucidated.
Francis Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto hinges on a dichotomy between
Christianity and Humanism as opposing, irreconcilable forces struggling for control of the planet. Schaeffer contends that the Christian foundations he sees as central to making America what it is are being eroded by an insidious Humanist conspiracy that
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will one day end in utter tyranny. Schaeffer’s Manifesto serves as an explication of these ideas as well as a step by step method of fighting back against the Humanist conspiracy and contains an underlying militantly anti-abortion message.
The dichotomy of Christianity versus Humanism serves as the overarching framework of Schaeffer’s Manifesto and provides the structure from which the other ideas of the book emanate. In Schaeffer’s perception Christianity and Humanism can be seen as inverted conceptions with each representing the near or complete opposite of the other.
This is illustrated in the following model of my own creation.
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Christianity Humanism
Christian False Tradition Universal Historical Perception
Sovereign Brute Obedience Obedience God’s Laws Rules of Man Particular God’s Sovereignty Human Sovereignty
Diametric Enemies: Boxes cannot be merged
Schaeffer’s Worldview Figure 1.1
Of serious import is the idea that these two boxes, representing Christianity
and Humanism respectively, are utterly separate and cannot be associated except by
comparison. The most basic layer of the boxes, which encompasses all the others,
pertains to the idea of authority. The Christian conception places God as sovereign
while the Humanist conception, predictably, places humans in this supreme role. As
will be discussed further below this creates the ultimate basis of Schaeffer’s dismissal
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of Humanism as a legitimate belief system. The next layer pertains to the rules by which those in each camp live, respectively God’s laws versus the rules of man which leads to the next layer, that of obedience. In Schaeffer’s conception Christians will obey the laws because they emanate from God while others will obey laws solely because they fear reprisal and retaliation from a stronger authority. I have termed these
“sovereign obedience” and “brute obedience”, concepts which will also be discussed further below. In the final box, Schaeffer conceives the foundations of the United
States as resting on either Christian ideals or a false interpretation of history. All of the concepts discussed here will be discussed further along with others that further explicate Schaeffer’s ideas. One last aspect of the dichotomous representation
Schaeffer embraces involves the universal and the particular as this also shows the inversion between the two ideologies. In Schaefer’s conception the universal dictates the particular for Christians while the particular dictates the universal for those of a
Humanist persuasion. This can essentially be seen as a battle of absolutes versus relativism which also provides another key idea of Schaeffer’s philosophy.
A conceptual outline of each major topic and its subsections follows.
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Overall Concept Scheme
Authority God’s Sovereignty delegated/conditional authority Law above King (Lex Rex)
Obedience . Sovereign versus Brute . Biblical backing . Christian Precedents for disobedience, revolution, violence . Secular precedents-historic, legal . Bottom Line - abortion
Force . moderated steps . legitimate means . unavoidable use . deterrence . last resort . restraint . peoples’ right
Belief Christianity . form/freedom . absolutes . all inclusive Truth . sacredness of life
Humanism . Humanistic ignorance . Humanistic baselessness . Humanistic relativism
Sociological Syncretism
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Foundational Decay Christian Precedents (foundations) . corrupted Christianity . Christian Traitors . Christian complacency
Humanist hegemony
Impending Foundational Destruction Humanist Conspiracy . materialist science . historical misinterpretation
Humanist Tyranny . abuse . hate . censorship . Christianity attacked – biased world, shaped perceptions
Humanist Religion . atheism
Dire Comparisons Looming Tyranny
Diametric Enemies utter incompatibility incompatible results inevitable conflict
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no in-between
Comprehensive Spirituality Christians think Critically Use Freedoms Sovereign disobedience, revolution, violence all things in life social action Christian precedent (social action) seize opportunities sacrifice positive example
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Authority – God’s versus Human The essential element of Francis Schaeffer’s conception of authority is that
God’s authority is sovereign with all other authority being delegated by God and of a conditional nature. When discussing the base of law, Schaeffer states:
That base was God’s written law, back through the New Testament to Moses’ written law; and the content and authority of that written law is rooted back to him who is the final reality. Thus, neither church nor state were equal to, let alone above, that Law. The base for law is not divided, and no one has the right to replace anything, including king, state or church, above the content of God’s Law.” (Schaefer, 1982; 28)
It should be noted that all references to God will mean the Christian God of the
Bible so long as we are discussing Francis Schaeffer.
He illustrates the delegated nature of authority through the idea of Lex Rex; that the law or justice comes from God and is therefore above the king or state:
Therefore Christ died that justice, rooted in what God is, would be the solution. Bracton codified this: Christ’s example, because of who He is, is our standard, our rule, our measure. Therefore power is not first, but justice is first in society and law. The prince may have the power to control and to rule, but he does not have the right to do so without justice.” (Schaeffer, 1982,28)
The delegated and therefore conditional nature of earthly power not only means that true authority has the legitimacy of being backed from on high but that it can be rescinded when abused, as is evidenced in Schaeffer’s discussion of obedience.
The idea of obedience in A Christian Manifesto also follows a dichotomous path as it essentially comes down to the necessity of obeying just authority versus the necessity of disobeying unjust authority. In Schaeffer’s conception the very act of
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obedience/disobedience is linked to one’s conception of the “final reality” as
Christians will exhibit what was above termed sovereign obedience while humanists will exhibit only brute. In Schaeffer’s view Christians obey the state because “God has commanded us to obey the state” (Schaeffer 1982; 90) while
“… those in our present material-energy, chance oriented generation have no reason to obey the state except that the state has the guns and has the patronage. This is the only reason they have for obeying the state. A material-energy, chance orientation gives no base, no reason, except force and patronage, as to why citizens should obey the state.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 89-90)
The idea of what must happen when this authority is no longer just stands as one of the central elements of the manifesto. Schaeffer includes many examples of
Christians who disobeyed unjust authority by simple civil disobedience and through revolution and violence as well. These “Christian precedents” are a constant presence throughout the manifesto and tie in heavily with Schaeffer’s conception of what the foundations of the United States rest on as will be discussed below. The first example
Schaeffer gives of a Christian precedent for disobedience involves the early Christians who were fed to lions in Rome for refusing to worship Caesar. He goes on to catalogue numerous instances where Christian disobedience derailed tyranny or set the stage for the Reformation to flourish.
