The Church of Hopeful Uncertainty: A Message from Frank Schaeffer

In the 1970s and 1980s, Francis Schaeffer was an iconic figure among evangelical Christians. He popularized the intellectual underpinnings of religious and political conservatism. Perhaps his principal sidekick was his son Franky, who wrote his own books, including one that defends capitalism as the Christian system by which the world should run. Franky now goes by Frank and visited Tulsa yesterday to tell us about the changes that have emerged in his thinking since the 1980s. He is now appalled at the monster that political evangelical Christianity created.

Schaeffer and many others describe the political right, today, as the American Taliban. It is no joke. The religious right does not want democracy; they want to establish a religious dictatorship, and they are accumulating caches of weapons to do so. Polls repeatedly show that a large minority of Americans actually believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. There is no more opportunity for dialogue or compromise with this position than it is possible to have meaningful compromise with Al Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban. Schaeffer pointed out that the conservatives among whom he grew up, such as his father and William F. Buckley, would not recognize the monstrous form of conservatism that now dominates the political scene. Schaeffer said that Barack Obama represents our last and best hope to avoid a religious dictatorship in the United States; if his presidency fails, a religious dictatorship is nearly certain. The motivation of the religious right is not godliness—an astonishingly large number of the leaders of the religious right lead immoral lives—but power, and they have no more esteem for truth than they do for godliness. He also pointed out that conservative leaders would publically talk about Christianity but in secret they would laugh at the Christians who played into their hands. Schaeffer changed his views when he realized that he would not want to live in the world he was trying to create, and that the secularists whom he publicly opposed were better people, personally and morally, than the leaders of the religious right. Schaeffer said that if Obama fails, this nation is screwed for the next hundred years.

Schaeffer also talked about what he now considers to be true religion. To the American Taliban, all that matters is that you assent to certain religious doctrines and are willing to use any and all means to oppose those who disagree with them. But to those who are truly religious, the right way is openness to the beauty and awe of the universe. The American Taliban fantasizes that it fully understands the truth; but we can never know the full truth. Our brains are biological structures that evolved within a physical universe; we are “stuck in” the universe and cannot objectively observe it or ourselves. Schaeffer opposes fundamentalist atheists as much as he does fundamentalist Christians, although, of course, the former are not dangerous like the latter. He describes his religious affiliation as “the church of hopeful uncertainty.” We cannot understand the universe any more than an infant can. We can never be certain but there is reason for us to believe that goodness and love are fundamental truths. Theology just gives us a rationalization for what we already know is true and good. In saying this, Schaeffer echoed the views of evolutionary psychologist Michael Gazzaniga, although Schaeffer may never have heard of him.

Schaeffer said nearly everything that people like me are saying, but much more powerfully—and from a position of being a former insider in the religious right.