Former Christian Right Leaders 'Fess up
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.
Whitehead's books -- The Separation Illusion, The Second American Revolution and The Stealing of America -- made him a popular figure in Religious Right circles. With the backing of Falwell and others, he helped found the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive and highly influential coalition of Religious Right groups. He also formed the Rutherford Institute, a legal group designed to promote conservative Christian causes.
Venturing into the farthest fringes of the Religious Right, Whitehead was for several years close to Rousas John Rushdoony, a leader of the Christian Reconstructionist movement that seeks to replace America's secular republic with a theocracy based on the Old Testament's legal codes.
Whitehead repudiated theocracy years ago. It's unlikely he'd be welcome at a CNP meeting now.