Schaeffer also includes two types of secular precedents for disobedience to the state; legal precedents and historical precedents. The main historical precedent
Schaeffer draws from is that of the American Revolution, which also ties in with what he sees as evidence of a Christian foundation for America. Legally, Schaeffer uses the
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Declaration of Independence to set up not only the right of the people to overthrow an unjust government, but to establish that, at times, it may be a requirement and duty as well. Schaeffer calls this the “bottom line”, the point that, once crossed, allows for no turning back and where disobedience is then necessary. A Christian Manifesto offers a single concrete example of what a “bottom line” may be, the issue of abortion.
Schaeffer concedes that the use of force is sometimes acceptable and even necessary when resisting unjust authority yet he is explicit in defining and moderating this force. Schaeffer defines force as “…compulsion or constraint exerted upon a person (or persons) or on an entity such as the state” (Schaeffer, 1982; 106). Under this definition Schaffer accedes that methods such as protest would be considered forceful and he acknowledges them as such. Schaeffer is explicit in demanding that any such use of force follow moderated steps, be by legitimate means and be used as a last resort. He also sees force as a deterrent and as the people’s right to utilize when necessary; in fact he many times portrays it as the people’s duty.
Belief Francis Schaeffer’s belief is clear; he is a Christian and anything outside of this conception of reality is false and detrimental. We once again see a dichotomous conception as Schaeffer establishes Christianity and Humanism as opposing belief systems both in content and practice. Christianity is portrayed in terms that convey its superiority over Humanism; the form/freedom government the United States enjoys, the inclusion of absolute, all-inclusive Truths, and a recognition of the sacredness of
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life are all attributed to Christianity. Humanism, in contrast, is portrayed in negative terms; ignorance, immorality, relativism and as having no basis for its assertions. The essential spiritual superiorities Schaeffer attributes to Christianity over Humanism involve the idea of absolutes; Schaeffer sees Christianity as the absolute Truth with tenets that are all-inclusive; there is no area of life left untouched by Christian Truth.
In Schaeffer’s words true spirituality “…covers all of reality. There are some things the Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful – which do not conform to the character of God” and that “It is not only that true spirituality covers all of life, but it covers all parts of the spectrum equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.” This is explicitly linked to another one of Schaeffer’s assertions of
Christian superiority in the following passage:
“When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality – the total realty of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal-infinite God. Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth – Truth about all of reality. And the holding to that Truth intellectually - and then in some poor way living upon that Truth, the Truth of what is – brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal results.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 20)
In Schaeffer’s worldview these two worlds, the spiritual and the political, are linked through what he sees as the Christian influence on government, resulting in what is called a form/freedom balance. As explained by Schaeffer:
“There is form in acknowledging the obligations in society, and there is freedom in acknowledging the rights of the individual. We have form, we have freedom; there is freedom, there is form. There is a balance here that we have come to take as the natural world. We are utterly foolish if we look at the long span of history and read the daily
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newspapers giving today’s history and do not understand that the form- freedom balance in government which we have had in Northern Europe since the Reformation and in the countries extended from it is unique in the world, past and present.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 25)
Essentially, Schaeffer here asserts that fair government stems from Christianity and will, though only by implication at this point, disappear without it. He deals directly with the common assertion that the Greeks were the first to develop democracy by asserting that any reading of Plato’s Republic will show that they did have democracy. Schaeffer goes on to further confirm the idea of Christian foundations for democracy through the idea that it has not taken a good hold in non-
Christian nations because they are lacking the proper foundation. Thus, democracy becomes a Christian institution and conception. A last element that separates
Christianity from Humanism ties in with the underlying anti-abortion message and is shown more in relation to Humanism’s lack; the recognition of the sacredness of life is something the Humanists just do not understand according to Schaeffer, an issue he elaborates on further in his discussions on the shortcomings of Humanism.
Whereas Schaeffer deals with Christianity in terms of its superiority, he deals with Humanism strictly in terms of the ways it falls short of having truth and in how it is directly detrimental to humanity. Schaeffer limits the discussion of Humanism to three essential traits; ignorance, baselessness, and relativism. The four are all interlinked and provide a cohesive structure that corresponds to Schaeffer’s
Christianity in a negative direction.
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Humanistic ignorance and baselessness as envisioned by Schaeffer go hand-in- hand and serve to reinforce one another. The ignorance exhibited by Humanists stems from the lack of any “true” base for their beliefs; failing to be rooted in the eternal
Truth of Christianity, while this baselessness is both justified and disguised by the ignorance. Essentially, Humanism’s lack of understanding concerning the final reality leads to a misinformed view of Humanity’s significance which legitimates the baseless assertions. In the words of Schaeffer:
“Those who hold the material energy, chance concept of reality…not only do not know the truth of the final reality, God, they do not know who man is. Their concept of Man is what Man is not, just as their concept of final reality is what final reality is not. Since their concept of Man is mistaken, their concept of society and law is mistaken, and they have no sufficient base of either society or law.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 26)
In Schaeffer’s eyes the Humanist conception of humans as little more than another competitive animal leads to a corrupted and insufficient understanding of their true nature and significance and this in turn leads to a corrupted and insufficient grasp of human society and law. This law is also baseless and therefore arbitrary and lacking any true foundational strength:
“We live in a secularized society and in secularized, sociological law. By sociological law we mean law that has no fixed base but law in which a group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the given moment; and what they arbitrarily decide becomes law.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 41)
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Even this shift to a secularized society and secularized point of view was a shift “…based on a philosophic change to the materialist concept of final reality. This shift was based on no addition to the facts known. It was a choice, in faith, to see things that way” (Schaeffer, 1982; 44), once again feeding into Humanism as a baseless philosophy.
The relativism of the Humanistic philosophy plays a central role in Schaeffer’s conception of humanism and in understanding his worldview as a whole. Schaeffer views pluralism as having become a system where “What you take is only a matter of personal choice, with one choice as valid as another.” and that “Pluralism has come to mean that everything is acceptable.” (Schaeffer 1982; 46). Schaeffer goes on to trace the evolution of this pluralism through the legal system as the definitions of religion changed, moving from a definition that included a divine figure to increasingly esoteric, personal definitions for people to adhere to. This is key as Schaefer perceives it as an attack on the very foundations of the United States of American and its democratic ideals.
One last aspect of belief Schaeffer discusses involves what I have labeled
“Sociological Syncretism” and pertains to Schaeffer’s assertion that the true issue comes down to Christianity versus Humanism as the ultimate dichotomy. Schaeffer asserts that political divisions, socioeconomic status and other such classifications are ultimately inessential to determining where one stands as many seemingly oppositional positions actually support each other in the overall picture; that of
Christianity and Humanism:
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Foundational Decay The idea of foundational decay is one Schaeffer uses to illustrate the Christian foundations of the United States and the reasons they are crumbling, a crumbling which has led to a subversive Humanist hegemony and will ultimately result in a tyrannical state.
The essential element of foundational decay lies in establishing Christian precedents in the founding of the United States. Schaeffer does this through historical examples he sees as tying Christianity into the foundations of democracy. Schaefer makes his position clear:
“Think of this great flaming phrase: “certain inalienable rights”. Who gives the rights? The state? Then they are not inalienable because the state can change them and take them away. Where do the rights come from? They understood that they were founding the country upon the concept that goes back into the Judeo-Christian thinking that there is Someone there who gave the inalienable rights. Another phrase also stood there: “In God we trust”. With this there is no confusion of what they were talking about. They publicly recognized that law could be king because there was a law giver, a person to give the inalienable rights.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 32)
In all, Schaeffer discusses the idea of Christian foundations for democracy and the United States a total of thirty-five times, making it one of the central issues and most discussed topics of his manifesto.
With the precedent for a Christian foundation set Schaeffer turns his attention to the decay of these foundations and explores the causes. In Schaeffer’s view much of
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the decay can be attributed to Christians themselves through a corrupted notion of
Christianity, complacency on the parts of Christians and through the workings of outright traitors to the cause.
The main problem with Christianity lies in the lack of a comprehensive vision of the world; seeing things in bits and pieces has led people to miss the larger problem looming over them and fostered complacency in Christians. This complacency carried on into other areas of life and kept Christians from being concerned about the right things. The failure to sound the alarms regarding the Humanist threat falls on the
Christian leadership who said nothing and on Christian lawyers who did not alert their brethren to the massive changes taking place in law and government.
The second problem plaguing Christianity lies in a corruption of the Gospel, a subtle insidiousness that puts people on the wrong track. Schaeffer characterizes this corruption as one that focuses so much on the spiritual side of life that it neglects the practical, everyday world people live in; a neglect that allowed for Humanism to creep in and take over the popular consciousness.
The last internal contributor to the decay of the Christian foundations is that of outright traitors to the cause, namely any theologically liberal pastor or Christian leader. According to Schaeffer
“…in each case when the chips are down these liberal theologians have always come down, as naturally as a ship coming into home port, on the side of the nonreligious humanists. They do this with certainty because hat their liberal theology really is humanism expressed in theological terms instead of philosophic or other terms.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 21)
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To further implicate these leaders Schaeffer asserts that they firmly support abortion, an unpardonable sin in the context of A Christian Manifesto.
This foundational decay has led to a hegemonic Humanist presence in our culture, government and society; a hegemony quickly leading toward a more tyrannical state as will be discussed below. According to Schaeffer:
“…the humanist world view includes many thousands of adherents and today controls the consensus in society, much of the media, much of what is taught in our schools and much of the arbitrary law being produced by the various departments of the government.” (Schaeffer,1982; 24)
Schaeffer asserts that this change in the overall viewpoint of the country has led to laws that mitigate against religion and that our courts are now based solely on a secular philosophical perspective. This has led to religion going from being legally defined as a relationship with God to being defined as one having a relationship with something that can stand in place of God while also placing the burden of proof regarding religious freedom on the one practicing it. Both of these developments are seen as increasing restraints on the freedom of religion as a result of the Humanist takeover. Schaeffer’s perception of a hegemonic Humanist influence extends to the media which he sees as promoting an anti-Christian, pro-materialist science, pro- abortion viewpoint.
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Impending Foundational Destruction The Humanistic hegemony discussed above has led to the brink of an utter and complete destruction of the ideals and beliefs of those who founded the United States and democracy itself in Schaeffer’s eyes. A Humanist conspiracy involving the crowning of materialist science as truth coupled with intentional historical misinterpretation is leading to a Humanist tyranny backed up by Humanism as a religion; though one Schaeffer perceives as little more than atheism. A series of dire comparisons are used to illustrate Schaeffer’s assertions.
In Schaeffer’s eyes the ascension of a materialist science perspective comes without cause and is unjustified, a story created by the Humanists to discount the role of God in the universe and to minimize the value of human life. Coupled with this push for materialist science is an intentional distortion of history in such ways as saying that America has always been secular and that the Founding Fathers were deists or religiously neutral. The essential problem, according to Schaeffer, involves an intentional misinterpretation of the First Amendment in seeing it as restricting the involvement of government in religion whereas Schaeffer interprets it to mean that the government is simply not allowed to restrict religion in any way. He cites multiple precedents for government involvement in and affirmation of Christianity as being central and essential to American life and culture.
A central element of Schaeffer’s thesis emerges at this point as the clash of beliefs discussed above coupled with the insidious Humanist conspiracy create the conditions for what will soon be a Humanist tyranny. In Schaeffer’s conception the
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Christian foundations of the United States allowed for the form/freedom government.
The subtle erosion of these foundations, evident in the restriction of religious freedom and illustrated by the acceptance of abortion, will inevitably lead to a tyrannical state.
Stated plainly: “Naturally, this shift away from the Judeo-Christian basis for law and the shift away from the restraints of the Constitution automatically militates against religious liberty” (Schaeffer, 1982; 43). Though he was writing at a time when conservatism was resurgent in America, Schaeffer saw this “open window” as a last chance to reinstate Christian values, saying that a failure to capitalize would result not in a slide into liberalism but into an elite tyranny. This tyranny is evidenced in many ways from the loss of religious freedom to censorship of ideas contrary to the
Humanist creed. Schaeffer sees a specific anti-Christian bent to the tyranny and details multiple instances of what he sees as the Humanist establishment attacking
Christianity by shaping people’s perceptions against it, including 31 examples of infringement on religious freedom.
A further problem involves the ascension of Humanism to a religion in itself, a religion favored by the government in Schaeffer’s perception, and a religion of atheism. Through the evolving, more open definition of religion discussed above
Humanism has become a religion, able to substitute for religions that hold God at their center.
Schaeffer uses dire comparisons to oppressive Communist nations to illustrate just how close his readers are to sliding into tyranny. Schaeffer takes multiple
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examples of things going on in the United States and relates them directly to similar, though far more serious, occurrences in the Soviet Union.
Lastly, Schaeffer directly addresses the issue of a looming tyranny due to the erosion of religious freedom and the Humanist takeover. This has begun, in part, through the government favoring of the Humanist religion and the use of tax dollars to advance its ideals. Schaeffer weaves in various quotes that imply a cohesive offensive against democracy as a political system and uses the examples of the repression of religious freedom to put forth a theory of impending authoritarian rule by the elite with the Supreme Court offered as a potential perpetrator.
Diametric Enemies The real crux of the issue lies in the utter and complete impossibility of reconciliation or compromise between the entities of Humanism and Christianity as conceived of by Francis Schaeffer. In Schaeffer’s model these competing worldviews are utterly incompatible, have incompatible results and will experience inevitable conflict.
Schaeffer wastes little time in explicating the dichotomous nature of
Christianity and Humanism. On the very first page of the manifesto he states that
“These two world views stand as totals in complete antithesis to each other in content and in their natural results…” (Schaeffer, 1982; 17). In keeping with his assertion that
Christians have failed to keep the large picture in focus and are complacent participants of the problem at hand Schaeffer utilizes The Humanist Manifesto to show
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that even the Humanists themselves have been aware of the incompatibility with
Christianity for a good length of time and that these differences carry far beyond simple ideological stances:
“They understood not only that there were two totally different concepts but that they would bring forth two totally different conclusions, both for individuals and society. What we must understand is that the two world views really do ring forth with inevitable certainty not only personal differences, but also total differences in regard to society, government and law.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 20-21).
Schaeffer’s opposition to liberal theology also becomes clearer in relation to the incompatibility of Christianity and Humanism:
“There is no way to mix these two total world views. They are separate entities that cannot be synthesized. Yet we must say that Liberal theology, the very essence of it from the beginning, is an attempt to mix the two.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 21).
This utter incompatibility leads, unsurprisingly, to incompatible results. This is unavoidable in Schaeffer’s mind: “The operative word here is inevitability. It is not just that they happen to bring forth different results, but it is inevitable that they will bring forth different results.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 18). This allows for no middling on either side, Schaeffer allows no room for one to say they support both sides: “It is not too strong to say that we are at war, and there are no neutral parties in the struggle.
One either confesses that God is the final authority, or one confesses that Caesar is lord.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 116).
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Comprehensive Spirituality The final concept involves the idea of a spirituality that encompasses all aspects of life; in Schaeffer’s world Christianity occupies this place. While comprehensive spirituality ties in with Schaeffer’s assertion that Christians have failed to grasp the larger picture it also brings forth the necessity of Christian social action, thus negating the “too spiritual” aspect of the faith that Schaeffer railed against.
Lastly, comprehensive spirituality adds depth to the discussion of Christian obedience as it brings out the idea of a sovereign disobedience, a time when it becomes not only right to disobey but one’s spiritual duty.
Schaeffer encourages Christians to think critically about what they see and hear and to use the freedoms they have to ensure they are allowed to maintain their freedom. Things like seeing the total picture and the necessity of sacrifice and seizing opportunities are prevalent in Schaeffer’s work.
Schaeffer directly addresses the problem of social action as many Christians feel it is not their place to engage in such mundane, worldly activities and offers multiple precedents for Christian social action. In this context Schaeffer is able to tie social action into spiritual action as he discusses the early revivalists offering social services along with the message of the Gospel. Anti-Slavery movements and various abolitionists also factor heavily into his push for Christian social action.
The idea of sovereign disobedience is central Schaeffer’s thesis as it makes disobedience not only acceptable but necessary at certain times. Further, it allows for
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disobedience to be carried so far as a revolution that utilizes violence. Schaeffer provides multiple precedents for Christian disobedience and even violence, most notably in the American Revolution:
“There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate. The Christian is not to take the law into his own hands and become a law unto himself. But when all avenues to flight and protest have closed, force in the defensive posture is appropriate. This was the situation of the American Revolution. The colonists used force in defending themselves. Great Britain, because of its policy toward the colonies, was seen as a foreign power invading America. The colonists defended their homeland. As such, the American Revolution was a conservative counter-revolution. The colonists saw the British as the revolutionaries trying to overthrow the legitimate colonial governments.” (Schaeffer, 1982; 117).
Though Schaeffer does to some extent dance around the issue of violence as appropriate, his use and endorsement of certain examples makes it clear that he feels violence may at times be necessary so long as one follows the moderated steps and awaits the breaching of a bottom line as discussed above. One must understand that abortion factors into this equation as Schaeffer plainly states its legalization as a bottom line and states that abortion is worse than the million plus people suffering through the war in Somalia going on at the time of his writing.
However, to see the potential for violence as the main theme of the concept of sovereign disobedience would be incorrect as Schaeffer is explicit in placing revolution and violence as the absolute last steps in a process designed to address perceived wrongs. He openly worries about people using his ideas to justify violence
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and stresses the idea that Christians must first and foremost present a positive example to the world they live in.
The connections between A Christian Manifesto and James Davison Hunter’s conception of the modern culture war are apparent. The following section will discuss these connections, Francis Schaeffer’s impact on the culture war and the culture war’s impact on Francis Schaeffer.
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CHAPTER V
ANALYSIS
Francis Schaeffer understood that there was a culture war raging around him and that there was not going to be a solution anytime in the near future. He also believed that there was a brief window of opportunity to change things for, in his opinion, the better. This section will attempt to analyze Francis Schaeffer’s role in the culture war in regard to Hunter’s work.
Francis Schaeffer’s Life and the Culture War Francis Schaeffer’s early life represents an anachronistic difficulty to the culture war thesis, he almost seems to be a precursor to the Christian Left at times.
Francis Schaeffer has many progressive tendencies. His view of homosexuality as being an aspect of the self one is born with at a time when the word was not even mentioned in most company was progressive to say the least. Likewise, his views on race at a time when many of his fellow Christians were aligned with overtly racist organizations (Diamond, 1995) is outright revolutionary, especially when taken in context of the general attitude of the United States at the time (Schaeffer, 2007). In this same vein, his association with and mentorship of many hippies, themselves the very embodiment of progressivism, is important. Perhaps being headquartered in
Switzerland had a major influence on him, but in these ways Francis Schaeffer seems to certainly embody the impulse toward the progressive, at least in regard to difficult social issues.
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However, at the same time Schaeffer was fiercely dedicated to Biblical inerrancy and saw the church’s softening of its stance on it as a tragic turn of events.
There was little re-symbolizing of the traditional faith in the Schaeffer household.
While there seems to be a little tension provided by this dedication to the inerrancy of the Bible, Schaeffer’s overall bent seemed to be toward the progressive at this point in his life.
