alt.education

Frank Schaeffer spent several years making a good living writing books
promoting the Religious Right's worldview and speaking before rapturous
crowds of fundamentalist Christians.

Schaeffer, the son of evangelical guru Francis Schaeffer, was the
closest thing to a rock star that politically conservative
fundamentalism can offer. As the Religious Right soared in the 1980s,
Schaeffer was there to ride the wave. Young, bright and charismatic, he
could have founded his own Religious Right group or perhaps even
launched a political career.

Twenty years have passed. What does Schaeffer think of the Religious
Right today? He wouldn't touch it with the proverbial 10-foot pole --
and the feeling is mutual. A spiritual and professional crisis brought
Schaeffer to the understanding that the Religious Right has it all wrong.

"My doubts really began when I realized that the people we were working
with on the Religious Right were profoundly anti-American," Schaeffer
said in a recent interview. "I began to get the same vibe from them I
got from my friends on the far left during the Vietnam War. They seemed
to be rooting for North Vietnam. When I was working with the Religious
Right, they seemed be rooting for the failure of America. Bad news was
good news for them."

Schaeffer isn't the only ex-Religious Right activist having second
thoughts these days. About 30 years ago, a young lawyer named John W.
Whitehead worked alongside people like Jerry Falwell to help birth the
Religious Right. Hoping to give the movement an intellectual grounding,
Whitehead penned a series of books attacking the separation of church
and state and demanding a government based on Christian fundamentalism.


Entire article at:


http://www.alternet.org/story/78818/



-- cary