Each year about this time, my thoughts turn to L’Abri, the influential Christian community founded in March 1955 in the mountains of French-speaking Switzerland.
Francis and Edith Schaeffer, the founding couple, tutored a whole generation of evangelical baby boomers through lectures, films and books on how Christianity should influence pop culture, philosophy and art.
I visited their mountain retreat in early 1976. I was so entranced by the intellectual life and lively repartee that I gave up a tour of Switzerland so I could stay five extra days. A few years later, as a college senior, I organized a showing of the 10-part “How Should We Then Live” film series on Christianity and culture made by Mr. Schaeffer and his son, Franky.
Thus, I was interested in a recent biography written by Baylor University professor Barry Hankins: “Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America.”
It’s hard, Mr. Hankins said, to find an American evangelical older than 50 who was not influenced by Mr. Schaeffer. The philosopher’s visits to the evangelical redoubts of Wheaton, Westmont and Calvin Colleges “were electrifying for young evangelicals in the throes of a hangover from fundamentalism,” he told me. “They were in churches that encouraged you to shun culture, not embrace it.”
In an era where Christians were encouraged to avoid movies and secular thinkers, Mr. Schaeffer quoted from an array of European nihilists, philosophers, filmmakers and artists ranging from Cezanne, Gauguin, Fellini, Sartre, Tillich and the Beatles to Kierkegaard, Picasso, Bergman and the Marquis de Sade.
Schooled as a pastor, Mr. Schaeffer was not an expert on any of these people, but “he was a popularizer,” Mr. Hankins said. “He could put things in a way that made sense. The big picture he presented was basically how Western civilization has moved away from Christianity.”
People lucky enough to visit L’Abri found an attractive Christian community of household chalets and a warm atmosphere that entranced visitors. Hard-core atheists schooled in European universities became receptive to Christianity, not just because of Mr. Schaeffer’s intellectual bounty, but also because of Edith Schaeffer’s insistence that everything done at L’Abri reflect beauty and taste.
That was then. One doesn’t just drop by today’s L’Abri — people are asked to commit to stays lasting from one to three months. Franky Schaeffer, now known as Frank, has come out with several tell-all books about growing up in an internationally known evangelical family. None of them are complimentary.
Mr. Hankins and I discussed the transitory nature of great experiments such as L’Abri, and how founders of such places tend to stay put 10 years at the most, then move on. Mr. Schaeffer was active on the Christian college circuit by 1965 and by the time I arrived at L’Abri, he and Edith often were on the road.
Although Mr. Schaeffer, who died in 1984, is considered a “period piece” by evangelical scholars, none of the current crop of young Christian philosophers have approached his fame, the author said.
“I don’t know any Christian scholar who would have his people read Schaeffer,” he said. “His ideas have not stood the test of time, but his model for engaging culture is still helpful.”
• Julia Duin’s “Stairway to Heaven” column runs Thursdays and Sundays. Contact her at jduin@washingtontimes.com.
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