Pinchbeck speaks with Frank Schaeffer, son of the evangelical missionaries Francis and Edith Schaeffer, who helped build the religious right in the 1970s and 1980s through films and books before repudiating it in his memoir Crazy for God. Schaeffer describes working alongside Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, Pat Robertson and the 700 Club, and Billy Graham, and making the film series with his father and C. Everett Koop that politicized American evangelicalism. He explains why he keeps being called back to explain Christian nationalism, and why he wrote the introduction to a book on confronting Christofascism. The conversation opens with his account of a memorial at which a widow publicly forgave her husband's killer while the leader who followed her declared he hates his enemies, which Schaeffer calls unparalleled sacrilege.
Guest: Frank Schaeffer
In brief
- Schaeffer argues that contemporary Christian nationalism cannot be understood without the 1970s and 1980s film and book campaign he made with his father, Francis Schaeffer, and C. Everett Koop.
- He describes himself as an expert witness to a crime who keeps being recalled to testify, since he is one of very few movement insiders who left and became persona non grata.
- Schaeffer treats the memorial scene, in which the widow's forgiveness was immediately followed by a leader announcing that he hates his enemies, as an act of sacrilege without precedent in American politics.
- His new book The Gospel of Zip uses his dog as a frame for Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods's argument in Survival of the Friendliest that human success rests on cooperation rather than competition.
- He presents the current political philosophy as the direct antithesis of the survival-of-the-friendliest thesis.
- Schaeffer is releasing the full audiobook of The Gospel of Zip free on YouTube alongside the paid edition, framing the giveaway as deliberately unlike his evangelical past.
Full text
for someone not raised in that environment to stand up in a memorial for someone who's been killed where the widow is saying they are trying to follow Jesus Christ by forgiving the killer and then smile and say, "Yeah, but I hate my enemies." It's basically like standing up in church and pissing on the altar. You're going to hear about this on judgment day because you cannot go with that. You can't have a widow forgiving her enemy as Jesus told us to do and two minutes later your leader saying, "Yeah, but I hate my enemies and I'm going after them." There's a moment of sacrilege there that is unparalleled in the history of American politics. Hey everybody. Uh today I'm delighted to be here with Frank Schaefer who was a son of uh American evangelical missionaries Francis and Eith Schaefer.
Uh and he was very much involved the religious right in the 70s making films, writing books, speaking at churches and um then he went through a kind of I guess uh internal process of self-reflection and and kind of shifted his worldview I think. Were you in the Marines also and all that stuff? Oh, but you're you're close because one of my three children was in the Marine Corps and at the beginning of the Afghan war and then he got out in 205. So we experienced the the military family tensions and fears of that period of our history which as you remember from 911 onward was pretty fraught. Absolutely.
And you published an autobiography which I think was like a bestseller, right? Crazy for God. Yes, it was. Yeah, I did. Crazy for God is a memoir about coming out of the evangelical right and my change of mind. And then um uh you know that got a lot of attention and and is actually used in the textbook in a lot of universities in both history and also the history of religion and that kind of thing because I was a fly on the wall and knew personally and worked with all the people most folks only heard about like Jerry Fwell, the Mari Majority, Pat Robertson, the 700 Club, the Reverend Billy Graham the Evangelist.
all these people who in the 60s,7s and 80s were really the backbone of the evangelical movement that then became more and more politicized mostly because of the work of my father Francis Schaefer and the film series he and I made together uh also along with Sever Coup who became Ronald Reagan surgeon general. So for about a 10 to 15 year period as a young man starting in my early 20s I was not only involved with but also observing what was happening and then we can talk about you know why I left and and Crazy for God the memoir really details that but it has meant that during the Trump period uh especially early in the first term you know I was always talking to people like Rachel Matto and everybody else uh that you can think of from MSNBC or or CNN or whomever because they would call me to try to find out h, you know, how do we understand this? Why are white evangelicals voting for this guy when he's thrice divorced and accused of rape and all the rest? And so I found myself caught back in this weird media loop that I thought, you know, had Hillary been elected, to put it that way, um, you know, I I would I would be out of that. So, I'm 73 and still talking about stuff that happened in the 1970s and ' 80s more than ever because this whole Christian nationalism idea and all this other stuff comes out of that era and you can't really understand it unless you go back and and think about this.
So, I'm sort of in this loop uh when it comes to my writing and talking and media appearances um that has very little to do with the novels I've written like Portoino and other things. I've earned my living as a writer, some of which have been quite successful. But I find that when it comes to a lot of the things we're talking about, um, you know, the impact of what I was involved with 50 years ago, I've lived long enough for that to become the main story ripped from the headlines right this minute as we speak. So it's a it's a kind of a weird twilight existence when it comes to those subjects for me because emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, philosophically, I'm 40 years out of that movement, right? So, I'm not there anymore, you know.
However, having said that, having been both a player as a young man, an epotistic sidekick to my dad on one hand, and an observer, and now in hindsight, an observer as in what happened to me? Why did I change? And then what's happened to the movement? Um, you know, I'm the expert witness to a crime, if you want to put it that way, who keeps getting called back into court because this thing's never settled. Totally. Totally. Yeah. And I I have to admit and I know you have a new book coming out. It's on the back of the back back of you, The Gospel of Zip about your relationship with your your dog and everything and and that's probably top of your mind right now, but I have to admit top of my mind is yeah, like um I'm feeling increasingly concerned that uh this in fact I think you you you co-authored a book, maybe you wrote the introduction for a book confronting Christofascism.
Yeah. Healing the evangelical wound. So I I haven't actually read that book yet. Did you write the introduction? Yeah. I mean, you know, like what I was just telling you about, I I'm asked to probably blur maybe 20, 30 books a year, of which I do maybe three or four. But weirdly, anytime a big publisher is going to do a book on, you know, crystal fascism or the journey out of the Pentecostal movement for some pastor who's decided he's changed his mind, you know, it's like, well, who do we call? And there's a limited number of people. There's plenty of people who've been in the religious right, but there's not very many who changed their mind, came out and became a persona non grata to that whole movement because when I talk about it, I actually know what I'm talking about.
And so I'm not a favorite person of those guys. But actually, you know, just to mention this book, the gospel of Zip, um, is is for people who want to understand what happened, I'm kind of continuing that story in the context of how do we get on with Trump voters? How do we survive in an era? And the, you know, the the the title with my dog Zip is really about this idea that Brian Her and Vanessa Woods talk about in their book, The Survival of the Friendliest, which they got into because they study dog evolution, as in human survival doesn't depend on competition and the survival of the fittest. It depends on the survival of the friendliest.
And this is what we learned from hunter gatherers, why they're around. So actually um the gospel of Zip the title doesn't sound like it has anything to do with this but about a third of the book is my personal history coming out story from not repeating what I did in Crazy for God but talking about the way it contrasts with this idea of cooperation and the survival of the friendliest because if you wanted to imagine the antithesis of that world philosophy we're living in it. So, you know, punish your comp competitors, go after anybody who crossed your path, ego given a free reign in the Trump era. Everything Trump is is the opposite. So, you would think that the only reason humans are here is because of a competitive, cutthroat, ruthless greediness that has been rewarded by the Trump presidency is the exact opposite of what I'm talking about.
So the very fact that I go into um this idea of a a canine human love story exploring why most dogs and a few humans live joyful lives actually there's a lot in that about my friends who are Trump voters who live up the street um people who are liberal in my in my neighborhood uh who we meet you know walking the dog and when they ask me about my dad an evangelical neighbor who's always quoting my own father's books back to me that he's heard preached as as right-wing sermons from Christian nationalists. So sadly, you know, the Gospel of Zip is another chapter in that story as much as it is anything else. But in this book, the difference is I don't just tell the story. I set up an alternative view which says, look, you know, you're going to have to choose. If it's this sort of ruthless bullying, survival of the fittest business, you know, is this why we're still here as human beings?
No, it isn't. It's it it basically the idea of cooperation and and compatibility is the only reason that anybody ever survived. And so actually this book is about the Trump administration more than anything I've written because it's very specifically an alternative philosophy which I find mirrored in my K-9 friendships. In other words, you know, dogs don't get on dogs have not domesticated humans by behaving like Donald Trump is behaving to the country if you want to put it that way. There's another rule. And of course that works in relationships and marriages and child care and everything we know about as humans just on a common sense level all through our history is the opposite of what the Trump administration is telling us life is really about.
Um so so weirdly even though the title seems dissimilar or less similar than say crazy for God this is very much a crazy for God part two but in the Trump administration era. Got it. Well, maybe uh for you know most people who are part of my audience probably don't even really know who your father was or what the whole background was. Maybe you can just give us a bit of a overview about that. A thumbnail. Okay. Well, um I'll keep it brief. I was born in 1952 in Switzerland to two missionary parents, Francis and Schaefer, who at the time were very obscure missionaries who had gone over in 1947 to work with young people in war bombed out cities that were now under reconstruction.
typical Presbyterian fundamentalist missionary parents introducing people to Jesus. If you want to get your life together, accept Jesus as your personal savior. They started an open home ministry called Labri Fellowship, which was literally an open home, a chalet up in the Alps. And you know, people sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor, staying for free, long all night discussions. In the 60s, this sort of became a a weird thing that will sound like an oxymoron to most people, a kind of hippie fundamentalist commune where my parents were teaching come to Jesus, uh, evangelical theology. And yet, if you looked at the people who were there, you know, a lot of long-haired hippies from the US, but also Great Britain, a lot of backpackers on their way to ashrams in India, traveling through Europe, and this was sort of a stop, but it was very obscure.
And then all of a sudden uh in in the in the late 1960s and early 1970s, my father and my mother both happened to write a number of evangelical best-selling books. And I'm not talking a few thousand copies. I'm talking about sold in the hundreds of thousands translated into 30 or 40 languages. And the fact that the people who are listening to you or most of the people who read my books these days have never heard of them is just witness of the the idea that you know we all are on our own little bubble. And so if you had been raised in an evangelical home, went to an evangelical high school, went to a fundamentalist church, you have heard of Francis Schaefer, you were raised on his books.
If you didn't, uh, you know, it would be like, you know, me trying to figure out the names of the bands that are hot right now. You know, I know a lot about the Stones and Hendricks and the Beatles, but I don't I, you know, I I've sort of heard of people contemporary, but that's not what I'm listening to anymore. So, they're household names to 19year-olds, not to me. It's a generational thing. Well, that's like that. So, the thing that really broke out my dad into being a phenomena in in a big sense where he's staying in the White House every time he's in Washington and you know, I'm on the stage with Ronald Reagan at the Christian Broadcasters Convention and so forth and so on was that he and Dr.
Coupe and I made a movie called Whatever Happened to the Human Race, which basically was the beginning of the anti-abortion movement from an evangelical point of view. And what most people don't know, and I'll just throw this in because I think your listeners won't know this, is that back in those days in the late 60s, early 70s, evangelicals had nothing to do with the anti-abortion movement. That was regarded as a quote Catholic issue. So that when we first went out with Dr. Coup's anti-abortion vision in that movie, and he looked to my dad for some verification, okay, I'm going to hook this to a famous evangelical leader.
The push back we got was from the Reverend Billy Graham, the evangelist, Christianity Today magazine. This is nothing to do with us, they said. So our our fight first wasn't with the National Organization of Women or Planned Parenthood. It was with the evangelical leadership at the time. And the reason I mention that is I don't think most people on a progressive side have any idea of how far the evangelical movement has traveled in becoming right-wing and politicized. There were plenty of evangelicals in those days who voted for Democrats. It wasn't the divide wasn't Democrat, Republican, and it wasn't even social issue, you know, litmus tests. So, they tended to be more conservative because they were church-going family people, etc., etc.
But I don't think people now, especially anybody under the age of 70, has a clue about the journey to the politicization we have now where all of a sudden evangelicalism, the Republican party, the far right, MAGA, are synonymous. When we started out, they weren't. So, our fight first was with people like Billy Graham. And I remember being in a hotel room in Rochester, Minnesota, where my dad was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for his cancer, talking to Billy Graham, the evangelist, who again, a lot of contemporary people won't know, but that was he was a big deal back in the day. He certainly was. And trying to beg Billy and saying, you know, join our crusade.
And he was saying, but this has nothing to do with preaching Christ. Why would I want to antagonize women? This isn't our issue. Why are you doing this Francis to my father that literally word for word I'm telling you what he said okay today the equivalent of a Billy Graham he could not be an evangelical leader with those views because they have so equated say being anti-abortion or whatever other moralistic litmus test there are with being a Christian so I grew up in a family that you know kind of two families an obscure missionary family nobody had ever heard of and then a very famous one and in my book the gospel of zip I talk about the fact that my mother would sometimes hand me a wad of what I called god cash that I put in capitals in the book which was really royalty money speaking stuff and so forth and then as his sidekick I started earning god cash so when Jeie and I my wife and I who had been we've been together since teenagers I got her pregnant when we were 17 and 18 a long time ago now when we when we walked away from the evangelical world there there were certain evangelicals saying oh well we know why you've gone over to become a secular liberal. You know, it's for the money.
And of course, the big joke was, you know, I'm 73 and I've never earned more than I did when I was 23 in my whole life. And I've written some New York Times bestsellers because the real money I ever had was literally the god cash on our book tables when we would do things like at Madison Square Garden or at the convention center in Dallas and have 25,000 people there all buying the book and and video packaging the whole thing. And you know we would have a Brinks truck coming twice a night to take the money to a local bank so we wouldn't get robbed. And if I wanted some money, I would just reach in and grab I mean it was like that scene out of the not the Godfather but you know um where she where he says how how scarf face or something scarf. Yeah.
Exactly. How much do you want? And she goes this much. So okay. So so I've tasted that. Yeah. And Jeannie and I lived high on the hog for about 10 years in the God Cash world. And then when we walked um you know that was the end of the easy money for us and and that side of my life has been more of a struggle ever since. And I talk about that in this book of mine that that we talked about the gospel of Zeb. But the fact of the matter is the the corruption that came into the evangelical movement with the money and the power and everything else.
