Marvin Olasky points out Frank Schaeffer's shameful blog posting about the death of Chuck Colson:
The Chuck Colson obituary that Schaeffer posted on his blog Sunday, though, is truly extraordinary, and I don’t see what purpose his fulmination-from-afar serves. The obit memorably begins, “Evangelical Christianity lost one of its most beloved and bigoted homophobic and misogynistic voices with the death of Charles W. ‘Chuck’ Colson, a Watergate felon who converted to ‘evangelicalism’ but never lost his taste for dirty political tricks against opponents.”
Olasky doesn't mention the serial attacks by Schaeffer - the scion to an influential Evangelical family - on Catholicism and on Colson for daring - daring! - to attempt to reconcile Catholics and Evangelicals based on shared moral values, which one would normally call A Good Thing.
Schaeffer also goes after the late Father Richard Neuhaus and Professor Peter Kreeft for daring to participate in this project.
Frank Schaeffer is a one man model for how the wedge strategy is supposed to work. Schaeffer started out as a well-known son of a 60's Evangelical leader, but in the last few years he has been seeking salvation by trashing evangelicals and conservatives and by finding acceptance among the tolerant left. Here is what he has to offer on the subject of Chuck Colson's death:
Evangelical Christianity lost one of its most beloved and bigoted homophobic and misogynistic voices with the death of Charles W. “Chuck” Colson, a Watergate felon who converted to “evangelicalism” but never lost his taste for dirty political tricks against opponents.
Colson was a vocal far right leader who tried to fill my late father’s religious right leadership (Francis Schaeffer) shoes by borrowing material from his books, even repeating one of Dad’s book titles as if he (Colson) was writing a sequel.
Colson had his “books” ghost written by Harold Fickett and other writers, some of whom like Fickett (who I worked with closely many years ago) used to complain to me almost daily about what an egomaniac Colson was to work for and how he did all he could to hide the fact that his work was written by others while rarely sharing credit.
Colson teamed up with far right Roman Catholic activist Professor Robert George of Princeton to launch the dirty tricks campaign to brand President Obama as “anti-religious” with Colson’s and George’s “Manhattan Declaration.” This was a trap they set for the administration that finally paid off when they talked a number of bishops into branding Obama as anti-religious because he wanted women to have access to contraception even if they worked for Roman Catholic controlled institutions.
Colson worked closely with various right wing Roman Catholic bishops to launch the current Republican Party war on women and gays in the name of “religious freedom” having become one of the chief practitioners of the evangelical/far right myths of victimhood at the hands of left wing media, colleges etc., etc. Colson was also a key figure in organizing the Prop 8 anti-gay marriage California iniatives. Colson was a key figure in calling the depriving of women of insurance coverage for contraception a religious “civil liberties” issue and provided evangelical cover for the Roman Catholic bishops’ misogynist bigotry.
So, there you go. If you don't accept Schaeffer's views, if you simply think that marriage is an institution profoundly and inextricably linked in its basic principles to "making babies," and you think that calling something "marriage" which can never be about "making babies" should be opposed democratically, well, then you are "right wing" and a bad, bad person.
Schaeffer's screed is filled with "wedge strategy" material. It is in fact a vicious, hate-filled attack on Catholicism and those Catholics who choose to side with their faith rather than with the passing ideology.
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