Crazy for God

I ordered Frank Schaeffer’s Crazy for God (subtitled “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”) as part of my research for The Babylonian Codex. I thought I’d just skim it, focusing on the parts where he talks about his and his famous father’s contributions to the rise of the radical Christian right and the formation of the Moral Majority, and then toss the book in the library donation box.

Boy was I wrong.

This is a story told with brutal honesty and a rare and penetrating wit. It begins, “You can be the world’s biggest hypocrite and still feel good about yourself. You can believe and wish you didn’t. You can lose your faith and still pretend, because there are bills to be paid, because you are booked up for a year, because this is what you do…”.

From there, Crazy for God takes the reader on a journey that is part autobiography, part magical mystery tour. Whether he is writing of his bizarre childhood growing up wild at his parents’ utopian evangelical mission in Switzerland (where guests included the likes of Timothy Leary and Led Zeppelin) or his equally fascinating stint as a boarder in the world of England’s elite public schools in the sixties and seventies, Schaeffer introduces us to an unforgettable cast of colorful and deftly drawn personalities. Ironically, the book actually focuses very little on the part of his life’s story that prompted me to buy it in the first place. I didn’t care. A gifted storyteller and brilliant analyst of character, Schaeffer made me laugh out loud, wince, and think long and hard about everything from family life and parental love to the ways in which the people we meet affect the course of our lives.

I’m not normally a fan of autobiography, but I sat up late into the night reading this one, unable to put it down. The truth is, it’s been a long time since I enjoyed a novel as much.

The library sale isn’t getting this one.