Schaeffer the Prevaricator

The Huffington Post featured a particularly ugly screed by Frank Schaeffer. He claims to be providing a service to the Republic by exposing “the loony Reconstructionist/Theonomist” agenda of people like Robert George and Richard John Neuhaus.

Schaeffer is a great exaggerator, what with all the hyperventilating about theocracy and “extremism.” And he backs these claim up by not so subtly suggesting that he was a right wing insider himself, and so he’s to be trusted to know what’s what.

For example, he writes, “The late Roman Catholic convert priest Richard John Neuhaus and I often talked when Neuhaus was starting his far right First Things journal.” Then he goes on to say, “I contributed several articles to some of the early issues of First Things.”

Hum. Often talked, is it? And several articles?

But it turns out that Schaeffer did not contribute several articles. He has only one article in the First Things archive. (“Art and the Spirit,” May 1991.)

Did he then “often talk” with Richard John Neuhaus?

Can we trust Frankie Schaeffer to tell the truth about anything?