I saw the transition. That's the point I'm trying to make. And so when you fast forward to Trump today, what people don't understand who try to write about him from a more secular and less informed point of view when it comes to the history I live is that the kind of people that I grew up with were groomed to accept Trump because our own leaders were corrupt. They were all about the money from the beginning. And once a transition to power politics aside from following Jesus Christ, if that's what you had been doing, you know, the choice to follow power politics was made before Trump came on the scene and people like Pat Robertson who became billionaires literally owning a diamond mine in South Africa among other things or Oral Roberts saying that he would die unless someone sent him $5 million by Thursday morning which literally happened on one fundraiser etc etc.
You know, that's the world into which the con artist Trump moved with ease and was embraced by people like Paula White and all these Trump whisperers scattered around him in those White House Oval Office pictures praying handing hands. This wasn't a new phenomena to me. This is this is the world that I totally inhabited and walked away from myself. Except the only difference is on a smaller level back in those days and then Trump made it go big time. So nothing had changed. It's just Trump was sort of the the promised, you know, the the, you know, the Jesus Christ to that movement because he he he he kind of led in a way they were used to being led.
So I think a lot of people misunderstand the movement and think somehow they were beguiled by Trump. Don't understand that they had already beguiled themselves. Well, I mean, what about your father? I mean, it sounds like they were pretty much in a way like idealistic in a way. I mean, they were very idealistic. And I can tell you in all honesty today that he and my mother would be shocked to the point of suicidal if they were if they came back now and believed what I know to be true. And that is what we did then led to this. As my dad would say it would, you know, his phrase would be about this.
It would make me vomit. And he used to use that phrase about things he was really sickened by. So whatever else they can be accused of in terms of their lives, it wasn't this. But and nor could Billy Graham by the way because Billy Graham was not a greedy son of a stealing money left, right, and center. He was a very powerful man. But he in, for instance, he integrated his crusades in this deep south as a Southern Baptist in 1954 before this was a cool thing to do and got a lot of from his Southern Baptist cohorts. In other words, and he resisted our call to confront women over abortion in the name of him preaching Jesus as a thing of love and so on.
So, you know, I am not saying all evangelicals were corrupt any more than all all Roman Catholics. Yeah, exactly. Why why were your parents in particular so taken by this abortion issue? Because Dr. Coupe was a lifelong friend and he used their young son me to get to them and say, "Francis, you've just made a very successful film series on the history of culture and art from an evangelical point of view called How Should We Then Live? why don't you do a new series and this time on the subject that's going to be the next big fight for Christians resisting secular humanism. It's going to be abortion.
And Coupe was the surgeon and chief at the Philadelphia Children's Hospital. And he was approaching the pro-life issue from the point of view of a physician who had been saving babies of very much similar age to say late term abortion with with all kinds of surgical things. He was also deeply committed Christian and also very reformed evangelical Calvinist if people know what that means. And so he flew to Switzerland to the mission, sat down with me, and I actually have a quote in the Gospel of Zip from a book that just came out that I interviewed on my podcast, which I've had you on, too. Um, in conversation with Frank Schaefer.
I interviewed the author who had written this book on Dr. Coupe, a very definitive biography. And and he w he had interviewed Coupe before his death. And Coupe said, "Well, I flew to Switzerland. I sat down with young Frankie Schaefer. And in one evening, we outlined on the back of a bunch of, you know, yellow pads a a program that then Frankie had to pitch to his father who at first didn't want to do it. But there were two things going on. Dad at that point had been bitten as I had very deeply by the ambition bug as in, hey, we did this very big series.
What's next? So, let's do another one. And then um and then Dr. Coupe basically had thought all this through and wrote it all out. And so essentially um you know I was completely swept up in what he was saying as a young man very impressed the surgeon chief would come see me and wanted to work with dad plus I wanted to keep getting a paycheck. I like the limelight and I I was deeply bitten by the bug fame and money and so went for the whole thing. Plus, I had just had a daughter as a teenager whose whose wife I married her in that sort of Christian fundamentalist context.
And so we, you know, we we were teen parents. And Coupe would say something like, "Well, would you have aborted Jessica? Aren't you glad you have her?" So, it was a mixture of an emotional experience of my own life of having an quote unwanted pregnancy that had turned into to a real love affair with my daughter combined with theology because I was a believer at that time and Coupe, you know, had all his Bible verses and everything ready. The fact I wanted to do another project with my dad and then once dad got bitten by the bug, then he became this big evangelical leader of that movement and then all of a sudden that became access to power. So, you know, when mom and dad would go to Washington, mom would swim in the Ford swimming pool in the White House.
When I would go to speak, Jerry Fwell lent me his jet. I had a pilot in a jet. I'm I'm in my mid20s, you know, flying around America doing 20 speaking engagements with my own plane. Um, what's not to love? So, basically asking me to reconsider that would be like going to Bruce Springsteen after his first golden album and saying, "Give up music." Yeah, it was in another world. But this this for that little bubble, this was the big time and and it took a you know, a lot of stuff to happen before I just dumped it all. Yeah, I want to get into that, but I want to ask you first about the um seven mountain mandate and the new apost apostic apostolic reform movements.
I I think your your your father was one of the founders of this seven mountain. Well, he wasn't he wouldn't he would not know what you're talking about because back in those days it wasn't called that. But they use his books with this idea that you take over the media, the law, the politics, the profession, the arts, the teaching, the universities. And it basically he called for that in his last book called a Christian manifesto, which is their bible. And if you look at like project 2025 and and what they're doing the checklist they turn they and of course they've gone into this with much more depth and it's actual policy but he was the first person to just call for these things in for these categories and so essentially you know he's he's a prophet to them they they follow Francis Schaefer so that if you ask people you know who influenced them most um you know for instance let's just take an example of Amy Coney Barrett.
Um, she was raised in an evangelical fundamentalist community. I've never talked to her, but you know, she read my dad's books when she was going through law school as part of the part of the um, you know, these people being groomed to do just what she's done. You know, this wasn't by chance. And the philosophy, you know, he he was their Karl Marx, if you want to put it that way. In other words, there's a lot of leftwing people who've never read Markx, but they wouldn't be leftwing unless Markx had written something and someone had been influenced who influenced them. So, at this point in 2025, we're a long way from my dad.
There's a lot of people who are younger within the movement who may have not even heard of him, but you better believe the people who influence them had. And um yeah, so it's about dominating these seven areas, family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government, which is exactly what dad called for in both how should we then live whatever happened to the human race and a Christian manifesto. And he listed those seven categories. He didn't call it the seven mountains, but he listed them as like being faithful to Christ. You know, once he became politicized, because his early work, you wouldn't know it's the same guy.
You would say, "Oh, I disagree with the theology or none of it was true or I'm an atheist." But you wouldn't say it was to the far right. But once he got, you know, as the British expression say, you know, got it up the nose. It became a thing. Once he went there, then one thing led to another. And of course, it began to feed off itself. And then all the leaders who already had those sorts of opinions like Rouses Rashuni and all these other reconstructionists began to talk about him and okay, he's our prophet, etc. So by the time you get into this iteration of it, you know, people working at project 2025, the people who are key to that or you know the office of bud management and budget now that is behind a lot of Trump's changes and what's going on and the guy running that, they all know who he was and they read his books.
