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Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back Paperback – Illustrated, September 30, 2008

4.3 out of 5 stars 508

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By the time he was nineteen, Frank Schaeffer's parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, had achieved global fame as bestselling evangelical authors and speakers, and Frank had joined his father on the evangelical circuit. He would go on to speak before thousands in arenas around America, publish his own evangelical bestseller, and work with such figures as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Dr. James Dobson. But all the while Schaeffer felt increasingly alienated, precipitating a crisis of faith that would ultimately lead to his departure—even if it meant losing everything.

With honesty, empathy, and humor, Schaeffer delivers “a brave and important book” (Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog)—both a fascinating insider's look at the American evangelical movement and a deeply affecting personal odyssey of faith.


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Editorial Reviews

Review

American Author's Association website, December 2008
"A story that needed to be told...A very personal and brutally honest memoir, that opens up and exposes the underbelly of the evangelistic movement...Gives the reader a rare and different look at some of various leaders of the fundamentalist moment...The book may open some eyes and minds about the dangers of politics and religion...A must read book for serious seekers looking for their own authentic path to enlightenment, or at least some inner peace."

De-conversion.com, 12/2/08
"A must read for the de-converting...It is brutally honest, eye-opening, at times laugh out loud funny, and heart breaking."

"Princeton Packet," 2/13/09
"Mr. Schaeffer knows what he's talking about. He was there, and his book lays it all out, chapter and verse."

TCM Reviews
"[A] moving memoir...For those interested in a different perspective on Francis and Edith Schaeffer, l'Abri, and the fundamentalist right-wing evangelical movement, as well as the touching story of someone deeply involved in it all, this is a must-read."

"Augusta Metro Spirit," 4/15/09
"In a witty recollection that takes a different path from the average evangelical story, Frank Schaeffer offers an intimate portrait of a life within and without the spotlight of mass congregations...Schaeffer is more than qualified to offer candid commentary concerning the religious right in these United States...Written with an intricate collection of detail, a smooth ability to turn elements of conflict into startling moments of realization, and a wonderful search for meaning."

"Tallahassee Democrat," 7/25/09
"Part memoir, part biography, and part expose of a fundamentalist moment in U.S. religion and culture. As memoir it is at times funny, at times moving. As biography it provides an interesting, not to say intimate, perspective on Francis and Edith Schaeffer. As expose it provides revealing glimpses into the emergence of the religious right and some of it

About the Author

Frank Schaeffer is the author of the New York Times bestseller Keeping Faith and the memoir Crazy for God. His novels, including Portofino, have been translated into nine languages. He lives in Massachusetts.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Da Capo Press; Illustrated edition (September 30, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 417 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0306817500
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0306817502
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.12 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 508

About the author

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Frank Schaeffer
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New York Times best selling author of more than a dozen books Frank Schaeffer is a survivor of both polio and an evangelical/fundamentalist childhood, an acclaimed writer who overcame severe dyslexia, a home-schooled and self-taught documentary movie director, a feature film director and producer of four low budget Hollywood features Frank has described as "pretty terrible," and a best selling author of both fiction and nonfiction. Frank is the author of "And God Said, 'Billy!'" and many other books. Frank's three semi-biographical novels about growing up in a fundamentalist mission: "Portofino," "Zermatt" and "Saving Grandma" have a worldwide following and have been translated into nine languages. Jane Smiley writing in the Washington Post (7/10/11) says this of Frank's memoirs "Crazy For God" and "Sex, Mom and God": "[Schaeffer's] memoirs have a way of winning a reader's friendship...Schaeffer is a good memoirist, smart and often laugh-out-loud funny...Frank seems to have been born irreverent, but his memoirs have a serious purpose, and that is to expose the insanity and the corruption of what has become a powerful and frightening force in American politics... Frank has been straightforward and entertaining in his campaign to right the political wrongs he regrets committing in the 1970s and '80s...As someone who has made redemption his work, he has, in fact, shown amazing grace."

