has anyone read Frank Schaeffer

[this_side_up]

and know anything about him?

http://frankschaeffer.com/

...

Staff Sergeant Aaron White, USMC was killed in a helicopter
crash on May 19, 2003 in Iraq.  Here is an excerpt from his
last letters home to his wife Michele and to his baby daughter
Brianna.

...

Aaron was killed two days after Brianna turned one. When an
American in a military uniform is killed his or her family
receives a one-time death gratuity of $12,000.  The surviving
family may also qualify for Survivors Benefit Plan (SBP) paid
up to age 62 or until the widow remarries. SBP amounts to 55%
of the soldier's retirement pay, pay that is already so low
that it qualifies many military families for food stamps. 
These "benefits" are contingent upon fulfilling many
petty regulations.  Michele did not qualify for SBP because
Aaron was in the Corps just under10 years service. Several
further benefits, like the income-based Dependency and
Indemnity Compensation (DIC), may or may not pay out about
$800 per month and $200 per child depending on the case.
Michele did not qualify because of several arcane
technicalities.  Michele and Brianna's medical benefits will
end three years from Aaron's death. However Michele did
receive some modest insurance compensation because Aaron paid
for coverage out of his own meager salary.

A just released study by the Rand Corporation found that the
families of civilians killed in the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001 received on average, $3.1 million in
government and charitable compensation.  The families of the
firemen and cops who died received even more.  Their average
compensation exceeded $4.2 million. 

,,,

In his second to last letter home Aaron wrote: "Believe
me I am not having a good time here.  This is an ugly hasty
land.  I hope [our] people appreciate the blood we are to
spill." Judging by how we are taking care of his widow
and daughter apparently the answer is that we do not.


So! instead of taking care of them and theirs, people
put those yellow ribbons on their cars.  As if. 

[pelagius]

1. Frank Schaeffer is the son of...

...influential Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer, an agnostic-turned-Presbyterian minister, whose works were very influential among evangelicals in the 70s and beyond.

http://www.rationalpi.com/theshelter/

(On a personal note, my own exposure to Francis Schaeffer's work -- which strongly decried a bourgeois Christianity that did not challenge the society it which it is existed -- led me, a young evangelical, to progressive politcs.)

Frank Schaeffer -- also known as "Franky" for many years -- followed in his father's footsteps as a Christian thinker but when his own way into Eastern Orthodoxy* and has written and taught from that perspective.