why does god not need protection?
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Growing up in the evangelical heartland of America, Grand Rapids, Michigan, I came to believe that the highest calling to which one might aspire was apologetics ninja. That is to say, I thought that protecting God from the predations of the faceless hordes of the godless through the proper application of a badass theological smack down occupied the most enviable sphere of Christian vocation. I so wanted to be Batman with a bullet–a suitably cross-shaped bullet, to be sure, but a bullet nevertheless.
There was, of course, Josh McDowell, who criss-crossed the country applying the intellectual hammerlock for Jesus, beating atheists into submission. Evidence that demands not only a verdict, but a frightened cry of “uncle” from those people who’d been giving God such a difficult time with their fancy scientific and philosophical trickery.
And while every self-respecting frontline warrior for Jesus had a dog-eared copy of Josh McDowell’s books, the real gold standard was Francis Schaeffer. I had a library of a couple thousand volumes by the time I was in Bible college, but my prize possession was the rainbow colored five volume Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, the sub-title suggesting its comprehensive ambitions: A Christian Worldview. Francis Schaeffer didn’t just give “pithy ripostes for every occasion”; he talked about art and culture, about Kant and Kierkegaard. In many ways, I considered Francis Schaeffer’s work the apotheosis of Christian intellectualism, largely because I thought he met the atheists on their home turf … and pwned the pretenders.
I’ve changed over time. I no longer recognize Evangelicalism’s claims of theological coherence when it comes to so many issues -- Biblical inerrancy, the exclusion of LGBT people, the lack of focus on issues of justice and poverty, and so on. Moreover, I’ve long since abandoned any pretense that God needs my protection from the heathen forces of the irreligious, which would necessitate a branch of Christian knowledge called “apologetics.” (In fact, I’ve long since abandoned the idea that there could even be a taxonomy of knowledge rendered intelligible by the use of “Christian” as an adjective rather than a noun.)
Which confession of my own departure from Evangelicalism brings me to the departure of another one of Evangelicalism’s favorite sons--Frank Schaeffer. Yeah, the Schaeffer boy. Francis A. Schaeffer’s son.
Frank Schaeffer talks about his exodus from the spotlight of the Evangelical center stage as a young man in his memoir, Crazy for God. But his latest book, Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God, focuses on, what appears at first blush to be, the opposite ends of the spectrum: Fundamentalism and the New Atheism. In these two traditionally opposing forces Schaeffer sees shocking similarities.
Now the idea that the stridency of the New Atheism of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins appears to many as merely an instantiation of Fundamentalism without the benefit of God isn’t a new claim. Terry Eagleton, for example, makes this case in a pointed and witty way in his book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution. But instead of spending much time on the grating nature of totalizing claims, Schaeffer paints a softened watercolor picture of the mystery of a universe that eludes the stark primary colors of either the Fundamentalists or the New Atheists