The major break came, in what seems to be developing into a culture war deciding factor, on the issue of abortion. Francis Schaeffer did regard abortion as horrific and Roe v. Wade as a mistake, but he was pushed further to the extreme by his son. With the advent of his documentaries, Schaeffer entered fully into the mainstream of American evangelicalism and the culture war, a move that would make his life an explicit example of many aspects of the culture war itself.
The first aspect of this change involves Hunter’s assertion that the discourse is largely a discourse of the elite and that the middle is essentially dropped from the discussion. Once Schaeffer entered the discussion, he helped to define abortion as the watershed issue, the dividing line between the evangelicals and the rest of the nation
(Schaeffer, 2007). From this point on he was a driving factor in the debate and became the “muscle” brought in when the issue of Biblical inerrancy was under threat. The idea of the middle being left out of the rhetoric is evidenced in Schaeffer’s own move from the middle to the right and then to the extreme right. The culture war helped move the hippie guru from a communal mission in Switzerland into a driving influence in the alliance between Christianity and the Republican Party.
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The second illustrative aspect of Schaeffer’s life involves his alliance with many elements he would have normally avoided. As discussed above Schaeffer’s move into the culture war put him in alliances of convenience and necessity with many people he found to be distasteful at best under the umbrella of fighting the
“creeping secularization of America”. In private Schaeffer seemed to make no bones about how he felt about Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and RJ
Rushdoony yet in public he appeared to be one of them. There is even a passage in A
Christian Manifesto where he endorses the Moral Majority on the grounds that they are at least doing something to help fight the good fight, seeming to differ with them only in saying that if one does not like them to do a better job yourself (Schaeffer,
1981). In fact, reading A Christian Manifesto one would never believe its author once preached to hippies or fought to preserve nature.
Lastly, Schaeffer’s life characterizes the absolute aspect of the culture war as one side must demonize the other in order to get their own point across. As Francis
Schaeffer became increasingly involved with and an icon for the Religious Right his level of tolerance for and acceptance of alternative ideas waned while his absolutist approach veered into the realm of tyrannical measures. The demand for an oath to
Biblical inerrancy at L’Abri is characteristic of the all-or-nothing approach the culture war can engender, Schaeffer reached a point of extremism where even his family was forced into subservience to an ideal that even most Biblical scholars find debatable at the very least.
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Schaeffer’s followers have also been guilty of stripping the human of much of his nuance and authenticity in their effort to create an icon to rally behind. Schaeffer is known for his fierce dedication to traditional Christianity and devotion to Biblical inerrancy. His intellectual approach to apologetics is held in high regard and by many he is viewed as a sort of Christian Right father figure. However, rarely is there a mention of his abusive tendencies; the only discussion I found of it was in his son’s autobiography. Likewise, his son is the only one to discuss his suicidal tendencies.
One can see how these things would serve as a mark against Schaeffer and his work for many, therefore the rhetoric insists that these things be left out completely. This deprives us of having a nuanced, believable person presented to us when we learn of his realization and repentance of his behavior. Instead of a story with a moral involving watching our present behavior to avoid regret, we are given a stylized culture war silhouette, an empty shadow of a person.
Francis Schaeffer’s Philosophy and the Culture War Much of Schaeffer’s philosophical work seems geared toward a culture war environment. He starts with the unbending belief that he knows what the root of moral authority is and he is most certainly not open to compromise on this issue, making him quite ready to join in the rhetoric of the culture war.
For Schaeffer the ideas of complete Biblical inerrancy, the deity of Christ and his eventual return are unqualified facts and this makes compromise impossible for a number of reasons. Biblical inerrancy comprises more than just believing the Bible to
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be the word of God, it also dictates that one believe it literally and factually. This alone rules out compromises with science, philosophy, other religions and various lifestyles. Biblical inerrancy also disposes one to various laws and tenets that are incompatible with most any other belief system, even those that share a common
Biblical root. The idea of the deity of Christ is compatible with various belief systems depending on the interpretation, but the fundamentalist Christian interpretation is not one of the compatible ones. If one accepts the fundamentalist interpretation, then all other faiths are not only wrong but heretical and blasphemous, the very existence of their sacred is a desecration of your own, to borrow Hunter’s conception (Hunter,
1991). Lastly, the eventual return of Christ dictates that one do everything he or she can to win people to Christianity before this happens, once again ruling out compromise.
Schaeffer’s apologetic requirements also fit into a culture war mindset as they are conducive to proving points and winning adherents, though they may have been more open and understanding than the average set of culture war tenets.
Understanding that people come from certain perspectives is very conducive towards being able to argue from a place they can understand and likely to be more effective by putting it on their level. Desiring for Christianity to be competitive with outside standards of verification demonstrates an understanding of what the culture war would entail. Christianity’s previous willingness to fall back on everything being solely a matter of faith would not hold up in a culture war setting, the strictly internal nature of the discussion was no longer tenable. Schaeffer understood that with the new advances
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in science and with centuries of human philosophy working against it Christianity had to learn to compete on a level beyond that of internal consistency.
That being said, Schaeffer’s last two apologetic requirements speak of there being more than just a culture war involved. His dedication to a relational apologetic is evidence of his compassion for people. Even though dedicated to a rigid understanding of spiritual truth, Schaeffer did care deeply for the people involved and this seems to step outside the bounds of what one does to merely win a war. Schaeffer’s requirement of a plausible Christianity also seems to do so as his willingness to drop Christianity if it becomes untenable helps him step above those who merely spout rhetoric whether they believe it or not.
However, the inconsistency of Schaeffer’s views on predestination and free will does push him back towards a culture war rhetoric. The glaring incompatibility of the two notions and slavish devotion to Biblical inerrancy led him to gloss over a discussion in favor of pushing an idea, something acceptable in the culture war.
A Manifesto for a Culture War Francis Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto is essentially a handbook for participating in and potentially securing victory in a culture war, written by an author who not only is a participant but who is able to possess a higher level view of the conflict as well. In a word, Schaeffer was not just writing and discussing his ideas about the world, he understood that he was involved in a battle over it.