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
508 global ratings
Black sheep author of Crazy for God tells of the behind-the-scenes of Evangelicals and Republicans
4 Stars
Black sheep author of Crazy for God tells of the behind-the-scenes of Evangelicals and Republicans
Crazy for God - a ReviewWhen I’m sorry a book ends, I know it was good. I liked Frank Schaffer’s Crazy for God. His honesty, self-deprecating humor, gentle critiques of his Christian context, and scathing rebuke of those who co-opt Christianity for partisan divisiveness - all make me admire him.Frank Schaffer lives into his name – he’s frank. “Honesty is the only thing that is satisfying about writing,” he writes. His writing is easy and honest, witty and wise. He tells it like it was and is. He grew up in the Christian family central to evangelicals going Republican. He loved his father and mother’s fanatical passion for evangelism, but grew sick of pretense and hypocrisy, especially that of slick preachers and politicians veering decent believers into supporting indecent, right-wingers. Some may accuse him of being an infidel to their Christian cause; I think he rescues it.Frank’s father Francis was once a star in the evangelical world. He preached well and widely, weaving art into religion, explaining Bob Dylan songs and other cultural trends in Christian terms. Their house in Switzerland was a mecca for Christians and artists. Francis was sought out by many celebrities of the 60s and 70s – from Timothy Leary to Billy Graham, from Salvador Dali to Princess Dianna. For him, art and intelligence were not antithetical to Christianity. He was a bit of a guru, preaching Jesus to the hippies. Frank’s mother also evangelized but wasn’t narrow. She’d read Mark Twain to her boy along with the Bible and didn’t prevent him from seeing nudity in great art.Frank writes of his boyhood with charming honesty. I imagine many Christians would be embarrassed at his writing about “wanking” with other boys and his revealing the behind-the-scenes reality of various Christian stars. Frank was the heir apparent of his father Francis, on which he easily could have capitalized. Instead, he went on to be an author, artist, and film-maker in his own right. Crazy for God makes me want to read his novel, Portofino.Frank regrets how his anti-abortion stance became the key for Reagan, the Bushes, Dr. Dobson (of Focus on the Family), and Reverend Pat Robertson to push that issue into the contentious divisiveness it became and still is. Frank regrets goading his tolerant father into pro-life extremes. Aided by the ardent pro-lifer, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, right-wing Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, and supply-side economics wonk Jack Kemp and his wife, the pro-life stance went from being a narrow Catholic issue to a widespread Republican one. With President Trump’s quip that women who abort should be punished and his stacking the Supreme Court with opponents of abortion rights, the difficult issue is again in our face.(To my mind, a woman’s decision whether to end her pregnancy isn’t the freedom of choice; it is the burden of choice. A fertilized ovum in a mother isn’t a mere nothing, nor is it a child or person. Difficult though it is, it is more the mother’s business than others. I doubt many would vote to outlaw abortion if they were then held financially responsible to help support the child.)While Frank Schaffer regrets how the Republican Party co-opted the issue, he doesn’t spare the Democrats and NARAL. At first they ignored Christian pro-lifers, and then they belittled them, portraying them as crazy extremists. He writes “the pro-choice forces were so hubristically aggressive when belittling their opponents that they alienated everyone who even mildly questioned their position. They drove people to us… [T]hey might as well have been working to help the Republicans take Congress and the White House.” Dismissiveness aggravated defensiveness and provoked adamancy. When sides get bifurcated, such cyclical dynamics can lock both in contention.When sides form, each sees the worst in the other – and elicits it. I have long noticed how attacking with defensiveness can be both deluded and effective. We once created “no-fly zones” in Iraq that only we flew in, shooting any radar daring to watch. We were afraid of their alleged weapons of mass destruction while invading with gobs of our actual weapons – Shock and Awe galore. Attacking with defensiveness is a sort of preemptive reactionary response, accusing the other while initiating an attack. Invasions create the insurgents we then defend ourselves from. Consider the rise of gun-wielding in our culture lately, more and more defending themselves from guns with guns.Much like the BBC’s Civilization and Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man, Frank and his father created their own Christian film series. How Should We Then Live? claiming modern art, culture, freedom and democracy were based in the Christian tradition and “that foundation was under attack from humanist and secular ideas and elites… because there were no longer absolutes that we could all agree on to guarantee them.”Even though that defensive attitude was felt then and still, there is less need for such bitter bifurcation in our mutual culture as is supposed and accused. Frank Schaffer himself embodies the virtues and values common to both Christian and humanistic people. Both agree we shouldn’t lie, steal, injure and kill. Such moral ethics is common in humanity and is not owned exclusively by any tradition or religion that shares in it.Moreover, many humanistic advances came in spite of the church and evasion of it, not with its blessing. Burning non-believers to death on orders from king, pope or imam is offensive to modern Christians and secularists alike, I’d guess Schaffer would agree. Equality, inherent worth, inclusiveness and participatory democracy has some roots in Christian theology, but were also impeded by it.Critical thinking is not praised and practiced from the pulpits, especially the more fundamentalist ones. Reason, logic and science annoy people’s beliefs. The fairly new reality humanity must deal with is far vaster and smaller, longer-lasting and brief than we had imagined. Life is more