Crazy for God
How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of it Back

Reviewed this for the British New Statesman: When, in 1997, Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism, decided to pay tribute to the late Francis Schaeffer, the theologian and popular writer must have seemed like an odd choice to those not familiar with the twists and turns......more

I had hopes for Frank Schaeffer's memoir for a couple reasons: Like him, I grew up in a "crazy" conservative, evangelical milieu (although his was far more colorful). Second, it was his father's early books which liberated me from that milieu, even though (as his son documents) Francis Schaeffer was......more

Frank Schaffer’s sometimes fascinating, but ultimately frustrating, memoir never delivers on the promise of its subtitle, “How I .. helped found the religious right, and lived to take all (or almost all) of it back.” In fact, Crazy for God suffers from an almost complete lack of context. The listener......more

Schaeffer's biography is painfully honest, both about his personal life and his involvement with America's religious right movement in the 70s and 80s. Most of the book concerns his youth, his generous but driven parents, and his own journey as an artist. The political right-wing movement forms a re......more

Evangelical Sainthood Challenged Make no mistake about it, Evangelicalism very much has a list of patron saints who are appealed to as authoritative and in many cases such an appeal to authority is considered to settle most any matter that can be brought up. Two in particular who meet this criteria a......more