Question

How do you feel about a march?  Christians are marching.  I saw Frank Schaeffer (sp.) leading, I believe, an Anti-Abortion march, and let's just say that it was done legally; people conducted themselves the way they should, and it was not done under the auspices of a local church name--it was concerned citizens.  I would like your thoughts on that.

Answer

Yeah, I don't have a problem with that--if it is done right and it is done in a proper way, and it is not a rabble.  You know, people do it for one reason--they do it to get on television--that's basically it.  Or to get the people on Capitol Hill to see them doing it, so that they know there is a large constituency there.  I think that if it done properly, and it is done respectfully, and shows due respect to the people involved--I don't have a problem with that.  But when the crowd is stirred up to think evil against the Legislators, or when it becomes a rebellious thing and it is fomenting, and they are saying ugly things about our nation or about people in positions of leadership, then I have a problem with that.  But, I think that if it is done right, as a citizen if you want to express yourself that way--that's great. 

The thing that concerns me is when I see men of God, who have been called to the teaching of the Word, and the preaching of the Word, abandoning themselves to all these kinds of things.  I will be very candid with you--I really feel (this is a personal feeling) in the last few years of Francis Schaeffer's life the tremendous capability that he had demonstrated to help the Church get on track apologetically--got totally lost, and he was so busy marching here, and marching there, all over the place, that those last years before he went to heaven, were not as productive in my mind, in terms of theology and apologetics, as the prior years had been.  And that is only a value judgment on my part--I am not certainly second-guessing what he did in his life, but as I look at his life and realize that it seemed in those last years that he was so concerned about marching and protesting, and doing this and doing that, that it diverted those energies away from the Word, and away from that great contribution that at least, I felt, he had made in the earlier years.

It is question of priority.  I think that it is fine to have a part in that, certainly if there was an anti-abortion protest in the state and everybody wrote letters and so forth and so on--I would want to be a part of that.  I wouldn't even resist marching and showing where I stood on that--if it was done right, but I would not divert the energies and the time, and the calling of God in my life to do that, because I feel the strength is in carrying out the ministry of the Word.