by Sandy » Thu Feb 27, 2014 2:32 pm
Regardless of the research, Worthen's own perspective and position makes any evaluation she makes of Francis Shaeffer biased. It is easy to pick up on that, but I think Stephen exaggerates her position somewhat. As his reviewer friend Roger Olson says, "She's weak in offering practical advice to Evangelicals." The religious left and intellectual elites hate Shaeffer with a passion because he was an intellectual with well-supported arguments against their philosophical and religious positions, and his prolific writing was a major contribution to the solidifying and unifying of the branch of American Protestantism known as the Conservative Evangelical movement. The unfortunate side of that is that he gets the blame for a lot of things that developed that he didn't really have anything to do with, such as dominionism and reconstructionism, and he gets accused of supporting and fanning the flames of the threads and strains of anti-intellectualism among Evangelicals. But he was pretty up front, and to his credit, those who met him face to face didn't find any of that to be true. To call him a demagogue is to exhibit a complete lack of knowledge of his approach and work, or a level of resentment and bias that disqualifies you from making an evaluation, or just ignorance of the definition of the word. That falls in the same category as accusing W.A. Criswell of involvement in the masterminding of the Kennedy assassination, or of the "serious danger" that Billy Graham's legacy is in.
Instead of posting the usual list of names, why don't you answer a question? How many of Shaeffer's books have you read, and which ones?