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This small, intense man from the Swiss mountains delivered a message unlike any heard in evangelical circles in the mid-1960s. At Wheaton College, students were fighting to show films like Bambi, while Francis was talking about the films of Bergman and Fellini. Administrators were censoring existential themes out of student publications, while Francis was discussing Camus, Sartre, and Heidegger. He quoted Dylan Thomas, knew the artwork of Salvador Dali, listened to the music of the Beatles and John Cage.

The effect of this tour de force on evangelical students was electrifying. Schaeffer's Boston lectures, Ronald Wells later wrote, commenced "my excitement about the task of Christian scholarship." Historian Mark Noll remembers the Wheaton talks as the most stimulating campus intellectual event of his student years. Francis Schaeffer tore down the gospel curtain that had separated evangelicals from contemporary cultural expression, giving Christians object lessons in how to interpret sculpture, music, painting, and literature as philosophical statements of the modern mind. Future historian Arlin Migliazzo was thrilled: "Schaeffer showed me that Christians didn't have to be dumb."

In the next ten years, the Schaeffers became well-known figures in American evangelicalism. Francis published 18 books and booklets, most of which came out of lectures and talks he had been giving since the 1950s. (Four more books were to follow after 1975; total U.S. sales alone exceeded 2.5 million copies.) Edith accompanied him on many of his speaking tours, developing her own messages and popular following. On college campuses, Edith liked to treat young women in the dorms to "an intimate, candid talk about marriage, sex, and the career of being creative as a homemaker." Edith also took up her typewriter, publishing L'Abri in 1969. In the mid-1970s, she wrote a regular column for Christianity Today, and by 1981 had completed a total of eight books on family life and devotional topics that had sold over 1 million copies. In her writing she often voiced opposition to "women's liberation" and the trend toward two-career families. This latter was curious, given that Francis's wider ministry commenced for her a new full-time career as a writer and lecturer. Meanwhile, 11-year-old Franky was trundled off to English boarding school.

Her depiction of L'Abri's early years was perfectly pitched to the countercultural sentiments of young people, with its homey images of young people with backpacks, shared labor, fresh whole-grain bread, and intellectual conversations by the fireside, all under the umbrella of God's supernatural provision through prayer. The book brought in hundreds of new visitors, mostly American evangelicals. Nevertheless, L'Abri still attracted a fair number of non-Christians—even Timothy Leary, the guru of lsd, managed to find his way there. Francis and Edith now spent but three months per year in residence, the work being carried on by their daughters' families and by volunteers.

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March 3 1997, Vol. 41, No. 3