Franky Schaeffer, Traitor and Nutcase

And trust me when I say I searched for printable words to use in my title.  His trashing of Charles Colson and the late great Richard John Neuhaus is beyond despicable.  

(I have chosen not to link directly to his blog because I don’t want to give the jerk the traffic.)

The Chuck Colson obituary that Schaeffer posted on his blog Sunday, though, is truly extraordinary, and I don’t see what purpose his fulmination-from-afar serves. The obit memorably begins, “Evangelical Christianity lost one of its most beloved and bigoted homophobic and misogynistic voices with the death of Charles W. ‘Chuck’ Colson, a Watergate felon who converted to ‘evangelicalism’ but never lost his taste for dirty political tricks against opponents.”

Schaeffer’s evidence for that charge: “Colson teamed up with far right Roman Catholic activist Professor Robert George of Princeton to launch the dirty tricks campaign to brand President Obama as ‘anti-religious’ with Colson’s and George’s ‘Manhattan Declaration.’”. . .

After numerous paragraphs of Colson-bashing, Schaeffer turns his ire on another departed leader, “the reactionary’s reactionary, Richard John Neuhaus.” He argues that Colson and Neuhaus fronted for “oppressive ideas rooted in an anti-constitutional theocratic far right wish list for changes that were supposed to roll back the parts of the democratic processes—say Roe v. Wade, women’s rights and gay rights—that far right Catholics and Protestants didn’t approve of.”

Oh yeah, that great monument to the democratic process, Roe v. Wade, that arbitrarily threw out the abortion laws of all 50 states.  How democratic.  And the Manhattan Declaration is a dirty tricks campaign?

I don’t know if I should have pity or contempt for someone so far off the deep end.  Franky better pray it will be pity on God’s part . . . a lot of it.  Trashing good men who have contended for the Faith, for freedom and for “the weakest of these,” particularly the unborn and those in prison, is a hellish thing.

Franky Schaeffer’s change on abortion indicates that God may have instead chosen to give him over to a depraved mind.  Franky knows (or knew) how wrong the Roe v. Wade abortion regime is.  He helped produce the seminal documentary featuring his father and C. Everett Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race.  And later on, I personally saw him speak at a Texans United for Life dinner.  (He already seemed a bit odd then, by the way.)

How far he has come . . . down.

I hope in heaven Francis Schaeffer does not have to know what has become of his son.

 

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Housekeeping: Yes, I know the formatting looks awful.  You have no idea how difficult the new blogger is to use.  It's driving me to the nut house myself.

Apple Bans Manhattan Declaration App

I was too preoccupied to notice this over the weekend. But Apple has removed the Manhattan Declaration app from its online store. They did so quietly, with little to no explanation. And Apple has been asked to reconsider.

I am a long time and usually happy Apple customer. In fact, I had a very pleasant experience returning a keyboard obsessed with the number 2 at an Apple Store on Black Friday of all days. It was very easy and hassle-free. And the store had almost as many assistants as customers. I was impressed. And, like it or not, Apple has the right to determine what will be in their stores.

But this decision reveals Apple management to be too much a part of that Left Coast bubble that considers orthodox Christians of traditional morality to be racistbigotnazihomophobes and just cannot understand why any reasonable enlightened person would think otherwise. I’ve followed the Manhattan Declaration and have signed it. There is nothing hateful about it.

I’ll go further. Ban the Manhattan Declaration, and you are banning me.

Apple may be hearing from me shortly.

About the Manhattan Declaration and Rome

After I signed the Manhattan Declaration, I heard concerns that it is a tacit endorsement of the Roman Catholic view of justification and of the gospel. I greatly respect many of those who have that concern, which include a close friend.

My answer to that concern is simple. The Declaration does not at all demand that it be read as such an endorsement. Instead it acknowledges “ecclesial differences.” Further, the Manhattan Declaration is not at all intended to address justification and other doctrinal controversies. As I’ve posted, it is instead a document that states a manly resolve to resist and refuse to submit to attacks on religious freedom, particularly in the areas of life and marriage.

Therefore, I continue to heartily endorse the Manhattan Declaration.

Kevin DeYoung has also addressed this issue as has Al Mohler. And, if I may say so, neither are exactly Trojan horses for the Bishop of Rome.

Hat tip to Stand Firm.

Orthodox With Attitude: Bishop Tobin and the Manhattan Declaration

I have long thought that the decline of church and society in the West can not only be laid at the feet of libchurchers but also at the feet of those “orthodox” who done nothing. So I am heartened by two recent developments in which orthodox leaders show some backbone and maybe even a little attitude, too.

First was RC Bishop Thomas Tobin’s excommunication of Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI). The Kennedys are perhaps the family which has done the more harm than any other to this nation. Their evil, which extends beyond support of abortion on demand (although that is certainly bad enough), had long been brazen. Yet has any RC cleric stood up to them and said, “Enough”?

Now one has. And it’s about time. Kudos to Bishop Tobin.

Second was, and is, the Manhattan Declaration. It is a robust statement by Christian leaders in defense of life and marriage.

But it goes well beyond that in a needful time. And this is where such backbone is displayed as to stir my heart. It proclaims both a right and obligation to act upon orthodox Christian principles in these areas. This declaration is more than just words.

Moreover and perhaps most importantly, it acknowledges openly and confronts the attack on religious freedom in the West, particularly attacks on those speaking and acting in the areas of life and marriage.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law—such persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro­life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro­life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of “same­sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century­long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same­sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi­marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.


And in confronting this attack on religious freedom, it states a manful determination to refuse to submit to it, ending with . . .

Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Through the centuries,
Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. . . .

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo­destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti­life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

To which I say, “Yes!” and “Amen!”

I have signed the Manhattan Declaration and urge my good readers to do likewise.

And I may post further analysis at a later time.