Theology Today - Vol 41, No. 4 - January 1985 - BOOK NOTES

510 - Bad News for Modern Man

Bad News for Modern Man
By Franky Schaeffer
Westchester, Ill., Crossway Books, 1984. 183 pp. $7.95.

Franky Schaeffer insists the issue of abortion is not complex. He argues that abortion has become a casual birth control method for the middle class. With one million six hundred thousand American abortions per year, Schaeffer contends abortion is no more defensible than slavery or gassing Jews.

Bad News for Modern Man seeks to awaken evangelicals to the dangers inherent in contemporary thought, while encouraging a "new ecumenism of orthodoxy" grounded in the sanctity of life. While "orthodoxy" remains undefined, the reader gradually ferrets out its meaning to include those who are against abortion, for a strong national defence, appreciative of the inerrancy of scripture, and convinced of the historicity of Genesis.

Bad News moves from the central thesis of the sanctity of life to lambast a host of people and institutions who have, in Schaeffer's view, flirted with the temptation of "being fashionable" for the sake of secular, liberal forces. The World Council of Churches, Gandhi, Fuller Seminary, Ron Sider and Wheaton College are among those Schaeffer castigates. With the possible exceptions of Gandhi and the World Council, Schaeffer's primary targets for this buckshot approach are those evangelicals who Schaeffer says fail to see the "creeping secularization" of modern philosophy that threatens their own foundations.

Even though Schaeffer is concerned more with "truth" than sophistication, Bad News for Modern Man lacks the depth to stand as a theological manifesto. Stylistically, the book also fails as a cogent statement for "pro-life" groups. Cliches such as "throw the baby out with the bath" riddle the book, which not even his disclaimer ("This book … is a blunt instrument") excuses. While several of his insights deserve a wide reading, the book's indistinctness will make it a "bugle sound" (I Cor. 14.8) only for the already convinced.

J. W. Gregg Meister
Lakeside Presbyterian Church
San Francisco, Calif.