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Alan Jacobs' most recent essay on the Books and Culture website, "The Know–Nothing Party," marks the second time a publication in the Christianity Today family has distorted my work to heap disdain on Christians of whom mainstream evangelicalism is embarrassed. This is all the more remarkable given that I am a secular Jew and that in both instances, your writers were attempting to paint me as some fanged enemy of Christendom; and yet even my alleged villainy pales in comparison to the contempt for Christian thinkers expressed by CT/B&C's own writers.
In a cover story on Ted Haggard (before his difficulties), CT staffer Tim Stafford accused me of using "mostly scary atmospherics" to place Haggard on a "spectrum between the Grand Inquisitor and William Jennings Bryan." Besides the fact that my "atmospherics" included—independently of my analysis—nearly as many of Haggard's own words, quoted directly or neutrally paraphrased, as Stafford's entire article, I happen to be a great admirer of Bryan. In my forthcoming book, I characterize the Bryan–Darrow showdown as a tragic conflict between two champions of social justice, and I follow historian Michael Kazin in believing Bryan to have been one of the great voices of Christian witness in American history. CT, apparently, holds Bryan in less regard, evidently preferring the integrity modeled by Ted Haggard.
Now Alan Jacobs anoints me a member of a "Know–Nothing Party" that is waging "a war on religion." I hope someone will please notify the CT writers whom I've been proud to promote in the past that they are, in fact, part of an insidious plot to tear down not only their own faith but also religion itself. I can hardly be upset about this gross falsehood, however, given the bile Professor Jacobs drips on R.J. Rushdoony and Tim LaHaye. Now, I'm no admirer of either man, but I'd hardly call Rushdoony a "Dark Armenian–American Lord," as does Professor Jacobs in his rush to disassociate him from Francis Schaeffer. I mean, Rushdoony was a pretty authoritarian guy, but he was no Sauron. I will, however, insist on calling Schaeffer a student of Rushdoony's. He read Rushdoony, and taught some of his ideas. Rushdoony's emphasis on the importance of a providential reading of American history is, I believe, evident in Schaeffer's slightest but most popular work, A Christian Manifesto. Clearly, Schaeffer did not accept all or even the majority of Rushdoony's ideas. Fortunately, one can be a student of a thinker without signing a loyalty oath. As for the fact that Schaeffer was older than Rushdoony, which Professor Jacobs seems to think proves something, I am without adequate response; I had no idea that one's juniors can't influence one. Likewise Professor Jacobs' insistence that Schaeffer read Rushdoony late in his career (though not before he published his most popular book, I might add); is their an age cap on learning of which I've not been informed.
As for LaHaye, I'm willing to take the Left Behind author at his word with regard to his influences, if not his prophecies, which is more than Jacobs is willing to do for his ostensible co–religionist. LaHaye has written of his great debt to Schaeffer. Far be it from me to dispute him. Jacobs is a scholar of literature, so presumably he's familiar with literary influence—that is, how it works in mysterious ways. There are any number of novelists who name Faulkner or Hemingway as their guiding light, but very few of them would do their alleged ancestors proud. Intellectuals may claim ancestors, but they do not have the luxury of choosing their descendants.
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