Frank Schaeffer is the youngest son of Francis and Edith Shaeffer. Here are some quotes from Frank Shaeffer's autobiography "Crazy For God: 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."
Trigger warning. These quotes describe what would be best labelled as verbal, physical and sexual abuse.
Page 136 — Dad could be screaming at Mom one minute, or just bluntly muttering "I'll kill myself one of these days," and ten minutes later he would be down in the dining room earnestly answering questions from the guests. They never had any inkling about his state of mind — except when, once in a while, the yelling could be heard or when a tea tray or vase would be hurled down the stairs or over the balcony. But people pretended nothing was happening, except of course for Mom, who would work a sanitized version of her interminable fights with Dad into her talks as a demonstration of the way God was working in their lives "in spite of Frank's weaknesses."
[This paragraph is not a quote, it's my summary of some of Frank's words.] Frank says his Mom always accompanied his Dad on trips, leaving Frank in the care of his older sister Susan who was expected to home-school him while Edith was away. During these times, his older sister used extreme punishment methods to 'discipline' Frank, including winding him up in a bed sheet, pinning it behind so he couldn't get free, and leaving him face up lying entombed on his bed for an hour or more.
Pages 109-111 — Since I learned to read with the threat of Susan's winding sheet and/or a solid slap hanging over me, I deeply resented Dad's need for nightly sexual intercourse. If *only,* I thought, he could have gone for a week or two without Mom and let her stay home!
It never occurred to me that perhaps it was somewhat strange that, by age seven or eight, I had been told by my mother that Dad wanted sex every night. (Dad never *ever* talked about his private life, so I only have Mom's version of this.) Nobody I know had a mother who shared this sort of Kinsey report on her bedroom activities with her children...
What Mom never explained was how her saying that she wanted to be home with us, rather than on the road with Dad, fit in with her wildly enthusiastic reports about how the Lord used her so mightily when she gave her talks. She would blame Dad for forcing her to go with him yet seemed to relish life on the road nevertheless. As a matter of fact, after she hadn't been on the road with him for a while, Mom got downright bored and would sometimes look up at airplanes flying high overhead and say "I really want to travel again." ...
It seemed that more was happening on my parents' speaking trips than daily sex, or Mom typing up Dad's letters or doing his laundry and helping him with his Mood. Mom loved becoming an evangelical star. And so the competition between Mom and Dad became intense. ...
Dad got in Moods, suffered bouts of depression, became discouraged. Mom never showed any weakness.
Frank Schaeffer is the youngest son of Francis and Edith Shaeffer. Here are some quotes from Frank Shaeffer's autobiography "Crazy For God: 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."
Trigger warning. These quotes describe what would be best labelled as verbal, physical and sexual abuse.
Page 136 — Dad could be screaming at Mom one minute, or just bluntly muttering "I'll kill myself one of these days," and ten minutes later he would be down in the dining room earnestly answering questions from the guests. They never had any inkling about his state of mind — except when, once in a while, the yelling could be heard or when a tea tray or vase would be hurled down the stairs or over the balcony. But people pretended nothing was happening, except of course for Mom, who would work a sanitized version of her interminable fights with Dad into her talks as a demonstration of the way God was working in their lives "in spite of Frank's weaknesses."
[This paragraph is not a quote, it's my summary of some of Frank's words.] Frank says his Mom always accompanied his Dad on trips, leaving Frank in the care of his older sister Susan who was expected to home-school him while Edith was away. During these times, his older sister used extreme punishment methods to 'discipline' Frank, including winding him up in a bed sheet, pinning it behind so he couldn't get free, and leaving him face up lying entombed on his bed for an hour or more.
Pages 109-111 — Since I learned to read with the threat of Susan's winding sheet and/or a solid slap hanging over me, I deeply resented Dad's need for nightly sexual intercourse. If *only,* I thought, he could have gone for a week or two without Mom and let her stay home!
It never occurred to me that perhaps it was somewhat strange that, by age seven or eight, I had been told by my mother that Dad wanted sex every night. (Dad never *ever* talked about his private life, so I only have Mom's version of this.) Nobody I know had a mother who shared this sort of Kinsey report on her bedroom activities with her children...
What Mom never explained was how her saying that she wanted to be home with us, rather than on the road with Dad, fit in with her wildly enthusiastic reports about how the Lord used her so mightily when she gave her talks. She would blame Dad for forcing her to go with him yet seemed to relish life on the road nevertheless. As a matter of fact, after she hadn't been on the road with him for a while, Mom got downright bored and would sometimes look up at airplanes flying high overhead and say "I really want to travel again." ...
It seemed that more was happening on my parents' speaking trips than daily sex, or Mom typing up Dad's letters or doing his laundry and helping him with his Mood. Mom loved becoming an evangelical star. And so the competition between Mom and Dad became intense. ...
Dad got in Moods, suffered bouts of depression, became discouraged. Mom never showed any weakness.