Here. His bug-a-boos seem to include Nancy Pearcey’s mentor Francis Schaeffer:
Schaeffer’s 1976 bestseller, How Should We Then Live?, chronicled the decline of the Christian west, which had flourished with God’s blessing for centuries, but was now in decline. With broad brushstrokes, our alpine sage showed us how the west had sold its soul for a mess of secular pottage and sham materialism. Schaeffer’s million-selling manifesto was made into an impressive film series, narrated by Schaeffer. Clad in his iconic Swiss leggings, with a flowing mane of white hair and trademark goatee, Schaffer took viewers to all the great cultural spots in the west to help us understand what had gone wrong. The book and film series were widely used at evangelical colleges and universities across the country.
And so? You’d think Giberson was describing a toxic suicide cult, instead of a bunch of Christian airheads, up to no real harm (or usefulness). Like, what real social problem were they ever responsible for? Which subway did they bomb? Which millions-dead civil war did they start?
Michele Bachmann told the New Yorker recently that Schaeffer had a “profound influence” on her developing worldview as a young person. Millions of evangelicals would murmur “amen” to that. I read Schaeffer and watched his film series at Eastern Nazarene College in Massachusetts in 1979 as part of a capstone general education course required of all students. (From “Growing up in Michele Bachmann’s world: Millions of evangelicals, including GOP candidates, are trapped in an alternative ‘parallel culture’ with its own standards of truth,” The Guardian, 03 October 2011)
Which is how she became a crack ho in rehab, right? Oh wait, wait, no, she’s a U.S. politician aiming at the presidency, not doing that well according to sources. But it’s early days yet, and women there usually end up as Vices or Secretaries of State, no matter what.
So … no ho, no rehab, no record? So what’s the rap against her mentor Schaeffer then?
It’s a familiar pattern. People try it in Canada too (and we won’t be surprised if Giberson does). But the audience is much less receptive because the inferiority complex is much less. Sure, the US has NASA, but who built the space shuttles’ Canadarm? It was a Canadian company’s fortune that started the Perimeter Institute for advanced theoretical physics. Canadians even built the bus the US prez famously rides around in. Etc. So hollering that the US is “anti-science” because many there doubt Darwin doesn’t go down as well in Canada as it would in Britain.
Schaeffer was a good man who helped many people avoid life’s cliffs, and that was true even for those who didn’t imbibe his theology. Giberson should be ashamed of himself, playing to the Brits’ weak spot in order to trash a compatriot – all in the name of promoting Christian Darwinism.
But perhaps Christian Darwinism has no better ideals or better spokesmen ….
Follow UD News at Twitter!