The Huckabee Win Is America's Loss

Mike Huckabee wants to be our president. He doesn't know about foreign policy. But he believes every word of the Southern Baptist interpretation of the Bible. Here is what he believes. God is angry with us and has always been. He was pissed off with us from day one. He was so pissed off that He wrestled with making a choice between killing all of us in a flood or saving just one family -- Noah's -- so that later God could sacrifice His only Son to save everyone descended from the one family he didn't kill and/or send them to hell for eternity. God did this because Adam and Eve, not to mention Noah's great, great grandchildren-that's you and me-didn't live up to God's pre-creation expectations. Cheerful, huh?

I was raised by fundamentalist missionary parents. My life has been one of all-consuming faith, not my faith, but the faith of others that I seem to have caught like a disease. What does God want? I'm still trying to find out. And having once been a famous "professional Christian" myself (until I cut and ran in 1985) my vision is muddied by the psychological baggage I carry.

The problem is Huckabee is sincere. So are the people who voted for him. I understand where they are coming from all too well. Every action, every thought, every moment is judged by an inner voice. Everything seems to have a moral component.

This election recalls the time I was involved in my own crusade, not for the presidency, but for the hearts and minds of the evangelicals my late father (Francis Schaeffer) and I were succeeding in politicizing, as we turned them into ardent pro-lifers. That crusade involved sell-out crowds in Madison Square Garden and all over the country.

I was a zealous evangelical back in the 1970s. When you are a zealous anything -- evangelical, Marxist, feminist, capitalist, Democrat, Republican, whatever-you express your zeal by lying. The lie is always the same lie: to say that you're certain about things, that you are right, and others wrong. They are so wrong that they are evil! This is a lie because truth is elusive. Nothing is as simple as any zealot, of any persuasion, thinks it is.

I've lived to bitterly regret the part I played in galvanizing the political energies of the evangelicals who soon morphed into the so-called religious right, the same people we just saw holding hands and beseeching Jesus to help their candidate save America from the rest of us. Looking back it seems to me that it was something like unlocking the doors to a slow-motion civil war, actually more like the doors to an insane asylum.

I've quit believing in ideological, let alone theological, purity. We guess. We hope. We muddle along. But there are no theological ideas worth hating anyone over. And if you understand vengeful Southern Baptist theology you won't want anyone near the White House who takes it seriously.

We've been here before. (Remember Pat Robertson?) Mike Huckabee will fade, because most Americans are more or less sane. But as he fades he'll take a little more of our self-respect with him.

The way to destroy harmony is to be too sure. I know. I understand how destructive it is to have a message you just have to impose on people even when you know it might ruin friendships, even when it might help rip a country apart. Been-there-done-that.

Nevertheless... in one dark little corner of my brain I still wish all the "lost" would get "saved." And there are lots of other religious Americans like me. We might say we theoretically want to all get along, but on the way there we'd also like to sandbag everyone with our message.

But wanting to "convert" each other is not the way to build any sort of a sense of all being Americans together. And the basis of the whole Southern Baptist raison d'etre is aggressive evangelization.

Huckabee represents the half of us who are waiting for Jesus to "rapture" us and believe that the other half are second class citizens that God is just biding His time to gleefully destroy and torture for eternity. Thanks but no thanks Iowa.

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of, "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."

Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer

Comments

[Qbear]

MotherHucker will never know the pleasure of putting People With AIDS in CAMP trains and cutting the funds for the meds we need to live.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-8/1210139/chucklesAIDS.jpg

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-8/1210139/huckatrain.jpg

Cuz one or the other of us won't be breathing.

[ljsfolly]

What those like hucks believe is that somehow they are they chosen few and they will be the ones watching us from hell while they kick it in heaven. I think hell is a made up place by man to control man and that huck and other like him will have their day but the bible has a place in the library not the elected offices of man. Beliefs and religion are a personal choice that we have been given free will to make. I do not nor have ever thought that those who thump loudest are the most correct as we have seen in fact that more times than not the loudest thumper is the most evil or corrupt with the indiscretions blasted out at us when the downfall happens. The Hucks scare me not as who they are but what they represent. FEAR. They use the bible to force upon week minded or lazy people their beliefs so they can manipulate them to their will. I just hope that the balance returns to us in this country and reason prevails.

[captcoyote]

Wow, what a fantastic post. I read one of your father's books when I too was part of "the movement." I too have mellowed out some. I feel like I know exactly where you are coming from and it really speaks to me. Thank you for your contribution in this dialogue. I hope others listen too.

[Taan]

From their actions, it's clear that not one bible-toting so-called Christian can pass the foundational admonitions of their own religious text: Love thy neighbor. Do unto others. And judge not.
Not one current candidate could have reached this stage by adhering to these three simple rules.

[desmirl]

Religion--­especially fundamentalist religion--demands total credulity in its practitioners. But maybe not in its evangelists. One has to wonder at the hidden cynicism of most evangelists, and beware of allowing these people into positions of leadership.

[JCali]

For years, I lived in Dover, PA where a group of evangelicals took control of a school board (you may have heard about it. It was in all the papers...) After living through that debacle, I firmly believe that those with closely-held evangelical Christian beliefs do not have the rational thought-capacity to hold a public office. In a nutshell, Evangelicals are not competent candidates.

[Lt]

these evangelicals brought us GW Bush, the Bush crime family, Reagan, homelessness, the war in Iraq,
Do we really want another one of these nut cases in the White House???????????

Remember how the faith based BRIBE bought the mindless christian vote and begot BUSH

[Hollyse]

Of the Cross and By the Cross to me doesn't have the same referencing nor appeal. Huckabee's running 'his state' is one thing, but not 50 states. Within four years this country won't be states but referenced as terrotories or districts. Why play to the choir when we can play to the entire church! So much for 'branding white light' for symbolism over substance' as we received our first lesson to subliminal language by Huckabee's doctor's-c­ure-all...­the cross...th­e pastor's freebie message to correction and salvation in his "vote for me" ad along with the trite saying, I'm so and so and I approve this message. I prefer being with Jesus as He and I look face to face than down at me from the cross. Huckabee hopefully will have a copy of the USA Constitution along with the bible in each hotel room and not the Patriot Act or Presidential Signing Papers. Many a man wrestles with the concept of God on the Cross or the God in the White House!

[LeoMarvin]

Not that I'd vote for Huckabee, but which of the other Republican candidates would you prefer? Because from where I sit, he's the least objectionable of the lot. Is that damning with faint praise? Absolutely, but last I checked we don't get to tell them they have to nominate Dennis Kucinich. So the question remains, which of the available choices would you prefer they pick?

[nomobull]

all the gop candidates frighten me the more I learn about them

[sarge]

Amen!

[OtayPanky]

I'm not a Christian, Frank - though I was a long time ago, and read your dad's stuff.

So I'll tell it to you straight: You're still the same annoying guy you were before.

You're still dealing in certainty - only from the other side of the street.

I don't care that Huckabee is a born-again Christian who believes in the Bible the way you used to. I care how he ran his state.

Grow up, already, and get over it.

[maddogbitesback]

I never thought their could be anyone more frightening than G.W. Bush but Huckabee is.

There is something vicious in the hearts of the evangelicals. They belie the Christian message. So the rest of the world stands by in amazement at the idiotic religiosity of Americans who vote to save a single cell and leave children to die in the richest country in the world. Their own poor deserve what they get and the rich deserve tax breaks. The sinners are the evangelicals and the fundamentalists. They may have faith but they sure don't have charity and their is little hope unless you get on board the train they are riding to hell.