Added 2 September 2008.
Fundamentalist Christianity has perhaps not been known for producing intellectuals, being popularly associated in the public mind instead with hellfire preachers and TV evangelists. Yet in the 20th century a young maverick from a conventional background became an evangelical philosopher who in many ways took the intellectual battle to the intellectuals themselves, throwing off the defensiveness or obscurantism of many of his contemporaries within the church at the same time.
Schaeffer's own conversion to Christianity is interesting. His family was nominally religious but Schaeffer apparently decided to stop going to church while in his teens, believing that the message he was hearing each week from the pulpit was not worth attending for. Later in his teens he found a book on Greek philosophy, taught himself Greek and as a result of his reading began to study the Bible as well. The result was an adherence to what might be called fundamentalist Christianity (the word 'fundamentalist' perhaps having different connotations in those days) but could equally be called historic Christianity, the belief of the Reformers and of the Early Church, of Luther, Calvin and the Nicene Creed.
Such was Schaeffer's commitment to this new-found faith that he went through Bible school as a young man and was made a pastor, receiving a church position during the Second World War. However it was after the war that the story really picks up, when he and his wife Edith came to Europe as missionaries to a continent devastated, as Edith put it, both materially and spiritually. Whilst the Schaeffers were finding their feet apologetics-wise, Francis was becoming concerned at the same time by the attitudes of his home church. Although they held to what he regarded as Biblical truth, he felt there was a basic lack of love, and it was this that led him to ultimately part with those who had sent him. Instead he became more or less independent, depending on faith to provide him and his family with enough to carry on their work. Amazingly they never went short, although at the same time the Schaeffers denounced the materialistic lifestyle as both unnecessary and a hindrance to those whom they were trying to reach. One man who knew them later wrote that after coming to Europe Schaeffer always used public transport.
By no means a man of steel or immune from feelings despite his undoubted mental powers, Schaeffer at one point in the fifties suffered a period of depression when he doubted his own work, partly as the result of previous experiences, but came through this difficult time a stronger man for it and thereafter plunged himself deeper into the work of the mission they had decided to call "L'Abri Christian Fellowship", L'Abri being the French word for shelter. The idea was that anyone could turn up and ask any questions at all, no matter how difficult, with the one proviso that Schaeffer reserved the right to fire back his own tricky questions about the questioner's worldview or beliefs. Despite the philosophical apologetic for Christianity that the Schaeffers offered, Schaeffer never tried to add to the Bible and once said that he viewed himself largely as a country preacher. Nevertheless at a time when the church, particularly that section which had not embraced liberal theology, was seen at best as irrelevant and at worst as anti-intellectual and superstitious, L'Abri drew young people from across Europe, North America and elsewhere, many from backgrounds of higher education.
The Schaeffers returned to the US in the seventies, having established branches of L'Abri in England and other countries before returning to set up in their home country. Francis Schaeffer was diagnosed with leukemia but carried on working until his death in 1984. His widow Edith continues their work.
The Schaeffers published a number of books from the fifties and sixties onwards, mostly as a result of discussions with visitors to L'Abri and framed around Schaeffer's apologetics and preaching. The three that are probably central to understanding his work (and also true Christianity for contemporaries) are The God Who Is There, He Is There And He Is Not Silent, and Escape From Reason. Both deal with what Schaeffer would call "true" faith as opposed to "God-words" or "leaps of faith". The idea of the "leap of faith" features prominently in a closely related book, Escape from Reason, in which Schaeffer uses a quick tour of theological and philosophical history from Thomas Aquinas onwards to illustrate how Western thought has more recently veered disastrously towards subjectivism and blind leaps into dark alleys as opposed to the classical philosophical belief that "A is not non-A", or that a proposition is either true or false. Reading all three together would be a good introduction to Schaeffer's thought, which was based solidly on Reformation Christianity but in a contemporary setting.
Schaeffer wrote a number of other important books. True Spirituality dealt with the practice of holiness without being either ascetic or morally sloppy. Death in the City was another book dealing with contemporary culture, based on Bible studies of Jeremiah and Romans. The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century dealt with matters of the corporate Christian life. Pollution and the Death of Man tackled ecology. Art and the Bible was a fairly slim volume but dealt with questions relating Christianity and art, an area that in the twentieth century had often been regarded with suspicion by evangelicals. Schaeffer himself was sympathetic towards the artist, often seeing modern works as a cry of despair, and once wrote that even if one disagreed with the artist, it was not necessary to deny the artistic merit of his work or him as a person - a rather different attitude to that displayed by some within the church at times.
One should always beware of eulogising a man, even a deceased good
man, lest we put him (or her) on a pedestal. Schaeffer never claimed
to be holy, or perfect, or that his way worked best or was the only
way, and as St Paul wrote, we must all receive our reward from God
alone. Nevertheless he appeared at a critical time when the choice
seemed to be either to adopt an unthinking fundamentalist belief or
an often equally unthinking liberalism, humanism or existentialism.
