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Evangelist Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) awakened a generation of evangelicals and helped turn the movement decisively toward cultural engagement. Legions of baby boomers, from wild-eyed hippies to disaffected preachers' kids, came to faith at his L'Abri study center in Switzerland. Along with C. Everett Koop, Schaeffer was instrumental in moving evangelicals into the pro-life camp. He was called the "missionary to the intellectuals" and, in one Christianity Today piece, hailed "Our Saint Francis."
But several young scholars inspired by Schaeffer soon came to see chinks in his approach. They judged his historical analysis profoundly flawed and his apologetic strategy too much a product of Enlightenment rationalism. And when he turned more to social activism in his later years, many admirers questioned his alliance with factions like the Moral Majority. The compassionate mentor who saw the wounded soul beyond a young person's anger seemed to have become a cranky polemicist.
Barry Hankins's Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Eerdmans) is a skillful biography written with both fondness and a keen eye that discerns the underlying consistency of Schaeffer's outlook. The evangelist was always a battler, from his early years as a pastor in Carl McIntire's fundamentalist Bible Presbyterian Church to his confrontation with European secularism to the 22-page letters he would fire off to his scholarly critics. Schaeffer followed fundamentalism's will to do battle with theological liberalism—and to save the lost and culture—in every situation and era through which he lived.
By highlighting Schaeffer's formation, Hankins squares Schaeffer's early and late years. Few who were introduced to Schaeffer through ...
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John Cuthbert
I won't buy the book, but I appreciate your review. Sadly, Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism do not need a reminder of yet another angry, separatistic, bombastic, "the-sky-is-falling" type of leader. I still find it odd that Francis Schaeffer would so strongly criticize "The West" and Liberalism in General while enjoying the signficant fruits of that form of thought in of all places liberal Switzerland!!! Evangelicals/Fundamentalists (I still don't know the difference, although the former dresses better.) still roundly criticize Liberalism while enjoying the healthy and diverse society it has created and in which Evangelicals/Fundamentalists can thrive!
ron rogers
That Hankins marginalizes Schaeffer's impact ("He sees Schaeffer's intellectual contributions of little lasting relevance, essentially agreeing with the criticisms of Schaeffer's evangelical peers.") misses the impact he had on me, a sixties kid. Of course, with the ability of hindsight it's easy to see where anyone has "missed" something that we now take for granted. Looking at many of the notes in my first study Bible from the early 70s I find myself "what-was-I-thinking?" more often than not. But Francis Schaeffer did a powerful job of bridging cultural imperatives and Biblical truth so that we could think, understand and communicate truth to a fast changing, increasingly post-Christian marketplace. He gave me permission to think. And to engage the marketplace of ideas and to not "put my head on a shelf" as did many Christians of that era. Today I am still thinking and engaging the culture in ways I would have thought unthinkable 40 years ago. YAY GOD! YAY Schaeffer!
Dave
Harold Fickett has written a book with Charles Colson, a so-called "Christian Zionist". Jesus condemned the Jewish leaders of his day, calling them "hypocrites, brood (offspring) of vipers". Colson and other "C-Zionist" leaders like Pat Robertson and Tim La Haye are prostrate in front of the anti-Christian pharisees of today, wanting to kiss and wash their feet. The Edomites, a people condened by all the main OT prophets, were converted as a group to become 'Jews' by John Hyrcanus, in about 120BC (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XIII ix 1; XV vii 9). Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived just after the time of Christ, says 'They (Edom) were hereafter no other than Jews'. Ugh!