I know I'm getting to this book a little late, but Frank Schaeffer is an interesting person that I've only recently developed a kind of admiration for, even if he is a believer (not that it's any skin off my nose, but I encourage my fellow unbelievers not to hold it against him if they were so inclined.) His book, rather prodigiously-titled: 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 a surprisingly honest book, a modern Apologia per Vita Sua, and really funny and entertaining in places. So, even though it's been out a few years--it's new to me, and I'm going to recommend it.
I became acquainted with Frank Schaeffer by reading his entries to Huffington Post. Not having the least interest in the evangelical right except when they are actively pissing me off (this generally seems to have been Falwell and Robertson's job, and sometimes Dobson's) I really did not know about Franky Schaeffer before he became cool and just a bit liberal. But I paid attention to what he always, and I mean always, describes himself as:
As a person who, with his father, aided if not founded the Christian Right through his evangelism and support of the pro-life cause. Which always sounded to me like : "Forgive me oh Libs, because I've been a sinner." It's an honest confession, and this book has the flavor of an honest confession, too. It's a bit weird, but then, his upbringing was weird.
By weird, I think I'm saying he was brought up in an unorthodox way in a family with an orthodox faith (he later became Greek Orthodox--life can be terribly circular, that way.) Despite that upbringing, in a faith that has become sometimes synonymous with "narrowness", by his "crazy for God" parents, who he depicts with flaws and "saving graces" well intact, he somehow retained an open mind and an open heart, as well as a love for art and music and film. He speaks movingly of his father's love of art, and his mother's fascination, in her old age, with the art of dance that she rejected in favor of serving the Lord when she was young. I detected sarcasm and elitism against the faith of his youth for its rejection of the beauty of man-created things--
And since I share that bias, I liked him terribly for sharing it. As I like him for sharing this memoir.
Where I've read some reviews that dwell a bit on his inclusion of ruminations regarding his early sexuality (especially about wanking) as being inappropriate, as well as the frankness with which he was exposed, as a boy among sisters, to discussions of female business, I actually appreciated those parts as being yet more honesty.
I enjoyed this book. As a writer, Schaeffer is blunt at times, and turns a phrase to good effect. He's idiosyncratic in certain ways--I can get how he might not have been a great screenwriter. But as a memoirist--he knows his subject matter pretty well. And he shines at times, especially in the ways he honors his parents while still admitting things were pretty screwed up for him, and because right now, he is a really spot-on commentator regarding the religious right. I think the things he says are valuable.
It was a very good read.
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