interrelated and interdependent than we recently knew. Our Eden isn’t a mere few thousand years old; it is billions of years in the making and is fragile in the face of our sudden technologies. This disrupts the quaint beliefs in the Bible as historically and factually authoritative. Evolution isn’t an attack on Christianity, but many Christians feel it is, resent it, and attack back. Are accusations of a culture war on Christianity really attacks?Witness our new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos turning our public education system over to the homeschool and charter school movements largely designed to evade, abandon, and undermine it. DeVos comes from a very wealthy, very Christian family (her brother Eric Prince had created the murderous privatized Blackwater mercenaries). So what if ideological purity is really small-mindedness, even stupidity? They don’t really want public spaces shared by people of all beliefs; they want private spaces where children can be indoctrinated free from the interference of intelligent differences. They want children brought up “in the way that they should go.” To Schaffer’s credit, he calls this “profoundly anti-American.”In this era when a third of our country adulates a blatant liar president who declares his own facts and attacks any who won’t agree, where psychopathic CEOs are highly paid to run their corporation as selfishly as possible (and whose voice such corporate “persons” may wield as “free speech” of lobbying funds to affect our government in secret), and with huge passionate populations used to believing and obeying – we have a dangerous time to deal with. Are evangelical Christians as uncaring about our environment and as mean towards others and immigrants as Trump or not? They would do well to read Frank’s telling book.Frank Schaffer added an episode about abortion to How Should We Then Live? Near to when Ronald Reagan published Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation in the pro-life journal Human Life Review, Francis published A Christian Manifesto urging civil disobedience, and Frank hurriedly cranked out A Time for Anger. Frank and Francis didn’t know it would result in the sons of the man who created then then-ridiculed John Birch Society (the Koch Brothers) running our climate to ruin and a raft of showy but shallow Christian preachers (Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Pat Robertson) with gold-plated faucets and glib messages getting dangerously extreme, almost promoting an apocalyptic end-times to punish America for its wayward ways. “The worse things got,” Frank Schaffer writes sarcastically, “the sooner Jesus would come back… the worse everything got, the more it proved that American needed saving, by us!”The Schaffers’ good intensions helped launch a mild sort of American Christian Taliban. “They’re using our issue to build their empires,” Francis lamented. They were plastic, power-hungry. To Frank’s credit, he writes, “To our lasting discredit, Dad and I didn’t go public with our real opinions… however conflicted Dad and I were, like other religious-right leaders, we were on an ego-stroking roll. We kept our mouths shut.”But he didn’t finally keep it shut. He bravely published this insider’s book, asking, “[W]hat sort of fools would our people elect as president or for Congress given that they had so easily been duped by the flakes, madmen, and charlatans they were hailing (and lavishly funding) as their spiritual leaders?” In that he published Crazy for God in 2007, I have to wonder if his prescience is prophetic.Who would have known his hastily-written A Time for Anger would help egg on anger in evangelical Christians, the Tea Party, and the base people in Trump’s base, replete with angry white racists and nationalists? Trump is angry at Iran; would war there on behalf of Israel and American Christians be a good thing?This is not Frank Schaffer’s intension, nor does he condone it. While he still abhors abortion, he is sensitive and nuanced enough to grant it personal and legal complexity. He may be on the outs with evangelicals for his exposé, but he redeems Christianity with a similar though updated sophistication as his father once had. Father Francis was a chaplain to presidents, but not in a showy way like Billy Graham. He told his son, “You can be seen to do something, or actually do it.” Frank does it, revealing a humane Christian perspective in a book about Christian flaws and phonies.At one point in his evolution, Frank had sunk so low in funds and self-esteem he stole meat. But he would go on to realize, “I’d rather be arrested for shoplifting than ever be an evangelical leader again. There is a certain basic and decent honesty about stealing pork chops that selling God had lacked.” Emerson would approve. “Tame men are inexpressibly tedious,” he wrote, and he went on, “I hate goodies… Goodness that preaches undoes itself… The village blasphemer sees fear in the face, form, and gait of the minister,” he accused. Authenticity is key, not persona.Kudos to Frank Schaffer for being himself! He didn’t wear an expected mask. The black sheep in his family sacrificed himself to keep the faith pure. He wrote with honesty and kindness, but also with a passion and timely critique. If more Americans, especially evangelicals, were to read his book, we wouldn’t be so duped. Perhaps by criticizing Christianity and how it is being misused, he has rescued and redeemed it a bit.Byron Bradley Carrier
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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2011
I enjoyed this book tremendously for many reasons. I found it to be funny, engaging, brutally honest, historically interesting - and a parallel track to my own life and experience. His depiction of the evangelical mindset of the day is, as the Brits would say, spot on! Being the son of missionary parents in France during the 60s and 70s, and having attended a Christian boarding school, I could have written parts of this book. The absent parenting in the name of ministry, the workaholism and "the children run free" were very much part of my own experience. If I were to write a book about my childhood growing up in France, it would mirror the mindset and some of the characters that play out in early parts of this book.

