On Sunday I preached about doubt, and on Monday, as if by providence, my friend Frank Schaeffer sent me an electronic review copy of his newly-released book, Why I am an Atheist who Believes in God.
Frank is the child of Francis and Edith Schaeffer, who were among the most influential Evangelical Protestant leaders of the 20th century. Based in Switzerland, where they served as missionaries and ran a retreat center, the Schaeffers helped to create a “culture warrior” culture within American evangelicalism, by convincing American Evangelicals that they should become politically active around issues such as abortion and so-called “family values.” As such, Francis and Edith Schaeffer were founders of what we now call the “Religious Right,” and as a young man my friend Frank was right in the thick of things.
Frank was an artist and a filmmaker whose work—especially in film—helped spread his parents’ politically active Evangelicalism across the United States. Together with his parents he enjoyed the company of political leaders such as Ronald Reagan, the extended Bush Family, and Jack Kemp; and he hobnobbed with conservative Christian leaders such as Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell.
But sometime in the 1980’s Frank turned his back on the religious right. He moved to Hollywood and made some movies that were (by his own admission) pretty bad. He converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church and eventually started writing. In the years since then he’s written on a wide variety of topics. He’s written novels (including the delightful trilogy comprised of Portofino, Zermatt and Saving Grandma), he’s written memoirs about his childhood and about the loving but often strained relationship he had with his parents (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 is especially powerful). And now he’s written Why I am an Atheist who Believes in God, which I’m about halfway through, and which makes what I think is an important point: no one is ever just a theist, an agnostic or an atheist. Those are the categories of belief (or lack thereof) that we use to categorize ourselves and others, but almost no one fits neatly into one of those three categories all of the time.
As someone who doubts, I am not just a believer. Sometimes I’m an agnostic, and I even have a little bit of experience being an atheist, and that’s why I’m enjoying Frank’s book so much. In Frank Schaeffer, we have an author with the necessary creativity, honesty and courage to say what is plainly true: humans don’t fit neatly into categories. We change over time and our lives frequently are marked by paradox, irony, and inconsistency.
What I love about Montclair Presbyterian Church is that we welcome the messiness of human spirituality. No one ever is forced into a particular category. A person can stop being a believer and become an agnostic, or she can set aside atheism in favor of belief, or he can be both and agnostic and an atheist, or an atheist and a believer, or maybe there’s another yet-to-be-dreamed-up set of categories that better defines us. Either way, I’m glad to be here.
Incidentally, if you’re interested in reading Frank’s book it should be available to order through your favorite independent bookstore, or on Amazon in paper or in pixels. If you read the book and like it, let’s talk. Maybe a group of us could get together to discuss what Frank has to say.