Frank Schaeffer

The conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition is in the middle of a three-day "conference and strategy briefing" in Washington, D.C., which proved to be a sufficient justification for MSNBC's Martin Bashir to bring back anti-conservative-Christian hatemonger Frank Schaeffer to denounce the meeting as essentially a congress of an American Christian Taliban.

"I think what you have to understand when you look at the religious right in action these days is that they speak in Orwellian doublespeak. They say the opposite of what they mean. They talk about faith and freedom, the conference should really be called Politics and Bondage," Schaeffer, the prodigal son of the late famous evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer snarled. [MP3 audio here; video is posted after the page break]

He's compared conservatives to radical Hindus and Islamists, called the Tea Party the "racist white bloc" of the GOP, and compared evangelicals to the Taliban, so naturally Huffington Post writer Frank Schaeffer was the perfect guest for Martin Bashir to bring on the May 2 edition of his eponymous program to discuss the importance of religious "faith as an issue" in the 2012 general election campaign.

Schaeffer toned down his rhetoric a tad bit from previous excursions on the "Lean Forward" network, but he still managed to work in grotesquely misleading and hateful slams of evangelicals and conservative Catholics.

The ongoing panic and paranoia about the Fundamentalist Menace continues with Frank Schaeffer and liberal media outlets. On Thursday, he appeared on the Ed Schultz radio show with guest host and trial lawyer Mike Papantonio, who tried to freshen up the fright-wig dialogue by bringing up the assassination of Abe Lincoln: "The South got pulled into the Civil War over religious politics. They murdered Abraham Lincoln, the people that murdered Abraham Lincoln under that conspiracy. They were zealot nuts."

When they talked about Byron York's question to Michele Bachmann in the Iowa debate if she was "submissive" to her husband, Schaeffer compared conservative Christian Republicans such as Perry and Bachmann to "fundamentalist" Muslims and Hindus who murder in the name of their religion:

Left-wing media outlets are really eating out of former Christian evangelist Frank Schaeffer's hands as he paints Michele Bachmann as the outer fringe of the fringe, and "anti-American." On the radical-left yet taxpayer-subsidized Pacifica Radio show Democracy Now on Wednesday, host Amy Goodman encouraged Schaeffer to unfurl charges that Bachmann was somehow comparable to Ayatollah Khomeini and Kim Jong Il -- two-thirds of Bush's Axis of Evil countries -- and somehow, an outdated believer in Bronze Age mythology.

Pacifica touted his latest article on the lefty site Alternet, titled "Are Michele Bachmann’s Views about 'Christian Submission' Even More Extreme than She’s Letting On?"

MSNBC on Friday featured liberal religious expert Frank Schaeffer to slam the "racist white bloc" of Tea Party Republicans who won't allow Barack Obama to succeed. Martin Bashir guest host Jonathan Capehart interviewed the author about religion and the 2012 GOP presidential nominees.

Schaeffer, whose father was the late evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer, smeared, "You have genuine fanatics, sincere about their belief like Michele Bachmann, who got into politics because she read my father's books in the 1980s when she was at ORU, Oral Roberts Law School."

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Frank Schaeffer -- the embittered liberal progeny of the late evangelical Christian scholar Francis Schaeffer -- appeared on MSNBC's "Martin Bashir" program this afternoon where he availed himself the opportunity to spew forth more venom against American evangelicals, who tend to vote for conservative Republicans.

Schaeffer was ostensibly brought on to react to new polling data that show 56 percent of Americans believe it's important for presidential candidates to have strong religious beliefs, even if those beliefs don't square with the voter's personal views.

In the process of the interview, Schaeffer indirectly compared evangelical Christians to the Taliban as he slammed "faith-based politics" (emphasis mine):

Frank Schaeffer has gaudily departed from the evangelical Christian family he was raised in, and how writes hair-on-fire articles about the dangers of the radical religious right. Last week, we found him warning on MSNBC of how Michele Bachmann represents a “theocracy in waiting” from people “who actually hate the United States as it is.”

Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post thinks Schaeffer’s new book Sex, Mom & God deserved a rave review in the Sunday paper, and went to find author Jane Smiley, who once wrote that Ann Coulter’s parents should be ashamed of themselves and that “Americans aren't nice or decent people, and conservative, overtly patriotic Americans are even less decent and less nice.”

In a segment on the religiosity of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, MSNBC's Richard Lui on Wednesday looked to an author who has smeared conservative Christians as "radical," weird individuals who "hate" America.

The guest host for Martin Bashir interviewed Frank Schaeffer, a blogger on the liberal Huffington Post website and also a constant critic of the religious right. Schaeffer, the son of a conservative theologian, excoriated conservatives: "But, I came to understand that these people actually hate the United States as it is."

Author Frank Schaeffer, son of the late prominent theologian Francis Schaeffer, can't seem to find anything good about evangelical Christians.

In his latest blog on the Huffington Post, Schaeffer criticized evangelicals' support of Israel. "Some of the nuttiest American religious leaders today (and in the past) have latched on to one form or another of Christian Zionism," he said.

"To put it mildly, the evangelical theological/biblical ‘reasons' have deformed US policy and made America act against self interest," Schaeffer wrote. "This has also harmed the state of Israel."

Schaeffer suggested that so-called Christian Zionists "would rather see an innocent Jewish or Palestinian child blown up in a rocket attack as long as the ‘Promised Land' is ‘fully reclaimed' to fulfill their harebrained ideas of biblical prophecy."

Huffington Post blogger, Frank Schaeffer, has been trying to eradicate elements of the right for quite some time.  Katie Bell had a great post on Monday covering his recent call to ‘eradicate' fundamental Christianity. 

It's no secret that Schaeffer is very critical of religious elements in society.  But on a side note, were you aware that he is a former member of the religious right?  Apparently making mention of such information gives him street cred with the non-religious left.  He mentions it nearly every time he opens his mouth.   Take a drink every time Schaeffer mentions his past participation in the religious right, and you're sure to be hammered in no time.

Not content with attacking the religious right, Schaeffer has also made a career of attacking the conservative voice in general.  Last year, he penned a column so bereft of facts that even the Huffington Post should have been embarrassed by the content.  More troublesome is that this particular post included the pronouncement of a new Web site campaign that is wrong on two fronts:  It incorrectly predicts the rise of violence perpetrated by the ‘far right' (anyone who dares to oppose Barack Obama), and it specifically labels conservative talk show hosts Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck as ‘domestic terrorists'.

Schaeffer states in his October 5, 2009 column that, "The extremism and paranoid delusions of the far, far loony right -- in other words The Republican Party today as led and deformed by Beck/Limbaugh/Fox and the fundamentalist "Christians" --- is now on full display."

It takes a breathtaking lack of self-awareness, or selective amnesia, or just bald hypocrisy for the left-wing blogosphere to speculate on the cause of “right-wing hatemongering.” But there it was on Sept. 21 – an article asserting that the “anti-Obama hyperventilating” was the result of … Christianity.

Appearing on Alternet.org, Frank Schaeffer’s “Right-Wing Hatemongering Fueled by Christianity?” suggested that resistance to the Obama program comes from “the ugliest side of religion.”

“The fact is,” wrote Schaeffer, “that if you're going to blame one group above all others for the willful ignorance and continuing ugliness of the response to President Obama the best candidate would be the evangelical/fundamentalist community.”

Schaeffer wrote that former president Jimmy Carter was correct when he recently asserted that racism was behind the passionate anti-Obama reaction. But Carter fell short in not explicitly linking that racism to his own religion – Evangelical Christianity. “The angry part of the South Carter spoke of is racist because it's dominated by a certain type of ‘Christian’ culture,” Schaeffer wrote.