I have opted to comment on "Crazy for God" because of some of the other negative reviews posted here. I do not believe for a moment that Frank wants to destroy his parents as individuals or their life's achievements. He is simply telling the story of two very eccentric individuals who lived a somewhat bizarre life and how the public persona differed from the private person, with all the possible contradictions the public would not want to hear about. I found this book to be very human, even brutally funny and sometimes embarrassingly honest.

Any person whose parents were involved in "full time ministry" would find this book beneficial. The paradoxes in faith, fame, life, parenting, counseling are well presented as well as the contradictions of "what I say isn't always what I do".

Frank, I found, was also very honest about himself. He doesn't hide. He portrays himself in the same way he portrays his parents - let it all hand out! As the saying goes "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" and so Frank did not fall far from his heritage. He too was an absent parent and a self-consumed workaholic. He has grown beyond it though and looks back on all his life with amazement, fondness and sheer puzzlement. There are very tender moments in the book that speak to other human qualities, which have taken Frank a long time to acquire. The closing chapter is very touching.

If I may, the only disturbing part in this book to me, was on page 387 when he state "These days, I don't know what my children believe or don't. I don't ask. It's none of my business". WHAT!!!!!! I hope those days pass quickly. The treasure of being a parent is helping your kids know what they believe. So you don't care if they become a Baptist, Methodist or even an atheist, ok. But knowing how they think, why they think that way... That, for me, is the part of being a parent that I love. That is fun. That is life. That's conversation around the dinner table. Would not give that up for a minute...

So, I think "Crazy for God" is a great read. It may make you angry but it will make you think. Buy it, read it, think about it!

