LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

Frank Schaeffer: 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

[...] With its up-close portraits of the leading figures of the American evangelical movement, and the empathy and humor of the prose, Crazy for God is a uniquely revealing and powerful chronicle of one man at the center of a crucial moment in our recent history. [...]

It's apparently scheduled to be released in the coming month, and the reviews look like it will be very interesting. From The Nation article Frank Schaeffer Goes Crazy for God, we read:

[...] Frank Schaeffer quickly lost all respect for the religious leaders he was meeting, and for himself as the hard-driving, America-hating preacher's son that had become his public persona. As he points out, it's no good to be a member of the elect if the rest of the nation is doing just fine, so of course the religious right must root against America, must hope and pray for the End Times slaughter of most of their fellow citizens. The best title for a movie about the past twenty-five years in religious America would be Elmer Gantry Returns, and Frank is here to tell you its cast of holy rollers is worse than you think: "In private, they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement." [...]

For those not aware of him, you can read more about Frank Schaeffer at Wikipedia. His father Francis Schaeffer was influential in urging political action by such people as Tim LaHaye and Randall Terry of Operation Rescue. You can read more about his influence in "Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence" by Frederick Clarkson.

[...] Many Christian Right thinkers and activists have been profoundly influenced by Reconstructionism. Among others: the late Francis Schaeffer, whose book A Christian Manifesto was an influential call to evangelical political action that sold two million copies, and John Whitehead, President of the Rutherford Institute (a Christian Right legal action group).

Francis Schaeffer is widely credited with providing the impetus for Protestant evangelical political action against abortion. For example, Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, says: "You have to read Schaeffer's Christian Manifesto if you want to understand Operation Rescue." [...]

ETA: BookFinder link.