It’s no secret that progressives can’t stand biblical Christianity. They are now at the stage where they flat-out condemn it as an evil that needs to be eradicated. One of the latest examples comes from an MSNBC interview of author Frank Schaeffer, son of the late theologian and author Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer declared that evangelical Christianity is a white supremacist movement.
Schaeffer’s rant is as unhinged as it is wrong. In it, he blusters out:
Listen, what we’re watching here is a massive shift in politics, demography, and even religion. American white evangelical Christianity that I grew up in is now part of a white supremacist movement that wants to hold onto power, whether it’s by gerrymanderning, voter suppression, white supremacy, or even violence. They know, for instance, that the gun lobby is making a fortune selling guns to people that shouldn’t have them. And they will go along with this as long as it’s part of their party platform that keeps them in power with the dollars that flow to candidates and the rest. We’re talking about a morally bankrupt religious movement. We’re talking about a country that, thank God, I think, faces a hopeful future because as a speaker before on this show said, the California trend of ethnic diversity, less racism, tolerance, accepting homosexuality as a normal human behavior, these things are on the ascendant.
I am a white evangelical who was and remains #NeverTrump. Furthermore, I know many white evangelicals who voted for Trump, but who are appalled by racism and believe it to be a terrible sin before God. Schaeffer’s unfair broadbrushing of white evangelicals should be dismissed as the bitter rants of an angry man who is in full-on rebellion against God. Since he can’t actually get to God, he strikes petulant blows at God’s people.
Schaeffer wasn’t finished with his rant, though. Continuing to demonstrate his extreme prejudice, he predicts that,
This [is the] last grim, bitter, clinging to power by white oligarchs. These racists, these child molesters, these buffoons, these liars, it is a pitiful thing. We are in the equivelant, and I’m not making a moral comparison, but it’s like the last days of Hitler’s bunker. A bunch of white generals clustered around a table, looking at maps, grimly trying to hold on to a shrinking part of Berlin as the allies move in from all sides. That’s our future; it’s going to be a good future here in America … it’s something that we can look forward to. But in the meantime, God almighty, we are facing just the lowest, scummiest moment in American history I can remember as a sixty-five year old man.
For starters, when anyone says he’s not “making a moral comparison” and then goes on to make a moral comparison, his argument should be chalked up as nothing more than irrational fist pounding; that person should not be taken seriously. Sadly, progressives take Schaeffer’s irrational words seriously. Secondly, his words contain the claim that history has a telos — meaning that history has a moral direction with clearly delineated right and wrong paths. I absolutely agree with that.
As a white evangelical Christian, I firmly believe that God stands over history and is working all things out for His good and for the final and full restoration of His Kingdom. As such, I too believe that history has clearly delineated right and wrong paths. As a progressive and a self-described “Christian atheist,” Frank Schaeffer has an extremely small intellectual foundation to make that claim. On what absolute moral authority does he get to claim that his desired future is good? If he’s being honest, his future only has winners and losers, as Marx taught. There can be no such thing as good in the progressive worldview.
Progressives do not want to acknowledge that they stand guilty before God. They do not want to acknowledge that each of our individual sins separates us from God. Progressives want to shape a God that fits into their ideology of power dynamics and oppression. For them, salvation is only found in leveling the playing field. Among other things wrong with that is the rejection of the fact that the unleveled playing field is a product of the sin of individuals. That is first and foremost why it is incumbent on them to erase biblical Christianity from the culture. Using words from the book of Judges, they want to be free to do what is right in their own eyes.
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