David.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2023
I'd really give it 3.5 stars. It's not as good as the author's fictionalized story of his childhood in the Calvin Becker trilogy - "Portofino" being one of my favorite novels and one of only four to make me laugh aloud. (In case you're wondering, the other three were "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", "The Wee Free Men" by Terry Pratchett, and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".) Although clearly a talented writer and intelligent man, he just seems too muddled to write really clear non-fiction. What he wants to say comes forth much better when he says it as a storyteller rather than attempting to be didactic, as he sometimes does here. The weakest part of the book is at the end, where he lashes out at figures of the religious political movement he claims he helped create (I am skeptical that he was actually as important to this movement as he says). I absolutely cannot stand Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson with his odious Focus on the Family, so I felt some guilty pleasure when Schaeffer bashed them. But in the end I was left wondering why I should accept his utter condemnation of them when he himself was, apparently, just as bad as they were.

The first three quarters of the book, however, in which he tells the story of his childhood, adolescence, and young manhood, were well-written, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, and a thoroughly engaging read. I loved his transcriptions of his colorful mother's talks and the description of her missionary techniques. My own mother was of the very same theological tradition and had many similarities in personal style, so I frequently found myself exclaiming excitedly over things like "the gospel walnut" (we had "wordless books", essentially the same thing), the cheerful, childlike spiritual songs, and a shared vocabulary, with words like "witness" and "fellowship" having meanings unique to that particular Christian tradition. The stories about growing up in the alps and his lively rendering of the people he knew filled me with a mixture of envy and pity - what a strange, fabulous childhood he had, such a curious mixture of privilege and profound neglect. No wonder he comes off sometimes as tragically bitter, a deeply damaged man who is also a pompous spoiled brat. Still, there's much in him to like, much to feel for.

I don't agree with the fans of his father who excoriated this book, and him for writing it. I believe people who grew up with abuse have a right to speak about it, even if their parents were famous and revered figures - especially if they were famous and revered. The cult of personality is a terrible problem, not only in the conservative evangelical subculture he writes about, but everywhere. It is salutary to be reminded that your heroes have feet of clay. Me, I rejected my Calvinist upbringing a long time ago and never shared my parents' interest in Francis and Edith Schaeffer, but I actually found myself liking and sympathizing with them as I read about them. They didn't come off as wicked hypocrites, but as flawed people who nonetheless genuinely tried hard and had a lot of good in them. As their son said in this book, they were no better nor worse than most people. They do reinforce my prejudice against "professional Christians", though. Being put up on a pedestal isn't good for anyone.

I appreciated the author's humility in including letters from family and friends that sometimes disagree with him or describe him in unflattering terms. His willingness to be vulnerable in this and in his sometimes cringingly personal depictions of himself won my admiration and gave his point of view some credibility it might otherwise have lacked. Those parts weren't always easy to read, but on the whole I enjoyed the book and found it hard to put down.
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Top reviews from other countries

