Charged with relaying the truth of God as revealed through Holy Scripture and rationally applied to more contemporary specific situations through theology, ministers face the unique challenge of uplifting those aspects of culture and society that are in accord with what the Lord intended for mankind while admonishing or criticizing those aspects of human institutions and individual behavior that fall short. As fallen beings themselves stained by the same sin nature plaguing each and every one of us, it can be easy for those aspiring for recognition as mouthpieces of the divine to substitute their own agendas and predilections as God’s own clearly defined will. That is why it is imperative for believers making up these respective congregations --- whether they be sitting in a traditional pew, listening over the airwaves, or even reading a book --- to do their duty not only as Bereans but also as the sons of Issachar by examining the ideas espoused, the implications of these ideas upon the future, and the underlying worldview of the individual expositing them.

Sometimes, our closeness to an individual prevents us from seeing an individual as they truly are. Usually, this causes us to gloss over the faults of our loved ones to remember them in a light probably a bit better than they really were as love covers over a multitude of sins.

However, the very opposite can also take place if something causes a relationship to become strained and if we are not careful the minor faults we all struggle with can cause us to look back upon those we were once fond of in an almost criminal light. This may be the perceptual trap Frank Schaeffer, son of the late apologist Francis Schaeffer, has fallen into when he claims his own father was worse than Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright according to a March 21, 2008 WorldNetDaily.com article titled “Francis Schaeffer’s Son: ‘Dad worse than Obama’s pastor’.”

When such a claim is made, those valuing discernment must examine the statements made by the disputed clergy in question and dig deeper into the underlying worldview of each. It is only by doing so that the concerned Christian can determine whether or not the rhetoric under examination falls outside the pale of acceptable orthodoxy.

Most of the Schaeffer lad’s allegations center around the charge that his father was at least as anti-American as Jeremiah Wright and that conservative Christians should be criticized for condemning one of these thinkers while embracing the other largely as one of the primary philosophical supports for the cultural engagement of the Evangelical Right. Central to this debate is what each of these theologians believed would bring the judgment of God upon the United States and why such retribution had been brought.

According to Schaeffer the Younger, inexcusable comments made by his father include the following: condemning abortion, reserving the right of the people to one day revolt as a last resort against a tyrannical government that abridges God-given rights that would otherwise allow the politically active to work for change within the system and that the right to bear arms as expressed by the Second Amendment serves as a mechanism whereby those in government ought to be made to think twice about infringing upon the rights of the people. The Schaeffer offspring also thinks it is unconscionable that his father dared to point out that philosophically very little separated the America secularist system of public education and the Soviet model.

Apparently in the eyes of Frank Schaeffer, the truth is not much of a defense. His problem may not so much be with his father as with the Founding Fathers as the elder Schaeffer was merely echoing in “A Christian Manifesto” many of the ideas forming the foundation of this great republic.

If it is wrong to view the Second Amendment as an “insurance policy” against unlawful intrusions of government power, does that mean that the younger Schaeffer would stand around with a smile on his face while operatives from the government take his property and rape his wife? It was this kind of unbiblical perversion of government that Franky Schaeffer’s father spent the last years of his life warning against.

O such horrible things --- the right to worship God freely, the right to be secure in one’s own person and property, and keeping the government within clearly specified boundaries so that it is strong enough to protect us from those that would do us harm while not making it so strong that it becomes a harmful parasite sucking our God given liberties away from us. Now let’s examine the kind of things believed by Franky Schaeffer’s new best friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

For starters, Wright holds to the theory that the United States developed the AIDS virus to maintain dominance over the Third World. Scientists and theoreticians could probably debate as to the origins of the pestilence, but doesn’t saying it was targeted at a specific set of foreign countries undermine the deaths of the many Americans the disease has claimed? Furthermore, isn’t AIDS a rather inefficient means of genocide since to avoid getting it all one has to do for the most part is to keep one’s pants on.

Most brainwashed today by government officials and leftwing propagandists into believing that firearms are evil by default rather than a neutral tool taking on the motives and characteristics of the individuals wielding them will have trouble swallowing the distinction between Schaeffer’s defense of the use of force over any that might be advocated by the likes of Jeremiah Wright. However, there is a world of difference when it comes down to just whom these two would be aiming at and why.

