Francis Schaeffer died in 1984.

Before he died, the last book he published was entitled "The Great Evangelical Disaster". I still have the same copy I bought all those years ago. Today, twenty-three years later, I can look around at this republic of ours, the United States, and what do I find? I see a society that is literally crumbling right before my eyes because of its incurable sickness. Our Constitution has been rendered of no effect; we are now governed by an two-headed oligarchy consisting of a priviledged few, the elite, the rich, and the powerful. Likewise, I can look around at the churches, and what do I see there? Well-oiled, smooth-running church-machines humming along nicely, energized by marketing research and sociological data, yet in the midst of them a spiritual catastrophe is unfolding on a scale unlike anything that's ever happened before. For evangelical churches are literally rotting from the inside out. The rot is accommodation with the World.

Twenty-three years ago, Francis Schaeffer could see that this disaster was coming. And he called his last book "the most important statement I have ever written." This is what he wrote in the title chapter:

Accommodation, accommodation. How the mindset of accommodation grows and expands. The last sixty years have given birth to a moral disaster, and what have we done? Sadly we must say that the evangelical world has been part of the disaster. More than this, the evangelical response itself has been a disaster. Where is the clear voice speaking to the crucial issues of the day with distinctively biblical, Christian answers? With tears we must say it is not there and that a large segment of the evangelical world has become seduced by the world spirit of this present age. And more than this, we can expect the future to be a further disaster if the evangelical world does not take a stand for biblical truth and morality in the full spectrum of life. For the evangelical accommodation in the world of our age represents the removal of the last barrier against the breakdown of our culture. And with the final removal of this barrier will come social chaos and the rise of authoritarianism in some form to restore social order.

Whether we see this as the judgement of God (which surely it is) or the inevitable results of social chaos makes little difference. Unless the mentality of accommodation within the evangelical world changes, this is surely what we can expect.

What Schaeffer warned about is coming to pass right before our eyes, while people continue to dance on his grave.

After this death, one of the things I noticed was the glee with which certain people were starting to dance on his grave. These people felt themselves free at last and commenced celebrating. Since he was now gone and had no way of lifting his hand to defend himself, they could now dance a jig over his body, cold as it was in the grave, as they set about "re-interpreting" Francis Schaeffer and his ministry in all the various ways that suited their purposes. The first to join this celebration was that obnoxious little book, entitled "Reflections on Francis Schaeffer." And what did it offer? In it a throng of carping stuffed-shirts and lordly academicians from "important" xtian colleges and universities took turns "analysing," deconstructing, minimizing, belittling, and denigrating Francis Schaeffer. They danced on his grave. But he is now gone, and nobody has yet stood up to protest that the jubilant celebration was both unseemly and indecent. But what can one expect from such arrogant people, with minds so clogged with silly minutia, and eyes too blind to see the larger horizon he once was pointing at.

And strangely enough, even after all these years, they're still dancing on his grave. As one example of this, just watch the comboxes at the Beliefnet web site should anyone there dare bring up the memory of Francis Schaeffer. Oh, the hilarity that ensues and the consternation that breaks out. It's like a sudden blast of hot sulfurous air. They will say: "Francis misunderstood this. Oh, check with the experts about Francis. Francis was a narrow-minded, fundamentalist fool. Francis was in error. Francis was a bad theologian. Francis was a bad historian. Francis was a fraud. Be on your guard about Francis because Francis had it all wrong. For Francis was this. And Francis was that. Wadda. Yadda. Badda." And so forth.

But, really, when you think about it, that this happens is nothing short of remarkable. How can it be? For the man has been dead and in the grave for over twenty-three years. To bring up the name of any other person who's been in the grave that long would have elicited little more than a yawn, or a puzzled look, or someone asking "who was he?" Yet for some reason it's entirely different when it comes to Francis Schaeffer.