Sure. Makes total sense. Um yeah, what an intense uh pedigree you got there. It's quite quite a heritage. um what began to move you out of this um worldview or this ideology? Like what were what were some of the things that happened to you? Well, this is going to sound like I'm plugging my book. Yeah. The Gospel of Zip. And I I am, but I'm not because I can't answer it without referring to a paragraph I wrote in that book. And I'm not going to re I'm not going to look pay, you know, look for it too much, but you've got to hear this because this is what led to it.
And early in the book, I say something to the extent that there is much to be forgiven because any truthful bio about me would start with this. And this is the bit I want to read. From birth, Frank Schaefer was indoctrinated to believe that males were created by God to rule females and that women were created to compliment men and submit to their husbands. In other words, Frank was groomed to become an by divine right. And basically, you know, really this sounds, you know, a little romantic and swarmmy, but I began my change because I really was in love with Jeanie and I was such a and everything that I had been told about marriage and structure.
And my father had abused my mother and we had been quiet about the fact that sometimes she'd come into my room and show me the bruises on her upper arm after I'd heard screaming. And it wasn't something he apologized for. He was he was he was like a Saudi prince of course you know it's okay to hit a woman and he didn't make a point of saying that but two things happened and that is that you know when I got married and there were people that I cared about more than me okay forget the theology for a minute the the world view that I had been raised with was so opposite of what actually works in human relationships which is what the gospel of Zip is about that I began to question it but it wasn't the theology at First it was like you know why have I been told that dominating a woman or disciplining a children physically or being you know never backing down being the leader of your family you know this is a model for absolute marital relationship disaster. So basically my question started because I was able to you know began to choose between Jeanie who at one point was saying you know if I kept down this path and thank God it wasn't because I was hitting her cuz I wasn't my father had quit hitting my mom and this this is in the book I I mentioned this when in age 15 I burst into the kitchen when he was screaming at my mother and grabbed a a kitchen knife and held it to him and said if you hit mom again I'll kill you. Okay.
Now, that's not why I left the evangelical world, but the the the level of hypocrisy I was raised in. And he wasn't beating her and putting her in the hospital. Wasn't that kind of thing. It would have be a slap once in a while or a punch and a lot of screaming and and a lot of watching my mother back down. Okay, so that was one thing. And basically, as I tried to live my life based on what I had been told was true, I'll give you an example. It would be like someone growing up in a family that rejects vaccines because they believed all this from Kennedy and then their little brother dies of COVID or flu and you start saying this doesn't work.
And so where I first saw it not working in my life was as a teenage father and a young married 20some with a kid and then two kids. And it was like I can't put a relationship together because you see Jeanie came from a liberal democrat voting San Francisco family. And so she wasn't she she you know she was in love with me but she was not. You met in sw you met in Switzerland or what did you meet? We met in Switzerland at Lebri where she was on a UAL pass with her sister Pam. Jeannie had graduated from high school. Pam had graduated from Berkeley.
Their parents gave them a one-mon vacation on a Europe travel around see Europe. They heard about this free place to stay up in the Alps. they came and were going to crash for one night and then 10 years later she comes back to America with two kids pregnant with a third and you know I can imagine from her parents' point of view but essentially trying to make a marriage work with a reasonable human being who's not indoctrinated. It it sounds like you started the relationship with sex before marriage. Is that correct? Absolutely. We she you know we we were we got but that was like 1968 or something like that.
Yeah. all the advantages of fundamentalist contraception. In other words, I'll pull out doesn't work terribly well. And so, you know, we were in this bubble. And then as I Okay, so that was one thing. And then the second thing was really an ideological shift. In other words, and again, this will sound smarmy and self- congratulatory, but it's not. Um, and if you, you know, if you see the way I write about it, it's a real mayulpa. And that is that I began to really despise the people we were working with. So Jerry Fwell would lend me his jet, but he was so obviously a greedy fraud.
Yeah, these people were thieves. And I compared them for all my father's faults, he wasn't a thief. In other words, it was like, well, if this is big- time Christianity, and the real break for me became the fact that people were saying the mantle has passed, which is the phrase you use in Christian ministry to say the sun now has the prophetic voice of the father. I'm a pretty good speaker and I was good at this. and I was getting invited to do the keynote speech to the Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, which I did to 23,000 pastors, not as a speaker, but as the keynote one year, etc.
Okay, it was like I'm going to I I don't like this and I'm going to be this person for the rest of my life. And and Jeanie fortunately had the backbone to say, then let's get out. And it was like, well, then how do we earn our living? I don't know how to do anything else. And it was like, we'll have to figure it out. So basically the point of departure for me was personal. I didn't want to be the I'd been groomed to be. And I was what what what what year was it that you that you that you left left the situation? I was really out by 1990.
Okay. And up till then it had been sort of a step process. So in I finished making the movies with my dad in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, I took I cut a show reel from my movies I directed for dad and took out all the god bits and got myself an agent in Hollywood. And for the next 10 years, I directed 10 shitty feature films. All right, that sounds and made a living. But I but I wasn't anti-Christian at that point from their point of view. I just disappeared into this into the be movie business making media. But then at a few years after that I wrote a novel called Portoino which was very successful fortunately for me and and was a story written from the point of view of a fundamentalist little boy in Europe my background fictional story and then it was over because the few evangelicals that heard about the book hated it they said oh you're mocking what we believe blah blah blah and then from so in a way at that point I was thrown out rather than left then all the doors shut.
That was the end of that. And from then on, I've been, you know, writing books and speaking in schools and colleges and struggling along as a writer and doing my best I can. When you were thinking that you had to get out, did you ever think about trying to use your position of power uh to kind of influence the movement in a way or I tried. When I wrote Crazy for God, I I wrote it in such a way that was as sympathetic as one can be. You know, my my my Jewish secular agent in New York at the time said, "Well, this is one of the kindest memoirs I've ever read in terms of you're very gentle to your parents and so forth, but it wasn't good enough because you're either in or out." Yeah.
And and you end, you know, and I don't believe that stuff anymore. So, I did everything I could to make it so like if there's anybody else, if there's another Frank Schaefer 10 years further back on the road that I got on, in other words, if I'm going to write this in a way that doesn't say I hate you or you're an idiot. And and by the way, I've done the same thing in the Gospel of Zeb. I'm talking about trying to get on with my neighbors who have Trump signs on their yard lawn. And I still go to their house and help them put up their Christmas lights even though they're quoting my own dad to me because it's a it's a statement.
And that is, you know, we still got to share the space. It's sort of the opposite of Trumpism and that's why I wrote the book because we're all here. So I still try to influence the people from whence I came but so far with zero success. Got it. Yeah. I mean what very much concerns me uh as a you know kind of uh hermetic uh intellectual you know psychedelic bohemian uh lefty uh is um just feels like the um the thing is getting more and more extreme. I mean, as you say, this sort of cryptofascism to the point where they're now saying it's like holy war against Democrats and liberals and talking about, you know, anybody who's left of them as being unhumans or no or or if you disagree, it's hate speech.
Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, it's just we look at the um trajectory of movements like this, you know, it often leads to concentration camps and Yeah. Sure. sides. Uh it feels like we're moving rapidly in that kind of direction. Particularly um yeah, there's something so um berserk, you know, I mean Trump over the weekend, there was this uh protest, huge protest and yeah, during the protest put out a video of an AI made video of him as a jet pilot shooting huge amounts of over America, over all these Americans. Yeah. Yeah, that that is just so I mean it's like it's the most debased level uh disgra disgraceful disgusting like I don't even think any other country in the world would would allow for something like that.
And people who theoretically believe in the soul and sin and Christianity Yeah. are twisted to the point where they're okay with this. And I don't know, it just feels like it has no bottom right now. So there doesn't seem to be one. And of course he's an anomaly. But the thing is the real story is not Trump. The real story is a movement which does goes along with it. Yeah. Which is other words if there's one guy standing on a corner pulls his pants down and you know craps on the sidewalk. Okay. That's that's how the world works. There are people like that. You know if everybody in New York City then lines up and does the same thing.
Now you have a problem because this isn't a civil society anymore. Well, you know to me it was funny. You know, there's that thing, which book is it by is it by Orwell in is it in 1984? There's a scene where, you know, you've got whatever the press thing was, and they they're always they change the story immediately, and then there's this moment when he has two contradictory stories at the same time come across his desk, and he sees like one article says it's black and the other article says it's white. And for one minute, they both, you know, they always say they didn't say that.
They both exist simultaneously. And it was kind of a it's a big moment if it is in 1984. Um, but I felt that very much when the widow, Kirk's widow stood up and said, "I forgive the the assassin." Now, I'm not judging whether that's real or not real, whatever, but let's just take it at face value. And then moments later on the same stage, Trump stands up and says, "Yeah, but I hate my enemies." Okay, that's a moment when the young Frankie Schaefer or Francis Schaefer or Billy Graham or any evangelical from my generation would have seen this very much like a black person watching someone speak who suddenly uses the N-word or um you know justifies something whatever the for someone not raised in that environment to stand up in the in a memorial for someone who's been killed where The widow is saying they are trying to follow Jesus Christ by forgiving the killer and then smile and say, "Yeah, but I hate my enemies." It's basically like standing up in church and pissing on the altar or or screaming, "Yeah, but I'm an atheist." When someone says, "You got to come to Christ and find salvation." And then the next phrase is, "Yeah, but I you know, I'm an atheist and and and you know, I piss on your altar." You couldn't have anything that's more of a dis sort of a dis a juncture. And it just rolled by.
It's just another moment on the media. But it's funny, you know, if I was God, right, noting things for judgment day. I'm not God and I'm an atheist who prays. I describe myself. But let's just take that what they believe. You're going to hear about this on judgment day because you cannot go with that. You can't have a widow forgiving her enemy as Jesus told us to do and two minutes later your leader saying, "Yeah, but I hate my enemies and I'm going after them." in that context. This wasn't a statement made years apart. This is at the same moment. Okay. So, basically, it's funny because that really stuck in my head.
I There's a lot of things going by, going by, going by. But at that moment, anybody who comes from an evangelical Christian background or is a practicing Roman Catholic has a choice. this can't be your guy because the context in which that statement is made is like the context in the Catholic church of just picking up the communion wafers and throwing them into the air and laughing and walking out. You know, you or going into into a synagogue and burning the Torah. There's a moment of sacrilege there that is unparalleled in the history of American politics. No one's ever done that ever. So, you know, Jesus says, "Forgive your enemies.
I forgive the man who shot my husband with tears on her cheeks. Yeah, but I say hate your enemies. And literally, it's a contradiction of the the most direct teaching of the gospel of Jesus. So that's a moment that is only not shocking because we can't be shocked anymore, right? But for anybody raised in my tradition, that is like now there is no wiggle room there. It's not like, oh well, how this is allowed. They have they have a uh ideological construct they've created where Trump is some biblical figure like the king something or something who had bad moral character but still advanced. Yeah. But the thing is not at that moment.
It's all over at that point when when you when you when you do that, you know, you can't say you love the Jews and embrace the Holocaust. You can't say don't forgive your enemies, hate them. Yeah. This is not one of those wiggle room things. This is like you can't justify that on the basis of well he's been raised up by God and he's oh you can justify his adultery his lying maybe an alleged rape oh yeah you know David did all that stuff but you cannot deny the central teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ specifically using those words that she did and have this guy say that into her face looking on the stage three feet from her while she's are we seeing uh people you know changing their views because of that.
Nope. Yeah. Um and so basically it's not like how can these evangelicals still follow him? I have an answer for that. They're not evangelical Christians. Yeah. What are they? It's really simple. It's a different movement. It has it has evolved into something totally unrelated. So you know I and I think we still keep going in this circle. How can these evangelicals follow? They are not evangelicals in that sense because if that moment doesn't unhook your wagon from this parade, you can walk away still a Christian nationalist, but you're a Christian nationalist looking for a new leader, right? Um yeah, the lack of outcry is uh incredible.
Um I'm curious. I mean, you you you know, were in this extremely privileged position. You were behind the scenes. You began to see that these guys were deeply corrupt. Yeah. uh you had a wife luckily who came from a somewhat different different background even if she was evangelical, right? So you made this you toggled over you know I mean I guess it you know people talk about it having elements of a mind control cult or brainwashing cult or whatever. Yeah. And obviously the right-wing is trying to get you know is getting more and more control of the media. I mean they're buying CBS and Tik Tok and so on.
Um but what what do you think uh what what can those of us who you know would like to see America return to some kind of you know sanity and and democratic process and so on you have any you know from what you've experienced from you know within the whole thing you know what what can we do right now is it too late or is there is there you know I think it's too late but because I think you know to to sort of look at it from another side there's a massive movement called the exeangelical movement which is huge. There's millions and millions of Americans who come from some background similar to mine who aren't there anymore. Yeah. And who have left. But there are also millions of us like me who are still struggling with actual issues of spirituality um you know as in do we forgive our enemies and these teachings.
And I think that there are people who grew up in this environment who maybe got a little older that can talk to say that younger man now going to a Pentecostal church who thinks he's found something that are very much in the MAGA movement. And I think that where the hope is going to be is those who speak the language of actual Christianity and know what they're talking about or Judaism or or Catholicism as opposed to evangelicalism who have been in that moved on perhaps have not gone where I've gone which is you know I describe myself as an atheist who prays which just is another way of saying it's a it's a paradox and I'm ambivalent and and and not certain about certain things and you know I'm I'm not trying to make that an intellect ual position. I'm just saying, hey, that's the way I was raised. Um, so anyway, I think that there's hope in the sense that some of those people, um, and I'll give you an example who I interviewed on my show, Tim Alberta, who wrote the kingdom, the power, and the glory, you know, when you read Tim's book, it became a bestseller in the New York Times, and he's he's it's it's the most lucid critique of the Trump movement from an evangelical point of view, but he's still an evangelical, but he's he's the kind of evangelical that looks at what Trump said and said, "Don't forgive your enem." we're supposed to hate them. And he laments this and is talking about all the pastors in his book who are being bullied by the right-wing members of their churches and wish they could stand up and preach an anti-Trump sermon without being thrown out of their church or having threats made against them.