In his condemnation of certain aspects of government and society, Francis Schaeffer was calling upon a defense of the individual created in the image of God possessing rights no institution or other individual has the right to infringe upon. As such, under “Schafferianism” it does not matter what color you are.

The ideology espoused by Jeremiah Wright is much different. In his thinking and those like him, one’s value is not determined as a distinct individual made in the image of God but rather as part of a larger group or COMMUNITY. One can see this in his hostility towards America in general and Whites in particular largely through the company he has often kept.

If you examine Wright’s associations carefully, one sees he does not oppose violence per say but apparently only when it is America or Western powers that have resorted to force in pursuit of policy objectives as Wright certainly has no qualms about those advocating and using violence against Americans and our national interest. For example, it has been documented that Wright thinks highly of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

What is it exactly that Farrakhan and his sect believe? Quite a bit more than selling pecan pies and newspapers on metropolitan street corners.

For starters, Nation of Islam doctrine postulates that White people are an inferior race genetically engineered by an ancient mad scientist. The Nation of Islam also contends that a UFO-like vehicle is circling the earth to whisk away Black folks and to rain down nuclear annihilation on the White ones left behind for no other reason than that they happen to be White.

So why is it, ladies and gentleman, that liberal malcontents of various stripes will stand around and applaud this kind of foolishness when it is directed against Whites yet condemn it with such vehemence when such blather flows from the lips of the Ku Klux Klan to the point that it is those professing tolerance and understanding that actually perpetrate these days the acts of mayhem and destruction at Klan rallies rather than the Klan nitwits.

Wright’s association with Farrakhan does not stop at the level of a friendly “what’s up” as they pass each other on the Chicago streets. Wright actually accompanied Farrakhan to visit Muammar Qaddafi. For Americans that have forgotten since the Libyan leader has buried himself in the sand for awhile hoping most won’t notice him, before the advent of Al Qadea and Osama Bin Laden, Qaddafi spent many years atop terrorism’s superstar list.

This is not Wright’s only endorsement of Western civilization’s Islamist enemies. In his church bulletin, Wright ran an op-ed written by a high-level Hamas functionary.

Ladies and gentleman, what kind of pastor worthy of respect as such is going to hang out with and lend credence to the ideas of such human debris? Some modernist and postmodernists will whine, “Well, Jesus went to the publicans and sinners.”

That is correct. However, Wright was not ministering to those in the Arab street whom most leftists believe we are to pander these days in terms of our foreign policy. Rather, Wright is expressing a sympathy for those whose ultimate goal is nothing less short of the destruction of human liberty and freedom as understood in a traditional context.

Wright is able to get up there and condemn the use of force on the part of the U.S. government through its armed forces while lavishing accolades upon scumbag tyrants and terrorists because Wright is a proponent of liberation theology. Essentially what that is is revolutionary socialism or Communism dressed up in a religious garb.

According to Marxist doctrine, there is nothing wrong whatsoever with the use of force if it is used to appropriate property from those deemed unworthy of utilizing it according to the vanguard of the proletariat who whoever else occupies that distinction these days such as radicalized minorities, environmentalists, or home owner associations. In fact to some revolutionaries these days, such acts are not even categorized as acts of violence as evidenced by World Bank protestor-types who insist they are nonviolent despite the looting, vandalism, and destruction of property for which those in this movement have become synonymous.

Liberals, especially White ones, have flocked to the Obama banner in part to pat themselves on the back just to show how progressive they are by backing a Black candidate and in so doing they freely embrace all of the anti-American baggage that make up the foundation of Barack Obama’s worldview. When either marauding mobs or minions of the state come to take what’s Whitey’s in the years and decades to come, it will be interesting to see if the younger Schaeffer comes back around to his father’s way of thinking or that he has grown accustomed to his role that cannot be described as anything other than a useful idiot.

by Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins
Issachar Bible Church & Apologetics Research Institute

Biography - Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins is an independent theologian and social critic. Frederick holds a BS in Political Science/History, a MA in Apologetics/Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a PhD. in Christian Apologetics from Newburgh Theological Seminary.