But that's what happens. After twenty-three years, they're still dancing on his grave. Though he is dead now and his mortal frame has gone to the dust, Francis Schaeffer when he was alive could see the larger picture in its totality, could elucidate its essential nature, and bravely dared to speak the truth about what he saw. George Orwell once said that to see what is front of one's nose needs constant struggle. But more than this, to say clearly what is right before your eyes is an act of heroism.

What did Francis Schaeffer say? Simply this: Autonomous Man congratulates himself that he has gained absolute Freedom. But no, he didn't get what he bargained for. He's been cheated. Instead, what he's gained was absolute Death.

Francis Schaeffer saw that the World Spirit of Modernism is killing us, killing men, women, and children; killing all that is good and decent. And what is Post-Modernism? It is just more of the same poison. With every passing day, it is killing us gently, efficiently, with more scientistic precision and targeted-market research and polling data, and with added anaesthesia to dull the senses while the heartbeat stops. But Francis Schaeffer saw the World Spirit for what it really was and spoke out against it. Therefore, the stuffed-shirts, the Hollow Men, the sophisticates, the lordly academicians, the important people, the appeasers, the compromisers, and the accommodationists will never forgive Francis Schaeffer for what he said. But now that he's dead, they cannot pull him down, so all they can do is to dance on his grave.

I am currently reading Barnaby Rogerson's book entitled "The Heirs of Islam—Islam's First Century and the Origin of the Sunni-Shia Split."

Rogerson gave a very readable account of the development of, and the conquests by, Islam under the first few caliphs, back in the 7th Century. The book is interesting and well written, although Rogerson isn't very shy about his pro-muslim sympathies. Sometimes he seemed so downright giddy about the muslim conquests and empire, that it didn't matter all that much whether this or that particular town had all its inhabitants massacred if they had resisted a siege, or if this or that population ended up being sold off as slaves. But I guess such things were par for the course back in those heady days, and were far outweighed by the marvelous advances in governmental administration brought about by those ever benevolent and enlightened autocrats, the "rightly guided" caliphs—especially when compared to those degenerate Byzantine xtians.

Of course, sarcasm is intended here regarding Byzantium. But in Rogerson's book there was nary a good word about the xtians in the story. His book made it sound as if civilization was practically a muslim invention.

But one thing was clear from Rogerson's book, in spite of himself: Islam was not so much a religion of peace as it was of conquest—of holding on to what you conquer, and subjugating and exploiting it. The system worked very well, and there was plenty of booty for everybody. In fact, the system started working too well.

On the other hand, I think I'd like to confer with some other historians for a second opinion about the goings-on in the 7th Century. I had to wonder if Rogerson was stacking the deck in places and might be another one of those Westerners who actually loathe Western Civilization.

Also, I notice that the perennially vituperative Frank Schaeffer has another book out entitled "Crazy for God: How I Helped Found the Religious Right and Ruin America". The title alone makes me think that Schaeffer is taking a little too much credit for himself. The official Amazon.com book description says:

With its up-close portraits of the leading figures of the American evangelical movement, Crazy for God is a uniquely revealing and powerful memoir, which tells its story with empathy, humor, and bite.

It sounds very juicy, the sort of thing that publishers love because it sells. Of course, publishers would be interested in getting the insider dirt on those despicable, right-wing fundies—and who better to provide it than the son of a famous evangelical?

However, seeing the words "revealing", "powerful", "up-close", and "bite", I can't help but wonder if Schaeffer is beating up on his dead father, Francis Schaeffer, yet one more time. (Now while growing up, I didn't get along with my father all that well, but never will I ever, under the guise of a stupid fictional novel, go about demeaning my late dad, who died several years ago from leukemia. If my dad had any foibles that I saw, it's not for me to talk about them nor for the world to know about them.) Be that as it may, at the very least it can be said that Schaeffer has a big axe to grind, having worn out several whetstones grinding it. Now from what I remember from reading some of Frank Schaeffer's earlier books, I can say that with him anything called "humor" often ends up translating into a seething, nasty sort of unremitting sarcasm which is devoid of any lightheartedness, and which often leaves a very bad taste in one's mouth. That sort of tone is okay in small doses, and can have its proper place, such as it was in his book "Addicted to Mediocrity".