So that I think the cracks appear in the truth tellers who tell me like Tim Alberta, well he's open because he wrote a book about it, but I think there are a lot of people out there who would say something to this effect to you. They, you know, in a private conversation, they would say something like that that I've said to you about that moment with with with Kirk's wife and and Trump, but they'd say, "Don't tell anybody I said that because they are so fearful now." And that goes for a lot of the so-called evangelical leaders. There are lots of pastors who have now been bullied into quite, you know, into acquiescence by a small group in each convers congregation who are the movers and shakers. Maybe they're on the board of elders who are very far-right Christian nationalists. And it's your job if you if you raise your head above the parapit and and it's very aggressive.
And so they have adopted that bullying mode where they're not even pretending to behave the way Christian leaders behave. And they've gone full boore maga Trump on their own leaders. So I think if there's hope, it's going to come from within. It won't be without. It won't be because Frank Schaefer tells these people what to do. it will be because there are young men and young women in the movement who were saying you know what um whatever you know bullying is not part of the gospel of Jesus Christ and I reject the calls to this kind of strong arm tactics combined with the lies and can't go there anymore.
So, I'm not saying this will happen, but I think that at some point the people who are more evangelical than they are MAGA are going to get really tired of this and begin to vote a little more a little differently. And and in that sense, I would say that people on the left have really got to learn to stop trolling that group. I don't mean what we're doing here is trolling them, but there's no need to to make them the total enemy. And one reason I wrote the Gospel of Zip is I'm saying, "Look, this guy still lives up the street from you. And if any change is going to happen, it's going to be because the relationship he has with the person who's not voting for Trump is still healthy.
We're not We cannot live in these isolated bubbles. So we can talk about Trump in the starkkest terms we want. We can talk about MAGA in the darkest terms we want. We can tell the truth about where Francis Schaefer's teaching lead, but that doesn't mean that I hate Jay up the street because he put a Trump poster on his house. Jay's a good guy. And the weird thing is he goes to a Hispanic church full of mostly brown people of the very kind ISIS is rounding up and putting in trucks. So if there's any hope, it's when Jay says, you know, um Cynthia Perez was a good person and she came and cleaned my house and she's in my church and doing the women's Bible and they just rounded her up.
You know, what's that got to do with Jesus? And that's what's going to have to happen. It's going to have to come from I don't you know those are the people who are going to have to change their minds and it's not all the MAGA people but it's the people who are making some attempt to actually live what they believe to be the truth. Yeah. Did you have I mean uh one question I have for you is kind of what's this is an outsider question but sure what's kind of the relationship of this you know evangelical movement that now is sort of kind of culminated in you know seven mountains a new apostto reform and Catholicism uh because it's interesting that I guess it's six of these justices are all Catholics or something which is very strange because that's like a very uh you know that that feels very intentional somehow.
Yeah. And I guess some of them are connected to Opus Day or something like that. Yeah, they are. And what's all that? Is it is it just the Catholic version of Well, again, just a little bit of fly on the wall history. You know, when I was a kid, Catholics were all lost and going to hell. The Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, they were all you guys were all in the same boat because you didn't believe in Jesus the way we did. So, Catholic theology didn't get you to heaven. Only reformed Calvinist theology did because you had a wrong conception about Jesus. So a lot of our missionary outwork outreach was to lost unsaved Catholics who worship Mary and all that.
What's wrong with their Catholics view of Jesus? They there's no papacy. The church organization's all wrong. They they have saints that they talk to as mediators and there is no mediator between Jesus and his people. They don't read the Bible. They listen to what the priest says. In other words, the entire hierarchical structure and theological construct of Catholicism from a real evangelical point of view is nothing to do with Christianity. Now, that's not the view today, but that was the way my parents saw it back in the 40s, 50s, and early 60s. And if a Catholic came, you know, they' spent a long time explaining how real Christianity, their version of theology, which is just it's Jesus, me in the Bible, no church, no priest, no pope, no no saints, you know, that that was the only way to really come to Christ.
So we've moved from that to a kind of an uneasy co- belligerency through the anti-abortion movement. But now that has become a fullbore MAGA allied ship where the Heritage Foundation and these other organizations are run by people who are in Opus Day and the far right of the Catholic movement. And the funny thing is Opus Day and the far right of the Catholic movement, the people who disliked them the most were Catholics, including the popes who totally disliked them because they were anti-Vatican 2. they wanted to keep the liturgy in Latin uh etc etc etc. So that fight is one that gets ignored these days and now what's happened is is that you know the Trump way of doing things matches the far right of all these movements and so they're all more similar in their politics than they're dissimilar and they've got this kind of marriage of convenience.
So when it comes to the Supreme Court, you know, starting with Scalia and all those people, we've moved from a place where Kennedy back in 19 in the in 1960 had to go around the country making speeches saying, "I may become the first Catholic president, but I believe in the separation of church and state. I will not be controlled by the pope." All that stuff you've heard about the Jesuits in the back room of all European deal. Don't that's not me. I'm an American, you know, PT 109. I'm a war hero. I fought for the US against totalitarian regimes. I'm an American. And he had to say that again and again and again.
And we've moved from there to where all of a sudden the Heritage Foundation, these other people run by faright Catholics in Opus Day of the kind that Kennedy had to say, I'm not those guys. Yeah. Um and the big they're they're as big a threat to the papacy, for instance, our first American pope, who's too liberal for them. And if you you know th their views of him is that he's heretical because he's not far enough to the right. So you know their they basically would have a very awkward conversation with the pope right now. Uh you know in the same way that they did with Pope Francis because he was too liberal for them.
So you have to understand it isn't the Catholic Church. It is the far right wing of Catholicism allied with the far right wing of Christian white nationalism evangelicalism. These are the guys making common cause through these organizations. And the difference is is that most Catholics in America are still divided between Democrat and Republican. Whereas the evangelical movement on mass at last count about 83% of them went wholeheartedly into the MAGA movement. and they are, you know, if Trump was relying on conservative Catholic votes, he wouldn't be president. But he got enough of of the the the right-wing Catholics in alliance with most evangelical Protestants to put him in the White House twice.
So you said that from your perspective kind of like um people changing awakening uh has to be an internal process within these movements. Um but is there anything that can be done from an outsider perspective? Was there any? Well, I'll give you one example of someone who seems to be changing her opinion a little bit, who is a public person, and that is that, you know, the the far right is no longer betting on Amy Coney Barrett because she's sort of almost kind of a better Christian than she is a MAGA person. And she actually is a real um, you know, she wants to be a good Supreme Court judge.
