Frank Schaeffer > Quotes

“The problem with the evangelical homeschool movement was not their desire to educate their children at home, or in private religious schools, but the evangelical impulse to "protect" children from ideas that might lead them to "question" and to keep them cloistered in what amounted to a series of one-family gated communities.”
― Frank Schaeffer, 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

“I'd be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty." Yes, and perhaps that's the only honest place to be. Another name for uncertainty is humility. No one ever blew up a mosque, church, or abortion clinic after yelling, "I could be wrong.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway

“What's the point of quoting the Bible to people who don't believe it's true" Dad would say.”
― Frank Schaeffer, 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

“...evangelicalism is not not so much a religion as a series of fast-moving personality cults.”
― Frank Schaeffer, 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

“People are not as one-dimensional as the stories about them.”
― Frank Schaeffer, 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

“Maybe we need a new category other than theism, atheism or agnosticism that takes paradox and unknowing into account.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“We’re living in an acquisitive capitalist society that is fundamentally anti-family and fundamentally uncomfortable with just enjoying being human. We’d rather shop than live, acquire than love and stare into a screen than hold each other.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“we must renounce reading the Bible to find arguments to justify our behavior or that of our group.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“Scientists and theologians can’t offer better than circular arguments, because there are no other kinds of arguments. Bible believers quote the Bible, and scientists quote other scientists. How do either scientists or theologians answer this question about the accuracy of their conclusions: “In reference to what?”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“As an ultimate fuck you to rule-keeping scripture zealots everywhere, Jesus hung out with whores.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“You don't choose anything important. It just happens. The only choice you have is if you'll make life's accidents work.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics--and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway

“Mean People Suck!” And that goes especially for people who are mean in the name of love.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“Fewer than 5 percent of Danes attend church. In godless Denmark, the national government funds a high quality education for all children, rich and poor alike, while in God-fearing America, education is funded through local property taxes, so neighborhood and income dictate a child’s educational opportunities. Add in race and ethnicity factors to create a perfectly stratified school system segregated by educational opportunity.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“If we wait for correct ideas to save us—theological or otherwise—we’ll never be saved, even from ourselves.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“Somewhere between the sterile, absolute, and empty formulae of reductionist, totalitarian science and the earnest, hostile, excessively certain make-believe of religious fundamentalism, there is a beautiful place. There is room in this place for honesty. For tenderness. For fury. For wonder. For hope. For mistakes. For paradox. For grace.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“Those of us raised in the Christian tradition need to choose to either see God in Jesus or to continue to let the Bible define God. Our tradition says that Jesus is God. Maybe we should act as if we think he is instead of worshipping a book. Maybe we should be brave enough to admit that we are compelled to either become blinded ideologues or we need to forthrightly pick and choose what we follow in the Bible. Most Christians do that anyway, many just don’t admit it.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“Jesus certainly was not a “Bible believer,” as we use that term in the post Billy Graham era of American fundamentalist religiosity that’s used as a trade-marked product to sell religion. Jesus didn’t take the Jewish scriptures at face value. In fundamentalist terms, Jesus was a rule-breaking relativist who wasn’t even “saved,” according to evangelical standards. Evangelicals insist that you have to believe very specific interpretations of the Bible to be saved. Jesus didn’t. He undercut the scriptures.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“every time Jesus mentioned the Torah, he qualified it with something like this: “The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…” I should have said, “Jesus undermined the inerrancy of the scriptures in favor of his version of pragmatic empathy!” or “Every time Jesus undermined the scriptures it was to err on the side of nonjudgmental co-suffering love. So up yours,”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“Our tradition says that Jesus is God. Maybe we should act as if we think he is instead of worshipping a book.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“We now send our books, our music and even our memories into a cloud. We may or may not believe in God but we do once again believe in meaningful consciousness residing outside of ourselves.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“On all levels and in every aspect of our society, the poor are rejected, mistreated, and forced more deeply into their poverty. Christianity should have taken up the cause of the poor; better yet, it should have identified with the poor. Instead, during almost the entire course of its history, the Church has served as a prop of the powerful and has been on the side of exploiters and states”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“Faith is certainly not theology to me. Church is just one of the places I look for answers to the only real question I have: Why do we long for meaning? For”
― Frank Schaeffer, 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

“Our best hope is not found in correct theology, the Bible or any other book, but in the love we express through action rather than words. Our best hope is that love predates creation and thus that the Creator sees us as ever young. Our hope is that when we look at God through the eyes of the loving Christ we will see who God really is. Our ultimate hope is that God will be looking back at us as we’d like to be seen.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“God’s only in your head!” my answer is, “Yeah, whatever. What isn’t?”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“Dad and Mom had a lesbian couple living in our chalet for several years in the early 1970s. One was Dad’s secretary, the other Mom’s helper. They shared a room. Fortunately, my parents were hypocritical and acted as if, no matter their official religious absolutes, the higher call was to ignore what the Bible said in favor of what they hoped it meant. Thus, without ever saying it, it seems to me my parents were affirming that the Bible should be read as if Jesus was the only lens through which to see God. The result was that Francis and Edith Schaeffer were nicer than their official theology.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“America still sees itself as essential and as destiny’s instrument. And each splinter group within our culture—left, right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular—sees itself as morally, even “theologically,” superior to its rivals. It is not just about politics. It is about being better than one’s evil opponent. We don’t just disagree, we demonize the “other.” And we don’t compromise.”
― Frank Schaeffer, 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

“Christianity should have taken up the cause of the poor; better yet, it should have identified with the poor. Instead, during almost the entire course of history, the Church has served as a prop of the powerful and has been on the side of exploiters and states.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to Give Love, Create Beauty and Find Peace

“Neuropsychology and religion are not the point. The point is that Genie walks into a clean house, and there are flowers. And that is in spite of the fact I have sometimes treated her horribly. I say the words “I love you.” I know I mean them though because I take half a day to clean, to shop for flowers, to think about taking Genie to bed, to experience a flutter of anticipation as she walks out of the airport concourse and I see her again. Yet while waiting for her there I’ve been casually watching a flight attendant’s ass. I’ve been a saint and sinner, a jerk and a better man than I once was, loved by my wife, children and grandchildren, yet sometimes still a tyrant.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow,”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

“Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Christian, you are that because of where and when you were born. If you are an atheist, you are that because of a book or two you read, or who your parents were and the century in which you were born. Don’t delude yourself: there are no good reasons for anything, just circumstances. Don’t delude yourself: you may describe yourself to others by claiming a label of atheist, Jew, evangelical, gay or straight but you know that you are really lots more complicated than that, a gene-driven primate and something more. Want to be sure you have THE TRUTH about yourself and want to be consistent to that truth? Then prepare to go mad. Or prepare to turn off your brain and cling to some form or other of fundamentalism, be that religious or secular.”
― Frank Schaeffer, Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace