Glory to Jesus Christ!
It's been a long time since this thread was active, but I wanted to respond, since I just finished reading "Dancing Alone".
The Orthodox priest in my town loaned the book to my dad, who passed it along to me when he'd finished. Disappointingly, Frank Schaeffer leaves no doubt that his dad was the deep thinker & talented one in the family. Frank's writing ability is only slightly more advanced than his filmmaking (years ago I saw his "Wired to Kill"; it ranks as one of the worst movies I've ever seen - but I digress).
Rather than make this an ad hominem attack on Frank though, let me say that I largely agreed with a number of his points regarding the negative impact of modern western culture and liberal religion. For instance, I found myself thinking, "right on" as he critiqued the corrosive influences of individualistic protestant pietism and Americanism-as-religion.
In other respects though, I found his reasoning and arguments to run quite shallow in substance, but deep in polemic.
Rather than even acknowledging those churches which are "Orthodox in communion with Rome" (Byzantine / Greek Catholic), or traditional, conservative Catholics, the term "Catholicism" was nearly always prefaced by the words "American Protestantized". Almost every mention of the pope included facetious references to "infallibility" which demonstrated zero understanding of that dogma as it is taught by the Catholic church.
Protestantism also received a good drubbing (worse than the Catholics), but with little differentiation between those denominations which still uphold a number of doctrines handed down by the undivided church, and those which are apostate (AS IF protestantism was monolithic).
The Orthodox come off as nearly fit for heaven. All jurisdictional (and other) problems were neatly ignored. The only slight twinge of disapproval Franky has is for those "ethnic" Orthodox who've lost their evangelistc zeal and theological purity. Their best hope, seemingly, is an infusion of new blood in the form of ex-protestant converts like himself! He even humbly mentions that when he began attending the Greek Orthodox church, his fellow parishioners were initially unaware that he had "been somebody" among the protestants. How altogether lovely that he condescended to dwell among them in bodily form, eh? If he was "somebody", it primarily "the son of Francis Schaeffer - a very gifted writer and philosopher.
So, while I give a hearty "amen" to Junior's basic assessment of "what a mess we're in" - I found his ultimate conclusions flawed, faulty and simplistic. To blame "the West" - i.e. Catholics and Protestants - for all the problems in this country (if not the world) while holding up the Eastern Orthodox Church as The Exemplar Unparalleled One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (guaranteed or your money back) seems ingenuous, ignorant, and "frankly" ludicrous.
The acorn has not fallen far from the tree, it appears. Frank retains all the "anti-papist" rhetoric of a zealous know-nothing fundamentalist and shows himself more worthy of the tag "Byzantine Protestant" than "Orthodox". I must say I expected more, and thus was sadly disappointed by the negative tone and attitude set forth in "Dancing Alone".
In Christ,
CAPTL
sinner
[This message has been edited by CAPTL (edited 04-09-99).]