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Fundamental Conflict The first aspect of Schaeffer’s Manifesto and the culture war involves the idea of fundamental beliefs and commitments. Hunter’s thesis is that the new culture war is different and potentially more problematic because the shared basis of the past conflicts has been destroyed and replaced with a battle over what the basis actually is
(Hunter, 1990). Schaeffer would agree with this assertion, there is little in A Christian
Manifesto to make one doubt this. The overarching structure of the book concerns the battle between Christianity and Humanism, two belief systems that cannot be reconciled and which have utterly and completely antithetical ideas as to nature of final reality. That there is no shared ground is a major component of Schaeffer’s argument; much of what he has to say hinges on the fact that Christians are locked in an epic battle with an intractable, nonnegotiable enemy. Schaeffer does not try to disguise his belief in the completely different foundations the two are operating from;
“These two world views stand as totals in complete antithesis to each other in content and in their natural results…”(Schaeffer, 1982; 17). Not only are the two worldviews different, in following their natural course they will arrive at different locations; in a culture war which destination one will fight to arrive at is the implied question.
Schaeffer goes on to point out that his conclusions are nothing new, that the
Humanists are already well aware of the foundational difference and are fighting the good fight and that it will come down to one side or the other in the end.
That these two sides are engaged in matters that far outweigh the everyday ties that bind is evidenced in what I have termed “sociological syncretism” that Schaeffer
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described. In essence, Schaeffer did not feel that anything truly mattered apart from
Christianity and Humanism; you were one or the other. Schaeffer illustrated this by asserting that of the “Silent Majority” of the 1970’s, very few were actual social conservatives with a moral conscience but were in actuality just people who wanted to have middle class luxuries and be left alone (Schaeffer, 1982), Humanists by default.
This attitude of for us or against us fits in well when dealing with issues of fundamental import as there can no compromise of such issues.
Rhetorical War A second aspect involves the rhetoric of A Christian Manifesto and the demonization of the opposing side, another prevalent aspect of the culture war as discussed by Hunter (Hunter, 1990). Schaeffer does not shy away from the use of rhetoric to heighten the fear of Humanism while simultaneously claiming the moral and spiritual high ground for Christianity. Interestingly, Schaeffer seems to excel at this more than most. Through the use of multiple cultural and historical examples, a firm grasp of secular philosophy and a calm, clinical statement of various assertions as common sense facts, Schaeffer is able to come across as nothing more than a concerned, rational citizen, a quality lacking in many writings of a similar stripe. His presentation further increases the desired effect when Schaeffer does make a bold assertion with the help of stand alone sentences punctuated with exclamation points such as beginning a chapter with “And now it is all gone!” (Schaeffer, 1982; 41) after
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a lengthy discussion of the wondrous things provided by a Christian foundation in the previous chapter.
Schaeffer is not shy in claiming the high road for Christianity, more specifically Christianity close to the type that would have existed throughout the
Reformation. He boldly asserts that Christianity is Truth, with a capital T (Schaeffer,
1982), that it is absolute and that this is one of its positive characteristics, not a detriment. He asserts that Christianity is the only one that recognizes the sacredness of human life and that this is because it is the only one that understands the basis of reality itself (Schaeffer, 1982). Schaeffer repeatedly uses various historic references to validate his claims and to lend the legitimacy of time to his arguments. Much of his historical legitimacy stems from his claim that the Reformation and Christianity are responsible for what he terms the form/ freedom balance in government, not the
Greeks. He also states that this same freedom would not work with other non-Northern
European, non-Reformation influenced cultures (Schaeffer, 1982), thus establishing
Christianity as the basis for democracy itself. He goes on to assign Christian faith a central role in the American Revolution and various charitable movements, including the abolition of slavery (Schaeffer, 1982). While it is certainly debatable whether these are valid assertions or not with evidence in favor of both sides of the issue, the central issue is Schaeffer’ adept use of history as a legitimizing tool for his perspective and thesis. His assessment also fits in very well with Hunter’s assertion that Christians are the most active interpreters of history for the orthodox (Hunter, 1990).
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However, Schaeffer, aware that he is involved in a culture war and understanding that his work will be analyzed and critiqued, moderates his stance by explicitly speaking out against any form of a theocracy and being firm in regard to proper conduct in achieving one’s agenda (Schaeffer, 1982). While it does seem that
Schaeffer was truly against any form of theocracy, especially in light of his feelings toward RJ Rushdoony, an unapologetic advocate of theocracy, it is also telling that he intentionally addresses the potential for people to use the notion of it against him and the manifestos ideas.
As boldly as Schaeffer claims the high ground for Christianity he is just as bold in relegating Humanism to the low ground. Throughout the book he does not simply let implications lie for the reader to discover; Schaeffer is explicit in laying out the differences between Christianity and Humanism. Unlike the modern day Christian
Right, Schaeffer asserts that Christianity is the only one that grasps the sacredness of life and does not settle for the implication that Humanism does not, but uses the examples of abortion and euthanasia to exemplify this being the case (Schaeffer,
1982). Schaeffer threatens the reader with the idea of a looming Humanist tyranny that will stem from the current Humanist hegemony that has gripped society. In
Schaeffer’s conception, Humanism is tyrannical in its eradication of ideas that oppose it and is already using its media and government resources to curtail dissent. Schaeffer uses dire comparisons to the most notable threat of the time, the Soviet Union, to illustrate the direction things are headed in regard to what happens when Humanistic ideals hold sway. Schaeffer deals with Christians who may tend toward Hunter’s
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progressive impulse as traitors to the cause with no discernible difference from the
Humanists and with any message they may bring as a corruption of the “true”
Christianity (Schaeffer, 1982). A significant aspect of Schaeffer’s dealing with
Humanism involves his setting it up as a late-coming virus of sorts, an insidious corruption of the foundation of everything that is good. After setting up the United
States as having Christian Foundations and influence hardwired into it Schaeffer sets about asserting that Humanism is destroying these same foundations, thus relegating it to the role of etching away at what already “is” (Schaeffer, 1982).
Apart from being a tyrannical latecomer, Humanism is also portrayed as excessively ignorant and thoroughly baseless. As a belief system with no basis for its tenets everything within Humanism is discountable, it is flawed from the start so everything that springs from the start is flawed as well. Schaeffer acknowledges no strengths in the Humanistic viewpoint and concentrates solely upon the ways that it is inferior to Christian belief. The lack of a base also creates a culture of ignorance in
Humanism. Humanists are ignorant of reality, of the role and purpose of humankind and of the final authority on all things. The ignorance of reality leads to a flawed assessment of everything from law to government while the ignorance of humankinds’ place and purpose leads to a insufficient view of its worth. Ignorance in regard to the final authority has led Humanists to crown the wrong king, namely mankind.
In all this rhetoric is very much in line with Hunter’s assessment of the new culture war. There is no room in the middle and the necessity of an all-or-nothing dichotomy is ever present in A Christian Manifesto.
