Sex, Mom, and God

by Frank Schaeffer

  26 Chris Hedges, “The Christian Fascists are Growing Stronger,” Truthdig.com, June 6, 2010.

  27 Theonomy comes from two Greek words: theos, meaning “God,” and nomos, meaning “law.”

  28 In presenting a theonomic view of biblical law, the Chalcedon Foundation is often referred to as promoting theocracy and “dominionism.” See www.chalcedon.edu/blog/blog.php.

  29 David Chilton, Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion, 6th ed. (Tyler, TX: Dominion Press, 1999), 271.

  30 Gary North, Tools of Dominion (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), 845.

  31 Greg Loren Durand, “Judicial Warfare: The Christian Reconstruction Movement and Its Blueprints for Dominion,” Crownrights.com, www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/HistoryOfReconstructionMovement.html.

  32 Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), 59–60.

  33 Frederick Clarkson, “Christian Reconstructionism: Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence,” The Public Eye, March–June 1994, www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre1.html.

  34 Howard Ahmanson Jr. is heir to the Home Savings bank fortune. Howard became Rushdoony’s financier and served as a board member of Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation. In the 1970s Ahmanson started the career of Marvin Olasky, who became an important figure in Evangelical media. Howard, like me, later renounced his association with the Reconstructionists, even going so far as to quit the Republican Party in 2009 and reregister as a Democrat. He also stopped by my home in 2010, along with his charming wife, Roberta, to tell me that he liked my memoir Crazy for God (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2007).

  35 Whitehead has since changed some of his positions on political and theological issues. He’s more moderate.

  36 The Institutes of Biblical Law. Table of Contents—The Third Commandment. Swearing and Revolution. The Oath and Society. The Oath and Authority. The Fourth Commandment. The Sabbath and Work. The Sabbath and Law Appen dix: The Economics of Sabbath Keeping—by Gary North. The Fifth Commandment. The Authority of the Family. The Economics of the Family. Education and the Family. The Family and Delinquency. The Sixth Commandment. The Death Penalty. Hybridization and Law. Abortion. Restitution or Restoration. Military Laws and Production. Taxation. Quarantine Laws. Dietary Rules. Social Inheritance: Landmarks. The Seventh Commandment. Marriage. Family Law. Marriage and Monogamy. Incest. Sex and Crime. Adultery. Divorce. Homosexuality. The Transvestite. Bestiality. The Eighth Commandment. Dominion. Theft. Restitution and Forgiveness. Liability of the Bystander. Money and Measure. Usury. Landmarks and Land. The Virgin Birth and Property. Fraud. Eminent Domain. Labor Laws. Prison. The Rights of Strangers, Widows, and Orphans. The Ninth Commandment. Corroboration. Perjury. False Witness. Slander Within Marriage. Slander as Theft. Judges. The Responsibility of Judges and Rulers. The Court. The Procedure of the Court. The Judgment of the Court. The Tenth Commandment. Covetousness. Special Privilege. The System. Notes on Law in Western Society . . . etc.

  37 Rousas John Rushdoony, “The Increase of His Government and Peace” (Vallecito, CA: Chalcedon Foundation, December 1967).

  38 Rousas John Rushdoony, Thy Kingdom Come: Studies in Daniel and Revelation (Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, 1970).

  39 Ibid., 67.

  40 Robert George, “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience,” November 20, 2009, www.manhattandeclaration.org/the-declaration/read.aspx.

  41 David Kirkpatrick, “The Conservative-Christian Big Thinker,” New York Times, December 16, 2009.

  42 Frank Schaeffer and Kathy Roth Douquet, AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America’s Upper Classes from Military Service and How It Hurts Our Country (New York: HarperCollins 2006).

  43 Robert P. George, “Obama’s Abortion Extremism,” Catholic Online Opinion, October 16, 2008, Witherspoon Institute, www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=30081.