But the problem was that the same obnoxious tone started turning up everywhere, page after dreary page of it. Another book around that time was His "Bad News for Modern Man". And indeed, it lived up to its title; I could barely stand to get through it. The guy's style of writing was just too rancorous, and, if anything, could be described as fanatical—when he's got something by the throat, he won't let it go or give it a rest. Relentless philippics can be very unpleasant to read after the first few pages. And by the time I finished his next appalling book, entitled "Sham Pearls For Real Swine", it became obvious that his writing was like an exercise in some kind of strange, cranky dementia—the book was detestable for its unredeemable, unmitigated bile.

The last book of his I tried to tackle was "A Time For Anger". But by then, the ill-tempered peevishness had become simply dreary and boring. There was nothing there worth the bother reading, or the price of the book.

Therefore, regarding the "empathy" part, spoken about in the aforementioned Amazon.com book description, well, I don't expect there will be anything that is recognizable as empathy. In fact, I am very, very skeptical about there being any real empathy at all. Instead, there is bound to be plenty of antipathy, or as book publishers like to call it, "bite". As for there being any objectivity, I am more than skeptical about that as well.

And for good reason I should be skeptical. On his own web site, Schaeffer bruits himself as "a survivor of both polio and an evangelical/fundamentalist childhood". Oh my. An unfortunate event in his life now finds its use as a polemical weapon. And therefore, for Schaeffer, an evangelical upbringing is in the same category as life-threatening diseases. (It must be a miracle that I survived such a dreadful thing.) So to my mind, it's very questionable that his newest book is going to provide anything besides a very tendentious point of view, to say the least. And how could there be anything else, especially when Schaeffer already regards the people he'll be talking about in his book as the moral equivalents of lepers and Typhoid Mary? I really have to doubt there'll be anything else. Schaeffer's axe can be very heavy, and it must have been a big load of dirt that needed delivering.

Oh, well. Book publishers love dirt because that's what sells books, the more dirt the better. Francis Schaeffer died in 1984, and after all these years, people are still dancing on his grave, all six feet of dirt. It's baffling to me. Can't they let him rest?

Now if I ever see this book in the library, I might check it out. However, I will never again pay money to buy any of Frank Schaeffer's books, and I am definitely not interested in his bildungsroman novels, about some kid discovering his need to get laid and how his parents are the stupidest people on Earth. Somebody should have told Schaeffer that that genre has long ago worn itself out.

Addendum:

Speaking of bildungsromans and long ago, back when I was still a young sprout living down in hideous Southern California, the scorching land of misbegotten dreams, I use to listen to a certain xtian radio station, broadcasting from El Lay as I recall, and which had a call-in talk show. I believe the host was somebody named John Stewart, but since it was so long ago, I'm not completely sure that was his name. But with a little research, I might be able to confirm this.

However, I definitely remember this: one day the host had Frank Schaeffer on the show, who was there promoting his newly published novel "Portofino". I already knew that Schaeffer had, by that time, jumped ship and converted to the Orthodox Church. There had been a story I saw somewhere which said he was working on an autobiographical book entitled "Dancing Alone", wherein he discusses the reasons that went into his decision to leave his evangelical upbringing and to embrace the Orthodox Church. So I wanted to ask Schaeffer about the truth of this story and tried calling in to the show, since it was taking listeners' questions.

To my immense surprise, I actually got through, more quickly than I expected, and I was put on the air, where millions of people could hear me. I got to ask Mr. Schaeffer two basic questions.