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A Manifesto for the Real World The fact that there is a battle for the public sphere over the root of moral authority is evident throughout the manifesto, as is the fact that Schaeffer understands that this battle has very real implications in the real world. Much of the book is spent preparing the faithful to fight this battle in the public sphere; in the courts, in the media and in government. Schaeffer’s entire discourse on the nature of authority is geared toward helping Christians understand that there are times when obeying the powers that be is actually sinful (Schaeffer, 1982). Schaeffer’s notion of authority carries implications for the culture war in its very essence. If authority is delegated and therefore conditional, any authority one sees as violating one’s basic tenets and beliefs can be illegitimated in one’s mind. From this it can be disobeyed through increasingly confrontational methods and all of this can be done within the bounds of one’s
Christian belief system. Beyond this, having an omnipotent God as the source of one’s conception of authority makes any compromise impossible and leads to a place where the mere existence of another idea is a desecration of what you consider sacred
(Hunter, 1990). Schaeffer has certainly set the stage for this to occur.
In addition to the role of authority being conditional and thus being susceptible to invalidation, Schaeffer provides a how-to manual on what to do once this authority has been illegitimated. In terms of the culture war this could also be phrased as “what to do when your side loses” and Schaeffer goes so far as to admit this. After a discussion of what he calls an “open window” (Schaeffer, 1982; 73-84), a time when
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the Christians have a chance to turn the tide back against the Humanist onslaught,
Schaeffer delineates a detailed plan for civil disobedience and protest under the heading of force. While the term force may seem misleading, Schaeffer uses it to cover the range of disobedient activities from protest to revolution (Schaeffer, 1982) and, in keeping with the civil nature of the culture war, outlines a strict code for the use of it as a last resort. Beyond laying a framework for just force Schaeffer utilizes history to show that there are times when force is not only necessary but when it has been the only thing that has saved Christians in various nations. In keeping with the culture war this commodification of history serves to provide a deeper understanding and casts an epic glow over the situation at hand, whatever that may be.
Schaeffer’s real-world tactics and demarcation of acceptable force involve the use of force against a government that has abrogated its authority through decisions it has made. Schaeffer is very moderate in this and many of the tactics recommended fall squarely within the bounds of Hunter’s culture war. The use of force as a way to constrain an unjust government or entity is common practice among the culture war regulars. Things like protests and boycotts do count as forceful under Schaeffer’s paradigm and these are certainly socially accepted, being counted as civil disobedience at the worst when done properly. Schaeffer is adamant that force only be used as a last resort and used only when all else fails. This being said, he also regards the use of force as the people’s right and as a useful deterrent force against those that would oppress.
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However, there are two aspects that seem odd within the confines of Hunter’s culture war until examined a little more closely. The first pertains to his assertion that a group should flee before utilizing force. While this seems to be somewhat outside the realm of what Hunter discusses, Schaeffer quickly points out that it may be, and most likely is, impossible for groups to flee at the present as the world has grown quite small. Thus, the need to stay and engage in the culture war may be necessary. The second problematic issue pertains to the fact that throughout A Christian Manifesto
Schaeffer does not rule out the use of outright violence and revolution; though through careful wording and qualification an outright endorsement is avoided. Despite these qualifications the idea of necessary violence is not ruled out. Schaeffer constantly refers to the American Revolution is glowing terms and associates it with Christian
Belief at every turn (Schaeffer, 1982). That he finds it just is never in doubt and he even takes the time to separate it from any liberal ideology by explicating it as a conservative counter-revolution against the British who, by invading the colonist homeland, were the revolutionaries (Schaeffer, 1982). Beyond this Schaeffer discusses people in foreign countries who may have no other option but revolution if they are to be allowed to practice their faith. Thus, by association and discussion revolution is kept on the table as a method of last resort.
That both of these are problematic within the context of Hunter’s culture war may be indicative of the next step in the culture war. It does not seem any great leap that people struggling for what they see as the fundamental ideals and tenets of their belief system would go to any length to preserve them. That the culture war will only
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be conducted within the bounds of legally or socially acceptable means discounts the gravity of the struggle which was the main theme of Hunter’s entire thesis. Fleeing is certainly a viable option for those that have the opportunity, which, as Schaeffer points out, is not very many anymore. With this option removed, revolution may be the only recourse for those that find their fundamental beliefs being discounted in or removed from the public sphere. While this seems like a stretch in today’s stable society, much of this stability stems from a general willingness to “live and let live”. Were this understanding to disappear, especially in the governmentally sanctioned way that
Schaeffer feared and warned about, it may become a very tenable option.
Comprehensive Understanding Lastly, Schaeffer’s notion of comprehensive spirituality, in which one’s
Christian faith permeates all aspects of his or her life, is illustrative of Schaeffer’s desire to pull Christians out of the spiritual clouds and have them enlist in the culture war.
Throughout his manifesto Schaeffer builds a case for a system founded on good things that is being eroded by the insidious pull of Humanism. This case is coupled with alarmist phrases and concerns over the impending destruction of what the reader knows as a way of life and a looming tyranny to follow. Schaeffer was acutely tuned in the to culture war and seemed to be cognizant of the fact that it was soon to pick up in size and intensity. A Christian Manifesto was written as a fire alarm for tradition and as an instruction manual for what to do once you heard that alarm.
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Schaeffer’s solution to the impending Humanist tyranny was a comprehensive spirituality where every Christian lived his life completely through their Christian faith.
Early in the manifesto Schaeffer rails against pietism as being too spiritually focused to be of any earthly good and explains that a true spirituality permeates all of life. In regard to the culture war he was facing Schaeffer saw comprehensive spirituality as enabling Christians to grasp the larger picture of the culture war around them. He wanted them to see that it wasn’t a matter of abortion being a problem and euthanasia being a problem but that both stemmed from the Humanist ignorance of the sacredness of life. It is more than a matter of secular schools, biased media, Christian traitors and corrupted truth, all of these things were part of the Humanist conspiracy.
Coupled with this broader awareness was the need to take the understanding and engage in the culture war, that acting against an unjust government or the Humanist threat itself was indeed a part of a Christian walk. In essence, the idea of comprehensive spirituality was to incorporate one’s spirituality with their politics and act in the “real world” where the culture war was taking place.
The Social Theory of Francis Schaeffer An interesting aspect of Schaeffer’s Manifesto involves a sort of social theory implicit in the content of the text that presents itself in three parts: a theory regarding the structure of society, how this structure affects the people in society and a diagnosed problem and solution for the social order.