  44 Fetal viability generally refers to the ability of a fetus to survive outside the womb, but the term is subject to interpretation. The Roe v. Wade ruling says, “With respect to the State’s important and legitimate interest in potential life, the ‘compelling’ point is at viability. This is so because the foetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb.” See “Abortion Time Limits: Fetal Viability,” British Medical Association Journal, June 17, 2005, www.bma.org.uk/ethics/reproduction_genetics/AbortionTimeLimits.jsp?page=12.

  45 Ariel Kaminer, “Abortion: Easy Access, Complex Everything Else,” New York Times, January 21, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/nyregion/23critic.html?ref=nyregion.

  46 Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1981), 49.

  47 Ibid., 128.

  48 Ibid., 117–118.

  49 www.amazon.com/How-Should-We-Then-Live/dp/1581345364/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285237692&sr=1–1.

  50 Speakers included Pastor John Piper; Christian radio personality Nancy Leigh DeMoss; Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor and antifeminist author Mary Kassian; J. Ligon Duncan III, chairman of the board for the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood; and Susan Hunt, an author and consultant to the Presbyterian Church in America’s Women in the Church Ministry. The conference was organized by DeMoss’s St. Louis–based ministry, Revive Our Hearts, a “women’s ministry” that teaches that female “submission” to men will bring America back to God.

  51 See www.truewoman.com.

  52 Mary Pride, The Way Home (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985), 28.

  53 I also published Is Capitalism Christian? (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985), a book of essays that I edited and for which Congressman Jack Kemp served as my advisor—feeding me material in keeping with his (then-popular) “supply-side” economic theories praising unregulated capitalism. Bad News for Modern Man (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1984) was about “the liberal takeover of America.” A Modest Proposal (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1984), coauthored with Harold Fickett, took a stab at Swiftian satire about abortion.

  54 Jacques Barzun, God’s Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love, Spiced with a Few Harsh Words (1954; repr. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 1973), 134.

  55 Pride published many more books after I quit as her agent (at almost the same time as I dropped out of the whole Evangelical movement). Her books include The Way Home (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1985); The Big Book of Home Learning (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1986); The Next Book of Home Learning (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1987); The New Big Book of Home Learning (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1988); All the Way Home (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989); The Child Abuse Industry (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1986); Schoolproof (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1988); Unholy Sacrifices of the New Age and Ancient Empires of the New Age (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1988, The “Old Wise Tales” series: Too Many Chickens, The Greenie, The Better Butter Battle, Baby Doe (Nashville, TN: Wolgemuth and Hyatt, 1990); The Big Book of Home Learning, 4 vols.: Getting Started, Preschool & Elementary, Teen & Adult, Afterschooling (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1991); Pride’s Guide to Educational Software with husband Bill Pride (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1997); and Mary Pride’s Complete Guide to Getting Started in Homeschooling (Wheaton, IL: Harvest House, 2004).

  56 This explanation of Jewish Orthodox purity regulations for women appears on Nishmat, a Web site for health care professionals. See Jerusalem Center for Advanced Jewish Study for Women, “Hormonal Cycle Manipulation for Brides,” www.jewishwomenshealth.org/article.php?article=14.

  57 G. E. M. Anscombe, “Contraception and Chastity” (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1975).

  58 Robert George, “Elizabeth Anscombe, R.I.P.: One of the 20th Century’s Most Remarkable Women,” National Review, February 3–4, 2001.

  59 Peter Kreeft, Ecumenical Jihad: Ecumenism and the Culture War (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996).

  60 Alexander F. Remington, “Priest, Conservative Richard Neu
haus,” Washington Post, January 9, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/08/AR2009010803685.html.

  61 This was an updated version of the ideology of 1930s figures like Father Charles Coughlin. (Coughlin was an extremist Roman Catholic priest and one of the first religious leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience.

  62 “Domestic Terrorism 101—Timothy James McVeigh,” Eyeonhate.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh#cite_note-22.