She sort of brings that ethic. And I'm not saying I would agree with all her decisions, but I would just say from the top down, you know, there you can't count on everybody not having a conscience. They're not all Trump. So she she she may be a little bit fly in the ointment to the Heritage Foundation when some of that stuff comes to court. And I think there are people within within all these organizations to whom, you know, the the various little lines can be crossed. But I think that in the in the in the mass of people um you're going to find a lot of of people, you know, uh who are younger who are not going to totally tow the MAGA line on even just on an aesthetic basis.
It's too stupid at points for for to remain a mass following. Now, when we wake up one morning and it's sort of tailing out, do we still have a democracy? That's a different question. You know, do we have a sort of a third Trump term with JD Vance just steamrollering ahead? you know, there's a guy who converted to Catholicism who apparently is unbothered by all these contradictions and is much more in love with power, you know, and so I look at him and I know him well. I don't mean personally, but he's where I was in my late 20s when I was still flying around in Jerry Fwell's jet knowing full well what I was doing, but saying I can't get out.
How would I earn my living? And he just sees this as a step to power and you can justify that in your brain, you know, and all the rest of it. So, I'm not placing any great hope on some of those leaders, but I do think the ordinary American Christian who still is trying to in some way follow any kind of a biblical mandate eventually is going to be sickened by the brutality and the bullying. I mean, the Bible doesn't teach that bullies should win anywhere, right? Okay. So, just that just like, you know, you're always on the side of the big guy kicking the little guy.
um and and you know, zip tying 13-year-old little girls who are hauled out of their grandparents' apartment cuz they're brown and don't have the right paperwork. At some point, emotionally, there has to be some kicking back on this from people who otherwise would go along with the program. Um yeah, that makes sense. Uh I mean, realistically, where do you think we're going to be in America in like five, 10 years? I make no prediction, but uh it it will it put it this way. I know one thing will happen. It will always be the law of unintended consequences. And let's just hope from our point of view, you and me sitting here today, that on that something unusual happens in the next five years.
And that is for once it bounces our way, right? Yeah. In other words, that the overre that some overreach that you wouldn't think looks like an overreach becomes an overreach and suddenly there's this weird thing where you know um somebody stands up who didn't expect to say something and and things unravel a little bit. And of course, you know, when you have a con artist who's not thinking through what he's doing very well and just shoots from the hip, the chance of an unintended consequence keeps multiplying. So, you never know what it'll be. I mean, the other day, my son was a Marine. The other day, these idiots in the Pentagon decided the Marines would fire live shells over a highway, and one of them prematurely exploded and the shrapnel fell down on one of the Republican big- time people who was there.
Nobody got hurt. But you never know. These people's hubris will eventually do them in. And I don't say that based on any moral point of view. I just say that based on the fact that I'm somewhat of student of history, and it always does. So, you know, Napoleon wound up on, you know, on a little island in the mid-Atlantic. Um he didn't conquer everybody and eventually things unwind and and you know uh the unintended consequence will happen to this law as well may take us all with them but you you better believe they're not going to win because they ne in history they never do. So the Caesars eventually fall and it and it's not a happy fall you know when the Visigoths march in and burn Rome or whatever it may be.
But I'm saying this will this shall not continue because con artists merged with ego never does. It always ends badly. But the bad thing is it's going to end badly for us too if somehow the American people can't distance himself from from not just this individual but this movement. And by the way I have a lot of sympathies with a lot of conservative beefs. I think the left has been stupid in a lot of areas. We have trolled them for 50 years on all sorts of stuff, including, you know, the the the kind of knee-jerk stupidity we show when it comes to issues of the sexual revolution and somehow traditional marriage, you know, is mockable and all these things that have been, you know, made the you know, so basically it's not like it's not like the right is totally offended for unreasonable reasons.
The thing is though, they have adopted a con artist to carry their banner who turned out to be the world's biggest bully. So, it's going to blow up in their face as well as in the rest of our faces because that that shall not work. It's not going to happen because history doesn't work that way. I mean, just study the royalty in of study the bad kings of England who just drove it all into the ground or what happened to Napoleon or any of these people. The hubristic style of leadership like this blows up. The same thing's going to happen to Vladimir Putin. By the way, you and me may not be around when it happens.
But that's not going to work long term. This doesn't work. Yeah. Ask the guys I knew in South Africa who are running the apartite regime. How did that all end for you? Yeah. Well, I guess, you know, they're putting their faith in, you know, artificial intelligence and surveillance and and, you know, weaponized drones and all that stuff. Well, and the scandal is that all these billionaire tech lords have played along, but it's not going to work for them either. So, when Peter Theal is saying the Antichrist is on the way, and he's mixing his weird brand of Christianity in with his pronatalism, everybody should have babies, but they need to get them genetically checked first so we get rid of anything less than high IQ superhumans.
You know, this is not the language of the pro-life movement. Yeah. you know, and at some point some good old Catholic who, you know, signed on for to protect life and all the rest is going to say, "Hey, you know, maybe Peter Theel doesn't represent me." You know, maybe these tech bros with their weird brave new world of, you know, this rationalist movement that it's all people like us and their, you know, nice little convenient threesomes and all the rest of it, but but with only with smart people and then testing the eggs and sex is for fun, but but you know, genetic engineering is for babies. At some point, it's like, wait a minute, you know, wasn't this what Huxley and Orwell and everybody was writing about? And it where's this in the Bible?
And these are Trump's fellow travelers. And you know, I don't think there are very many parents in the country happy with their teenagers staring down at a phone all day. Well, guess who's engineering the algorithms to keep them glued? And these are not our friends. And when I say are, I mean any ordinary American. These aren't your friends. And these are Trump's buddies. So at some point, some unintended consequence is going to become very manifest. you know, Peter Theo. It almost happened with Doge and and Musk. People started, you know, Trump had to distance himself from that because this wasn't going well. You know, the richest man in the world demolishing foreign aid in our government.
I mean, he had to move on pretty quickly from that. So, th these are this is a rogues gallery. These are not good people. And at some point, you know, my friends up the street who put up Trump signs are going to disconnect with some aspect of this. And when enough of them do it, then a guy like JD Vance will come along and find he doesn't have an army to vote for him anymore because people are getting sick of it. Judging from your experience and you know maybe after this question we we'll wind up a little bit but I mean do you think somebody like Vance is actually sort of a sociopath or or psychopath or do you think it's actually just as you said kind of in your situation opportunism like suddenly you're in this straight up opportun it's me climbing into Jerry Fwell's jet again having just spoken from his pulpit knowing that he's a complete jerk and a liar and a greedy son of a and I'm the same guy now but I'm saying to myself yeah but this is just for a time and eventually, you know, if I ever get my own thing going, I'll I'll be different.
And I'm sure that JD is telling himself the same thing. And I'm sure if you could be a fly on the wall listening to him and his wife talk, but no one's around, he would be explaining to her why he only looks like he's selling out to an authoritarian loon. But he won't be that. But you have to use this as a stepping stone and so forth. But of course, what none of it's the same thing that nobody realizes when you're a rock star and you know someday you're going to be married and have kids, but in the meantime, you know, you're raping 13-year-olds in your hotel room, you know, in in when you're out on the road, but I'll change later.
