Rent Sex, Mom, and God: A Religiously Obsessed Sexual Memoir (or a Sexually Obsessed Religious Memoir)

Synopsis

With laugh-out-loud scenes from his childhood and youth and acidic ruminations on the present state of an America he and his fundamentalist parents help create, Frank Schaeffer asks what the Becks and the Limbaughs and the Palins and the paranoid fantasies of the "right-wing echo chamber' are really all about.

Here's a hint: sex.

The unforgettable central character in this strange-but-true successor to Crazy for God and Patience with Godis a character indeed-the author's far-from-prudish evangelical mother, who sweetly but bizarrely regularly provides startling (and hilarious) juxtapositions of the religious and the sensual during his childhood and youth.

As the author himself explains:

"I'm a novelist and storyteller. So my way of telling the Big Story of what the religious right did to America is to fold it into the individual story of my life. I do this for two reasons: first, it's (I hope) entertaining and provides insight into the evangelical right-wing mindset. Second, it so happens that my father and mother (Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I became leaders in the far religious-right movement and so had a big impact on America. My story is a window into millions of similar lives but also the (somewhat scandalous and controversial) story of one life and family that touched millions of others.
"Dip into my life and learn why certain folks have a perpetual chip on their shoulder over imagined grievances to the point where they hate their (own democratically) elected government and-curiously, in the name of "patriotism"-are thoroughly anti-American. Hang out with the Schaeffer clan for a bit and discover why the religious right is rooting for the Apocalypse while also regarding themselves as victims of the liberal elite and all the while mired in perpetual sexual dysfunction and weirdness that creates a self-loathing culture that lashes out at the rest of us. And they do it all in the name of Jesus. Go figure."

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