  63 Lynne Terry, “Bombing Defendant Bruce Turnidge Railed About the Government in a House Filled with Weapons,” The Oregonian, October 7, 2010, www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2010/10/woodburn_bombing_trial.html.

  64 Ibid.

  65 On January 16, 2009, Limbaugh told his listeners that he was asked by “a major American print publication” to offer a four-hundred-word statement explaining his “hope for the Obama presidency.” He reported, “So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, ‘Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need four hundred words; I need four: I hope he fails.’”

  66 See “Moral Education: A Brief History of Moral Education,” “The Return of Character Education,” and “Current Approaches to Moral Education,” http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2246/Moral-Education.html#ixzz0oefKiFH7.

  67 Christian product sales in the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) alone grew to $4.63 billion in ’06, according to CBA’s research. See www.cbaonline.org/nm/timeline.htm.

  68 Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved (Murfreesboro, TN: Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1979), 17.

  69 Brad A. Greenberg, “Comparing the Lives of Sarah Palin and Queen Esther,” September 10, 2008, www.jewishjournal.com/thegodblog/item/comparing_the_lives_of_sarah_palin_and_queen_esther_20080909/.

  70 On January 21, 2010, a decades-old system of rules that governed the financing of the nation’s elections was overturned in the Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission. The Supreme Court decision on corporate spending in political races thereby allowed the big corporations to call the shots on these elections (anonymously).

  71 Dignitas is a Swiss assisted-dying group that helps those with terminal illness and severe physical and mental illnesses to die assisted by “qualified” doctors and nurses. It even provides euthanasia for people with “incurable mental illnesses.” Who decides someone is incurable is a good question.

  72 Jeffrey Rosen, “The Dissenter,” New York Times Magazine, September 23, 2007. Rosen notes that Stevens is “the oldest and arguably most liberal justice.”

  73 Ruth Ginsburg, “Some Thoughts on Autonomy and Equality in Relation to Roe v. Wade,” North Carolina Law Review 63 (1985): 375: “The political process was moving in the early 1970s, not swiftly enough for advocates of quick, complete change, but majoritarian institutions were listening and acting. Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.”

  74 Archibald Cox, The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1976), 113–114.

  75 Laurence Tribe, “The Supreme Court, 1972 Term—Foreword: Toward a Model of Roles in the Due Process of Life and Law,” Harvard Law Review 87, no. 1 (1973): 7. Quoted in Richard Gregory Morgan, “Roe v. Wade and the Lesson of the Pre-Roe Case Law,” Michigan Law Review 77, no. 7 (1979): 1724–1748, doi:10.2307/1288040.

  76 Sabrina Tavernise, “Squalid Abortion Clinic Escaped State Oversight,” New York Times, January 22, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/us/23doctor.html.

  77 Marian Wang, “Why a Gruesome Pennsylvania Abortion Clinic Had Not Been Inspected for 17 Years,” ProPublica, January 21, 2011, www.propublica.org/blog/item/gruesome-pennsylvania-abortion-clinic-had-not-been-inspectedfor-17-years.

  78 According to the Guttmacher Institute, 1.5 percent of abortions are done at twenty-one weeks of gestation or more. That represents about 20,000 abortions a year. “Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States,” Guttmacher Institute, January 16, 2011, www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html. 0.08 percent are performed after 24 weeks, when the fetus is viable.

  79 In an analysis of survey research on American civil life, Hoover Institution scholar Arthur C. Brooks finds that religious people are 23 percentage points more likely than secular people to volunteer their time to charities. See Arthur C. Brooks, “Religious Faith and Charitable Giving,” Policy Review (October–November 2003): 17.

  80 Letter and name used by permission.

  81 Megan Thee, “Public Opinion on Abortion,” New York Times, April 19, 2007, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/public-opinion-on-abortion.

  82 Jess Henig, “What Would Happen if the Supreme Court Overturned Roe v. Wade?” FactCheck.Org, April 6, 2008, www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/what_would_happen_if_the_supreme_court.html.