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Schaeffer’s conception of the social order is based on his notion of corrupted
Christian foundations discussed above and can be seen as progressing into the dichotomous social order he delineates in regard to Christianity and Humanism. This notion takes on a new life when combined with Schaeffer’s assertion that these two distinctions supersede all other categorizations as the predominant classifications for people in society. When viewed in this light one can see a theory of society emerging, as how one (or a group) relates to society at large would be determined by the view filtered through either Christianity of Humanism.
In regard to the structure of society Schaeffer’s theory asserts the notion of a corrupted societal order from the start; the Reformational Christian foundations of
Western civilization have been infected by the Humanism of the Enlightenment, duping a large number of people into its ranks in the process. This sets up a dichotomous social order in which one has to actively choose to secede from the dominant (near hegemonic) order and consciously join the Christian camp if they wish to not be a part of the Humanist conspiracy. This leaves no middle ground for people to reside in and, in tandem with other aspects of his work, actively removes many who would consider themselves Christians from having that distinction. This assertion also lumps all other religious and philosophical traditions together into one group, leaving
Christianity alone as the besieged underdog. This leads to Schaeffer's conception of the future of society as eventually being dominated by a state-sponsored Humanist religion that brooks no conflicting viewpoints and actively discriminates against all other faiths; in this case Christianity as all other conceptions fall within the range of
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Humanism. The use of concrete examples of this already happening and dire comparisons to the Soviet Union further this as a social theory as opposed to a theological philosophy.
The transcendent nature of these categorizations heavily influence the way people relate to and exist within society. While Schaeffer acknowledges the importance and validity of such things as race, class, gender and other sociological distinctions, in his conception his dichotomy of Christianity and Humanism overwhelms all others and stands as the final arbiter of where a person will or will not fall on various issues in society. This greatly simplifies the view of society while also allowing for other distinctions to remain intact, albeit with a much lower level of importance in the bigger scheme of things. Which camp one resides in determines much of how they perceive the world. The nature of authority as discussed above would be a pertinent example of this as members of the Christian camp see it as a divinely mandated structure that is delegated by God and to be obeyed because it is such. People with a Humanist viewpoint, on the other hand, will perceive authority as just to the extent that it supports the ideals and goals that they personally hold and will obey it out of a fear of reprisal.
Lastly stands Schaeffer's notion of how to correct the social order being infected with and decaying from the Humanist conspiracy. His prescription lies in his notion of "Comprehensive Spirituality" both in the wider viewpoint it necessitates and in the potential avenues for change it opens. Schaeffer's first step in having a comprehensive spirituality that infuses every aspect of one's life involves seeing the
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"big picture" of the world, or having a comprehensive view of the society around you.
Issues like abortion, homosexual rights, the dissolution of the family, feminism and many others were all very troubling for Christians at the time of Schaeffer's writing
(and still are). Schaeffer's assertion was that the real problem lies in the fact that
Christians are failing to see the bigger picture behind these things, that they are missing the fact that these are all symptoms of a much larger disease, namely
Humanism.
The next step after recognizing that there is a bigger, more comprehensive picture of society is to take one's belief, in this case Christianity, and apply it to one's own life in a fully comprehensive manner and to act out of this. However, Schaeffer is careful to delineate how this application will play out lest someone with an "incorrect" understanding of the Gospel were to act out of their faulty interpretation. Schaeffer's understanding stems from the notion of a delegated authority that can be negated, thus
Comprehensive Spirituality comes to entail the potential for the use of force up to and including revolution and violence to dethrone a ruler that has abrogated his or her authority. Schaeffer's theory sees this last step as essentially unavoidable, though he does advocate using all other means of redress before resorting to the use of force.
One can once again see Schaeffer’s desire to preach beyond the choir as he uses the
American Revolution and other acts of disobedience perpetrated by Christians as a backing for this potential avenue.
As one can see there is much here that qualifies as a social theory as Schaeffer delineates an idea of how our current society is structured on a foundational level,
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where this structure originated from and the possible future of society within this structure. Beyond this, one must consider the fact that many people have already accepted Schaeffer's theory and have used it as a guide for how they view and react to the society they exist in. One can see Schaeffer's influence in much of the Christian
Right of today and his ideas have infiltrated the popular consciousness of many
Christians; therefore understanding Schaeffer's work as an applicable theory is necessary whether one agrees with his assumptions and logic or not.
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CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
Regardless of one’s opinion of the movement, the Christian Right has had a tremendous effect on the landscape of American culture. The family, education, law, media and politics are just a few of the key areas of society that bear its mark. While
Francis Schaeffer may not be the most well-known name in the Christian Right but his influence on the movement was tremendous. Much of the impetus to move out of a self-imposed spiritual exile and into the full light of American politics came from his works. He managed to make participation in politics and society move from being seen as idleness at the best and sinful at the worst into being a full-fledged Christian responsibility. Schaeffer’s philosophy and teachings are still relevant to the movement today.
Culture war is a part of America’s past, present and, by all indicators, future as well. Since the inception of the nation different groups have battled for the right to control public and private culture. While this has always been conducted within the framework of a Judeo-Christian consensus the influx of foreign religions and influence has altered this. James Davison Hunter’s conception of a new culture war divides not along the lines of religious affiliation but between two broad impulse, that of the orthodox and the progressive. The new war is fought by people who do not share a common consensus on what the root of moral authority is and this has changed the rules of the game.
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Francis Schaeffer was aware of this culture war and participated in fighting and shaping it through his influence on the Christian Right. His book, A Christian
Manifesto, carried profound weight within the Christian Right and still does to this day. It was written with an intent to spur people to action, to re-orient notions of authority toward an absolute, objective understanding of it, to alert people to the threat of Humanism and to lay out a plan of action for fighting it. Through these ideas
Schaeffer created a manual for fighting a culture war.
In analyzing Francis Schaeffer’s role in the culture war many things come to light. It seems that Schaeffer not only had an impact on the culture war but that it also affected him and his life. Through his intimate involvement with the Christian Right
Schaeffer moved further and further to the right politically and socially, eventually insisting on changes that cost him much of what he had worked for in life and his relationship with members of his family. The need for extreme rhetoric cost him the nuance, thoughtfulness and compassion that had set him aside and earned him the respect of many not inclined to have very much for a man of his type. Schaeffer’s message also affected the culture war as Christians moved out en masse and asserted their will over the public sphere, a move we still see reverberations from today.
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