Well, you talk to anybody about life patterns and you don't. So I think there are a lot of fellow traveling opportunists in the Republican party and then a lot of other people who are scared shitless who have been bullied into silence but guys like JD Vance are you know this is not going to work out for them in the sense he may become president but the idea that suddenly he'll be able to disconnect and make Maga sane having been part of the insanity um you know having excused racist comments by young Republicans who are you know messaging each other that's the word this is your world now. You know, you you don't walk from this. There was a book before the election by a white Christian nationalist, Jack Pobiac, who's part of Vance's entourage called Unhumans. Yeah.
Which basically said that liberals and leftists were not fully human. Yeah. And that it advocated for an American pinch or Franco who would, you know, and Vance endorsed the book, by the way. Vance endorsed the book. Exactly. Yeah. So, basic basically you you don't you don't walk away from that stuff. You can't be this person then be somebody else. Unless, and again, this is going to self crazy. Unless you do what I do and say, "I was wrong. I up. I almost ruined my life. I've completely changed my mind. And here are three books explaining why." Yeah. But I'm not running for president anymore, right? I'm not out there starting a church movement.
No, I I blew my chance. I'm done. I'm just a writer now talking about, hey, I'm writing new book for you called The Gospel of Zip because out of sympathy for the next guy who's going to make the mistakes I made. Don't look at me and imitate me. Don't do what I did. Right? And here's how you can identify the fact that, you know, in your own life things you need to change. That's a different message. So, if JD Vance stood up and said, you know, I can't do this anymore. uh whatever that line was crossed, you know, my wife's giving me a choice between my marriage and running for president on this MAGA ticket, but she won't have it anymore because she's a brown person from India and says, "Okay, I'm done here." You know, watching people my color from my background being rounded up and thrown in vans and disappeared.
We're done and I'm sorry and I'm out of politics now and you know, you won't hear from me again till I write a memoir 10 years from now about why I got here. That's different. then he'd still have, you know, you you'd listen to that. But just going along with the program and pretending everything's fine at a certain point, is that really who we Republicans want leading them? Is this this opportunist who's sucked up to Trump? Um, and when Trump when Trump falls, which he will in reputation, if nothing else, once he's gone, the people who were the most collaborative when it came to his bullying tactist and imitative of them, um, you know, screaming at Zalinski in that office meeting or endorsing, you know, that book we were talking about, it's not going to be forgotten.
So, Trump may be able to get away with it, but if JD thinks he can do it, good luck, right? Uh well, Frank, lovely to chat with you and uh good to good to get your your uh perspectives on this uh crazy situation. Uh are you still in touch with anybody who's like, you know, very in that movement in Well, the funny thing is I you know, one thing I talk about in my new book, The Gospel of Zip, is the fact that the only leader in that movement who stayed in touch with me once I bailed and I mean for like 20 or 30 years after I bailed, so it was a long time and very friendly and very helpful was Dr. Sierra Coup. And why did he to stay in touch?
Because he said, "You're right to have walked." Why? Because he wasn't extreme enough for the movement he helped start. Yeah. So, for instance, as surgeon general, he would say things like, "Well, it's not true that women suffer more breast cancer occurrence when they've had an abortion. It's not true that more women commit suicide who have had abortions. It's not." And then worst of all, from their point of view, he said, "You know, this whole thing where we're calling AIDS the gay cancer, and they had it coming, well, guess what? You know, I think people should use condoms to have safe sex. And by the way, I think we should spend billions of dollars on research because gay people are human beings.
And so they they began to do to him, you know, what later they did to me, not in the same way. I'm not that kind of a public figure, but all of a sudden it was like, well, you're you know, you're not proof enough enough. So he went back to Wheaton College where he had given his first anti-abortion speech way back before he came and pitched the project to us. He gave another speech which they then did not distribute uh but that was recorded and they talk that is talked about in his me in this in this biography by him where he said the pro-life movement is not the pro-life movement. It is the anti-abortion movement and it has given into extremism and that was it.
So it's not he changed his view, but he bailed from the movement as an extremist movement that he no longer approved of that had then called him out for being quote progay by saying, "Hey, I'm the surgeon general. We need to invest in AIDS research." So he was he he was too sane for the beginning of the MAGA movie. Yeah, it it really does feel like um yeah, it feels like we're watching a very bizarre familiar yet unfamiliar thing happen where people are like, you know, going into this trance state and then they're kind of like uh reinforcing it, you know, on social media and with outrage. And so it's then it's like they have enough people on in that state so they can, you know, if they if they decide to do it, commit mass violence or whatever whatever they decide is called for, you know. Yeah.
And if you throw God leads me is leading you to do this into it, then of course you're on a whole another planet where rational discussion doesn't mean anything because it's this idea that Trump has been called by God. Okay, game over. I mean, how do you discuss with that point of view? The only way you can discuss by with it is to get into the weeds and say, okay, if you believe in quote the Bible and you're trying to follow Jesus, you know, and the only verses you like are the muscular stuff about you're going to burn in hell forever if you disagree with us. But you discount the entire sermon on the mount, you have a problem, irrespective of the fact that I don't think any of this is true, just taking your own intellectual and philosophical and theological presuppositions as fact for a moment based on that.
You can't do this. And I'm not the only person saying that. So the question is, you know, Peter Warner, other people have been saying it. Um, you know, Tim Alberta, other people who are still in the evangelical world. At some point enough people may listen. You know, if 10% of the population who voted for Trump had not voted for him, he wouldn't have been president either time, right? Cool. Well, listen, let's uh let's revisit uh sometime soon. Yeah, anytime. I love talking with you and uh and like and oh, and the the the Gospel of Zip will be on for sale on Amazon November 1st. And and I I always forget this, but of course if people have made it to this point in the You Tube recording, they should please like, subscribe, like and subscribe.
Exactly. Share, you know, all that stuff. Daniel's one of the good guys. Like, subscribe, do all that good stuff. And by the way, the unusual thing about the Gospel of Zip is if you don't want to buy it, it's free on You Tube November one. Oh, cool. And if you go to the gospelofzip. com, it's a site that Ernie Greg, my producer, set up who does my podcast. Um, and it's free and there's no hook and there's no fundraising. There's nothing that will remind you of my evangelical bad old self. There's no hooks. There's nothing to sign. There's nothing to pay. But if you want to listen to me read my own book for 7 hours and 14 minutes, which is the length of it.
It's like a, you know, it's like an audio book, but it's free on You Tube. So, you don't have to watch my ugly mug. You can just listen to the sound, and you've got a free, professionally recorded book to listen to. You'll never pay a dime for it. And, um, I'm giving it away. So, it's also for sale on Amazon, but there's a free version on You Tube, November 1, everywhere. Amazing. All you have to do is go to the gospelofzip. com and it's yours for nothing, which is not an evangelical thing to do. There's no God cash when you give your book away. Yeah, just saying.
Well, hopefully God, you know, works in mysterious ways. So, we'll see. Well, put it this way. You do. So, that's good. Have me back. All right. Have a great Have a great afternoon. We'll talk. Hey, Daniel, this was great. I love it. and I love your podcast and people everybody subscribe to Daniel's podcast because it's a good one. Thank you. Thank you, sir.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.