Victor C. van den Broek d'Obrenan
5.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting journey told with humor and pathos
Reviewed in Canada on February 17, 2014
I read the 400 pages of this enjoyable book in 2 days. Probably a record for me. I had never heard of Frank before but I had heard a little bit about his father although I had never read any of his books. I became aware of Christ in the late 70's and so that's approximately the time that L'Abri became famous. I got caught up in the Churchianity thing and was swept through various denominations up into the Word Faith movement headed up by the likes of Kenneth Copeland. I found it fascinating to read about young Frank's life in the midst of his parents love for God. Francis and Edith were a very sincere couple. They wanted the best for their faith and the people that came to the them. They appeared very non-judgmental from what young Frank describes. No one was rejected at L'Abri- Atheists, Gays, fundamentalists, liberals and all life styles in between. The elder Francis had a genuine love of art and culture in general as did Edith. They combined a love of culture and art with a fervent love for God. Their children grew up sort of dysfunctional- Americans who knew nothing about America living their young lives in Switzerland. Young Frank had polio in his leg. His loving parents did what they could but in the end Frank's life carried on and he had a limp. He does not dwell on the handicap in the book. The book describes Frank's life with his very famous parents. Although mostly home schooled he had no secondary education. He absorbed life from his surroundings. His parents were always having discussions about the relevancy of God in the modern world with the hundreds and thousands who made the pilgrimage to L'Abri- sitting in on these meetings was Frank's informal education. Frank married at age 19 and then he got involved seriously in Christianity. He was the son of a famous evangelical. It opened doors. He became a part of the conservative, religious, political right wing and later a film director directing his fathers works. Thoroughly disgusted with the hypocrisy of fundamental Christianity he discovered that he had traded his father's liberal attitude toward all things spiritual for the money hungry and hypocritical right wing. The story is gripping and poignant and in the end very sad because fame seems to have destroyed the beauty of the elder's openness and acceptance of others in exchange for the hypocrisy of Christianity. The elder Francis never locked into the Gospel yet he lived it out in his love of art and culture and the marvels of humanity's quest. I also recommend the book One by Michael Williams to read about another refugee from Christianity who found the truth in the Gospel and although he also turned away from Christianity Mike is going forward in preaching the Gospel.
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Nathanael MJ Wright
5.0 out of 5 stars You probably won't agree with all that's written and if your experience was not the same as the author's then you may well find
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 24, 2015
A fabulous must read book for anyone who has felt both the positive and negative impacts of growing up exposed to the fundamentalist religious beliefs of one's parents. As such it's a book for our times - the assault upon dogma is refreshing, the honesty at times uncomfortable. Above all the reader is treated to a narrative that feels authentic to those who grew up in a similar culture whilst being a sober reminder to those who often in all sincerity believe that religiously inspired political movements lead to a healthier society. You probably won't agree with all that's written and if your experience was not the same as the author's then you may well find some of his experiences bewildering at best. However the book will certainly make you think and I'd be surprised if you don't learn something!
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Cyberlizard
4.0 out of 5 stars Chest-baring revelations from a man on a journey
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 19, 2020
I suspect that most of us who read this book will be, or have been, readers and admirers of the work of Francis and Edith Schaeffer. Like many influential leaders, their lives and legacy may have been subject to excessive admiration, something they themselves would doubtlessly have abjured. One cannot with any integrity claim that this book falls into that category, but it is an interesting, if perhaps subjective, account of life in the Schaeffer household and beyond.

Frank Schaeffer has been accused of effectively trashing the legacy of his parents. I think that is somewhat unfair; he sets out the foibles of his parents as he saw them, but one is left in no doubt by the end of the book that he did love them both. If any criticism can more seriously be made against Francis and Edith, it is that they allowed their son (the only son of the four children, and the youngest sibling) to run a little wild, or at least not to pay more serious attention to his upbringing and education. Nevertheless Frank was given the chance of a decent schooling, but this went awry partly due to his dyslexia.

If there are any real villains in the book, they appear to be the leaders of the Christian Right in the USA who co-opted father and son for their own agenda and who are harshly portrayed here by the author. Not knowing any of them, nor living in America, perhaps I cannot comment, but it seems that towards the end of his life Francis himself was having doubts about the wisdom of their enterprise.

I give this book four stars based on the interest and the standard of writing, not because I necessarily agree with the author. It misses a star because frankly there is a little too much frankness about his sexual habits and history which some readers will probably find offputting.
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars ...he finally saw reality for what it was
Reviewed in Canada on January 2, 2010
As the title suggests this is the author's mia culpa for what he saw was his responsibility towards the creation of the '80s and '90s Christian Right movement throughout the United States. His father, the Christian icon Francis Shaeffer, would have been proud of his son's transition from a fundamentalist's fairy-tale world to one that is based on the reality that faces us all.
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Joseph Myren
5.0 out of 5 stars AWESOME
Reviewed in Canada on July 11, 2023
AWESOME