First, was it true that he was working on a book by the title of "Dancing Alone"? As I recall, his response was flatly to deny that he was working on any such book. It turned out that not too long afterwards, in 1994, he did publish a book by that title, which gave his reasons for "crossing over the Bosporus" to the Orthodox Church. It was puzzling to me why he issued such a denial on the air. Go figure. Maybe he had a contractual obligation to his publisher never to discuss any books still in the process of being written? I don't know. But I definitely remember seeing a story about "Dancing Alone" beforehand.

Second, I asked him to explain his views on the relationship between Tradition, as the Orthodox call it, and the authority of the Scriptures. Without any doubt, Mr. Schaeffer must have known perfectly well what I was asking about, but he side-stepped the question altogether. My guess was that since the radio station host was an evangelical xtian, and the show's audience mostly evangelicals as well, Mr. Schaeffer probably didn't want to evince his adopted position for fear it would cut into any interest the audience might have in the novel he was promoting.

A little evasion is okay, I suppose, just so long as people buy the book.

Why is church "youth band" music so horrible?

Today, the pastors had the youth band come and lead the worship this Sunday morning. The young lead singer was not very good, to put it gently. And Ms. Moonbones, who is a good judge of music, tells me his voice was barely "bubble gum" quality. The accompanying girl vocalists didn't harmonize at all. But what was painfully noticible was that the lead singer was acting like Sanjaya Malakar, there up on the dais.

Now the senior music minister for the church is a very accomplished musician. He really knows his stuff. And he was also up there doing a guitar backup. So this morning the question I was asking myself was: "Even though he knows better, why does he allow this?"

Generally speaking, in all various churches where I've heard them, every "youth band" has been been, well, dreadful. Yet pastors always want to showcase them. Why do they do this? I am not entirely sure; maybe it's just how things are in America. But I have a theory about it.

Our entire culture is insufferably "youth oriented". And it serves the financial interests of some large corporations to keep things that way. Therefore, the youths are brainwashed by incessant advertising into thinking that the entire Universe revolves around them; life is all about getting what you want. Moreover, I suspect that pastors nowadays are so desperate to keep the teenagers in church that they will even resort to a bit of dishonesty. Let me explain what I mean. They will have "youth services", say on Friday nights, during which the "youth band" gets to play its stuff, followed by some light-weight teaching by the "youth pastor". I guess pastors are thinking that it must be doing some good if they can get the kids to hang out at church, as if godliness were like wet paint on the walls: if the kids hang around long enough, some of it is bound to rub off on them. Consequently whatever music the youth like, whatever draws them, is automatically regarded as what flies. Next, to further pat the kids on the back, to let them know how wonderful and great they are, they will have the "youth band" play on Sundays, even if it is painfully obvious that the kids involved have no musical ability. (And if the pastors keep this up long enough, they might end up driving away even more adults. But that doesn't matter, I guess—we're a youth oriented culture, so who cares about what the middled-aged geezers think?)

But for pastors to do this is a mistake on two counts, I think. First of all, it only embarrasses everybody, and it's really not very honest. Why tell the kids what great musicians they are when in fact they are not? And everybody knows it—it's like watching someone up on the stage running around with his fly open. Secondly, in the long run, always catering to the kids' lastest fads and fashions is not going to keep them in the Faith. This is another example of giving people what they want and not what they actually need. And right now, what kids need the most is to be weaned off their incipient "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" that is so rampant in our country, and is everyday what they're getting indoctrinated in at school, what is getting shoved down their throats by advertising, and what is being injected into their arteries by the media and entertainment industries.

Furthermore, as an antidote, every now and then, the kids just need a good beating with The Dreaded Cluebat of Reality. The kids have to learn that they, as much as anyone else, need to become saints and not merely consumers.

I daresay that the big majority of kids in church nowadays will abandon any faith they might have had once they reach college, where they will encounter some truely hardcore, militant secularism, along with the sulfurous, all-pervasive atmosphere of devil-may-care turpitude. In the long run, giving the kids a weekly dose of happy-clappy, bubble-gum teeny-bopper music at church isn't going to help them.