Paul McCusker has spent the last 25 years working for Focus on the Family. A former Baptist-turned-Anglican-turned Catholic, McCusker has served as executive producer for the organization’s award-winning audio dramas, such as “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and the recent Audie Award-nominated “The Screwtape Letters,” as well as the children’s radio program “Adventures in Odyssey.” McCusker serves as director of creative content for Focus on the Family.
He spoke with Register senior writer Tim Drake about his life and work from his office in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in southwest Pennsylvania, in Uniontown, but I grew up in Bowie, Md., just east of Washington, D.C., and spent my formative years there.
Nice testimony. Unfortunately, I think McCusker’s rather simplistic take on evangelical Protestantism, while a caricature, is all too true. He says, [i]”The problem with evangelicalism is that people don’t know Church history. Most evangelicals think you have the first century Church, this blip called the Reformation, and then Billy Graham.”[/i] Sure, there are exceptions, but sadly that charge does resonate with my experience of an awful lot of American evangelicals and fundamentalists.
But of course, if you take [i]Sola Scriptura[/i] to be more than just a Protestant slogan or rallying cry, and if you think only the Bible matters, then church history really is pretty much a superfluous, unnecessary thing at best, and at worst, Tradition is a downright dangerous thing. What the scribes and Pharisees relied on instead of God’s Word, etc.
I’m glad Focus on the Family hasn’t thrown McCusker out of the family. Too bad we Anglicans couldn’t hold on to a creative, fruitful guy like him.
David Handy+