  83 “Researchers are finding an alternative that is safe, cheap and very difficult for governments to restrict—misoprostol, a medication originally intended to prevent stomach ulcers. This pharmaceutical approach is called ‘medical abortion.’ In the United States and Europe it typically consists of two sets of ‘M’ pills. The first is mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486, and then a day or two later the misoprostol. Using the drugs in combination produces a miscarriage more than 95 percent of the time in early pregnancy.” Nicholas Kristof, “Another Pill That Could Cause a Revolution,” New York Times, July 31, 2010.

  84 “Facts on Induced Abortion.” Nearly 50 percent of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and 40 percent of these are terminated by abortion. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion. Forty percent of pregnancies among white women, 69 percent among blacks, and 54 percent among Hispanics are unintended. In 2008, 1.21 million abortions were performed, down from 1.31 million in 2000. However, between 2005 and 2008 the long-term decline in abortions stalled. From 1973 through 2008, nearly 50 million legal abortions occurred. Each year, 2 percent of women aged fifteen to forty-four have an abortion; 50 percent have had at least one previous abortion. At least 50 percent of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age forty-five, and at current rates about 33 percent will have had an abortion.

  85 “The annual figure has averaged 90,000 in recent years, or about 40 percent of all pregnancies, twice the national rate.” “Religious Leaders Call for New Efforts to Lower the City’s ‘Chilling’ Abortion Rate,” New York Times, January 6, 2011.

  86 Rachel K. Jones, Susheela Singh, Lawrence B. Finer, and Lori F. Frohwirth, “Repeat Abortion in the United States,” Occasional Report No. 29, November 2006, Guttmacher Institute, www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/11/21/or29.pdf.

  87 “Facts on Induced Abortion.”

  88 “Facts on Induced Abortion.”

  89 Abortion was decriminalized with the passage of the Veil Law in 1975.

  90 Charles M. Blow, “Abortion’s New Battle Lines,” New York Times, May 1, 2010. The Gallup Poll is available at www.gallup.com/poll/127559/Education-Trumps-Gender-Predicting-Support-Abortion.aspx.

  91 Katherine D. Wenstrom, M.D., “Massachusetts Medical Society in a review of Fetology” by Diana Bianchi (Author), Timothy Crombleholme (Author), Mary D’Alton (Author), Fergal Malone (Author),” New England Journal of Medicine 23 (2001): 47.

  92 Here they are in reverse order: Baby on Board (1992), slapstick comedy starring Judge Reinhold and Carol Kane; Rebel Storm (1990), futuristic action film starring Zach Galligan and June Chadwick; Headhunter (1989), occult horror film starring John Fatooh, June Chadwick, and Steve Kanaly; and Wired to Kill (1986), postapocalyptic action film starring Emily Longstreath, Devin Hoelscher, and Merritt Butrick.

  93 My paintings of that period were somewhat in the Rouault manner, with heavy dark outlines and vivid blocks of color. I had early successes in my art career with a one-man show near Geneva at the Chante Pier gallery, in London at Criteria Arts, and in New York at the Frisch Gallery, where Mrs. David Rockefeller purchased a painting
. I gave up painting in 1974 after I went full-time into producing my dad’s movies, hit the road, etc. In 2006 I took out my old paints and resumed painting, now in a different style and for my own pleasure.

  94 The Family was founded in 1935 and is known for its long history of friendly dealings with dictators worldwide as well as for its clearly defined aim to infiltrate the U.S. government with Far Right Evangelicals who will, in turn, carry out a Reconstructionist-type of campaign to “reclaim” the country and world for a politicized “Jesus.”

  95 See BBC News, May 20, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8059826.stm.

  96 “Vatican Shielded Dublin Priest Until He Raped Boy,” Associated Press, December 17, 2010.

  97 Deborah Becker, “Irish Catholics Call for Cardinal Law’s Resignation, Following Clergy Abuse Report,” WBUR.org, February 10, 2010, www.wbur.org/2010/02/10/irish-priests-followup.