Dallas, USA - Frank Schaeffer is a "trophy" Orthodox convert. His father was the renowned evangelical theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer, who founded L'Abri Fellowship, a Christian center in Switzerland where individuals can seek answers to spiritual questions.
He's often asked to speak at conferences. He is outspoken, articulate and funny, with the kind of biting wit that comes from having been an insider in evangelical circles.
Schaeffer says he spent the 1970s and 1980s as a "sidekick" to his famous father, directing evangelical films, speaking and writing books for the Christian market.
He appeared all over the country, from Jerry Falwell's church to "The 700 Club." But he said he soon became tired of the "hero-worship cult" in evangelical circles, where a ministry rises and falls with its big-name founder. There's usually built-in nepotism that goes along with it, he added, with "someone's second cousin running the mailing list."
Some maintain their integrity, he said, like Billy Graham or his father; many do not. He began to be dissatisfied with a tagalong ministry.
"I could have had a career in that, as the mantle-passed Francis Schaeffer heir. I was good at it, but I didn't have a calling. I would have lost my faith and I would have lost my integrity as a writer," he said.
Schaeffer felt evangelical worship had moved away from its biblical origins and become entertainment-oriented, with "all those bells and whistles keeping people amused." Megachurches that measured their success in numbers and dollars felt too much like the Hollywood film industry he worked in, he said.
In the mid- to late-1980s, he began to dissociate himself completely from that world, seeking a faith that would be his own, instead of being tied to his career as a Christian filmmaker or his father's reputation. He began studying church history and attending Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches.
But he couldn't reconcile the idea of the papacy, and the modern, stripped-down Catholic services he attended, with their "happy, clappy nonsense," felt less liturgical and even more Protestant than the services he grew up with.
At the urging of a friend, he visited an Orthodox church, where he said he found authentic Christian worship. In 1990 he was chrismated, or anointed, into the church as a member.
Though his journey to Orthodoxy began before his father died, Schaeffer said his father would not have disagreed with his conversion. In fact, Francis Schaeffer's last book was "The Great Evangelical Disaster."
"He and I agreed on the critique that led me out of it. He was a stern critic, and was very much not an American evangelical at the end of his life. He described himself as a historic Christian instead," Schaeffer said.
His father also had a friendly relationship with Mother Teresa and British author and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who became Roman Catholic. Those friendships, said Schaeffer, were in stark contrast to how the elder Schaeffer might have responded earlier in his Reformed Presbyterian life: "He would have said they were going to hell."
He finds it amusing that the Christian right holds his father up as a hero. He insists his father would have disagreed with much of modern evangelicalism. (Then again, evangelicals also revere C.S. Lewis, a British writer and Christian apologist, who was a high-church Anglican.)
"The evangelical movement doesn't have many 20th-century heroes," he said.
Schaeffer has been a writer and novelist for several decades. He and his wife launched Regina Orthodox Press to publish books about the Orthodox Church for people who are unfamiliar with the faith.
His semi-autobiographical and humorous novels center on growing up in an evangelical family (his fourth is due out next year) and he's written two nonfiction books about his son in the military, including the best-seller "Keeping Faith."
His son's experience in Iraq gave him an appreciation for the discipline of the U.S. Marine Corps. Not unlike the Orthodox Church, in fact.
"No one is going to come in and do it their own way. And you have to acquire the humility to walk the same path others have walked before you. Orthodoxy does not meet you halfway."