To those outside the church he appealed to their reason but also to
the Scriptures, showing that belief was not just a blind leap in the
darkness but was actually more reasonable, especially when compared
to the consequences of many of the contemporary worldviews. The
church he confronted with its often unthinking and unloving postures
in some areas, as well as its own "leaps of faith". Though
few people growing up in the church have now heard of L'Abri, I
believe the various branches are still running in most if not all of
their original countries, including England.
Some years after
his death there were claims that Schaeffer had influenced, or been
the cause of, the Religious Right in the USA. There was some truth to
this as some prominent figures at the time (Tim LaHaye, Randall
Terry) cited him as an influence, LaHaye for political participation
by evangelicals and Terry for civil disobedience in the cause of
anti-abortion. However, the more serious charge that Schaeffer was
responsible for, or shared the views of, Christian Dominionists or
Reconstructionists (who might be loosely considered theocrats) is
harder to make stick. Christian Reconstructionists themselves
criticised A Christian Manifesto, which was held by some
critics to be advocating theocracy, a course of action that Schaeffer
himself explicitly rejected in the book. An interesting personal
insight is apparently given by his son Frank Schaeffer (see below)
who was instrumental in getting his father involved with what would
become the Christian Right movement in the early 70s. The Ship of
Fools article in the Links section gives more on this, but it seems
that Schaeffer Snr was ambivalent towards the movement by the end of
his life.
Nobody can deny that it is hard for sons to follow in their father's footsteps, especially when your father has been praised and held up as an example. It is equally certain that no father is perfect, and that the ways of one generation may seem strange or even offputting to the next. Frank Schaeffer is the only son of Francis and Edith Schaeffer (they also had daughters), and early on in life seemed destined to follow his father as a preacher or similar Christian worker. He also had obvious artistic talents and his father spoke highly of his work. The first book I saw with his name on the cover, Bad News for Modern Man, seemed a little acerbic, but then I heard nothing more of him for some years until his name appeared as the author of a novel, Portofino, in which the main characters are a highly-strung missionary family (the Beckers) abroad in Europe, bent on converting everyone to their own Protestantism while displaying somewhat more human quirks among themselves. Surely not? I thought to myself, but yes, it was indeed the Frank Schaeffer, aka earlier as Frankie Schaeffer. Those reviews I have read on the Amazon website seem favourably disposed towards this work, described as a "coming of age" and "Huck Finn"-style story, but as somebody said, if this is autobiographical then it doesn't portray the historical Schaeffers in a particularly good light. The follow up, Saving Grandma, dealt with the same family with the son, Calvin, as its hero, and while some Protestant and Catholic reviewers tended to identify with the family's religion, one person did note that there were somewhat unsavoury elements in the book involving auto-eroticism (I won't go into details).
The most ironic part of the story here, however, is that at the same time as apparently denouncing his family's faith as uptight and intolerant, Frank Schaeffer made a volte-face and joined the Eastern Orthodox Church, rejecting his Protestant past. To a certain degree I sympathise with him, since this is a path I once considered before remaining in Anglican Christianity, but where I definitely part company with him (as I suspect many others do) is in his convert's zeal, which has led him into frankly bitter or vicious wording in both print and speech. While I disagreed with Bill Clinton's stance on abortion, for example, I certainly wouldn't liken him or his supporters to Nazi concentration camp guards, as Frank Schaeffer did. Schaeffer junior produced a book, Dancing Alone, about his conversion to Orthodoxy, which could have been an interesting and quite legitimate exercise, except that numbers of reviewers, including those sympathetic to Orthodoxy, have complained about the vitriol, sloppiness and plain inaccuracy of much of the book. I have not read the book myself, so cannot comment, but given what I have read of Frank Schaeffer's speeches, I would be surprised if my own opinion were much different to the one expressed here.
However this was not to be the end of the story.
The Francis A Schaeffer Foundation
The Francis Schaeffer Institute
CS Lewis & Francis Schaeffer - book comparing the lives and apologetics of both men. I haven't read it so can't endorse or criticise it, so if anyone has, please E-mail us.
Wikipedia article on Francis Schaeffer, to which I acknowledge my thanks for some of the information on the Religious Right and Schaeffer. Has a very useful bibliography.
Ship of Fools article reviewing Frank Schaeffer's Crazy For God, discussing the Schaeffer family's part in the US Christian Right. Worth reading for an insight into both father and son.
Reviews on Amazon.com of Frank Schaeffer's Saving Grandma, if you want to check my veracity, and reviews of Dancing Alone.
More thoughtful reviews of Frank Schaeffer's book are given here and here.