All Comments for: Our Contentious Catalyst | Christianity Today

Free Newsletters:

RSS Feeds |

Audio |

Twitter

Home > 2008 > November

Christianity Today, November, 2008 |

Our Contentious Catalyst

Francis Schaeffer never stopped battling for the faith.

Harold Fickett | posted 11/20/2008 05:01PM

Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America
by Barry Hankins
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, November 2008
288 pp., $13.60

Evangelist Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) awakened a generation ...

[Reader Reviews]

Average User Rating:

Rate and Comment on this article

Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 comments.

Page: 1

Show All

John Cuthbert

Posted: November 26, 2008 8:19 AM

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

Posted: November 24, 2008 4:37 PM

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	Posted: November 24, 2008 1:50 PM

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!

Rev. Raúl Domínguez

Posted: November 22, 2008 3:27 PM

I thank God for the ministry of this one great evangelical scholar. He really challenged my neorthodoxy, almost liberal views on the Bible, and redirected it to the right conservative view on the Bible. And when I got to read “, The God Who is There” and “Escape from Reason”, I did understood how really his work affected the new theologians in our era. Now days I am an escape goat of liberalism, due to a guy like him. Although I don’t believe all about the way he pictured holiness, because in that only matter, he not only used the “the Enlightenment language”, but also applied it to his conception. May God bless his ministry.

Robert

Posted: November 21, 2008 11:33 AM

Dr. Allen D. Unruh - I will not even attempt in this reply to rebut your comments, which boarder on the absurd, so much so that I thought responding would be a waste of time (both mine and yours) but rather I will direct you to two exceptional books, (1) Tyler's Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality and (2) Nussbaum's Head to Heart: American Christianities. If after reading these excellent, well researched and well reviewed books, you choose to persist in your belief that American was founded on Christian principles, by Christian thinkers, than at least you will be doing so with the full realization that your position, as that of Schaeffer's, is simply not supported by the facts. And indeed this is the reason why Schaeffer's Manifesto is devoid of a single footnote supporting his suppositions. The Founding Father's, devote (in their own way) as some may have been, were men of the Enlightenment, not men of the biblical text.

Dr. Allen D. Unruh

Posted: November 21, 2008 8:59 AM

History is recording that Schaeffer was right. Historical records document unequivocally the tremendous impact Christianity had on the drafting of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. However, our forefathers were careful not to build this nation on a theocracy like that of the Church of England. Jesus Christ doesn't force people to believe and that is the basis of the concept of tolerance. Today the radical left has taken the concept of tolerance and applied it to everything but Christianity. Ronald Reagan said, "If we ever forget we are one nation under God we shall be a nation gone under." Dr. Allen Unruh

John Hale

Posted: November 21, 2008 6:32 AM


Fickett states that "Schaeffer followed fundamentalism's will to do battle with theological liberalism." Should it be inferred then that evangelism's difference from fundamentalism is the former has no will to battle theological liberalism?

Susan De Vries

Posted: November 21, 2008 4:53 AM

I don't think I've ever read a better review of a biography, especially when it concerns one of my heroes. I appreciate the author's careful criticism that the biographer avoided any analysis of personal, family difficulties or private persona. And his critique of the on-going dilemmas of the evangelical camp are succinct and astute. To illustrate just one, "to be so busy marketing conversion that the great remainder of Christian life is neglected" seems to be the unchanging pattern of the great short wave radio pioneers, HCJB, TWR, etc. Thank you, Harold, for an excellent report on an insightful biography. I think I'll get a copy and read it!

John Dunlop

Posted: November 20, 2008 5:10 PM


Helped me understand a bit more both the importance of what Schaeffer did, and the fact that he was a flawed human like the rest of us.

Russ LaPeer

Posted: November 20, 2008 2:32 PM


Warning people against error is no more separatistic than any other principled stand for truth.

RJR.fan

Posted: November 20, 2008 2:14 PM

Shaeffer's defective eschatology worked against his long-range effectiveness. His two most prominent disciples, C. Everett Koop and his son FS IV, demonstrate the problems of premillennialism: Koop caved to the sodomite lobby when he had the chance to actually do something about the AIDS crisis, had he but thought and acted Biblically. FS IV renounced the Reformed faith of his fathers, and became Eastern Orthodox and ungrateful.

Milton Pope

Posted: November 20, 2008 2:02 PM

I agree -- reluctantly -- with the criticism of Schaeffer's apologetic. But having read pretty much all his books, most of them repeatedly, I have to say that he was more than his apologetic. The never-changing constant in every part of his work was evangelism, spreading the good news of Christ. If he was flawed, he was flawed. But he did so much for me (in Bible college in the late '60s) and many of my generation, showing us that we didn't have to bury our intellect to be Christian. He and C. S. Lewis kept me sane.

Robert

Posted: November 20, 2008 1:40 PM

I'm indebted to Schaeffer, to whom I was introduced in my late teens, in particular for demonstrating how non-Believers lives tend not to correspondence with their beliefs and the cultural relevance of faith. However, over time as I was exposed to more sophisticated thinkers, I found Schaeffer to be polemical. He had a shallow understanding of philosophy, history, science and ironically culture. He misunderstood Kierkegaard or chose to misrepresent him, endorsing a propositional view of truth, and turning the faith into believing the right things, as opposed to experiencing a relationship. If I recall correctly, Schaeffer's works are completely devoid of footnotes substantiating his claims or his statements regrading the beliefs of others. Beyond this, his Manifesto was a disaster, a complete mischaracterization of American history, which perpetuated the myth that has burdened the Religious Right ever since, namely that America is a Christian country. This is is true legacy.

DanS	Posted: November 20, 2008 1:23 PM

Hankins's biography...sees Schaeffer's intellectual contributions of little lasting relevance...his apologetics are unsuited to the postmodern era... Truly, Mr. Hankins should get out more. Evangelicals, of Schaeffer's caliber, understand the vast intellectual and cultural diversity of the planet. Sure, postmodernism is the most recent expression of intellectual confusion and despair, but Schaeffer's analysis remains timeless. Why? Societies are not monolithic or homogeneous. The intellectual problems of the '60s and corresponding befuddled minds are still around, albeit in slightly modified forms. I read The God Who is There at age 20; and reread it at age 60. I'm suspicious that Mr. Hankins has always found F. Schaeffer's analysis, as well as the entire realm of orthodoxy, a puzzle.

Howard Pepper

Posted: November 20, 2008 12:47 PM

Very interesting article! I will add just one point from my reading encounter with Schaeffer... That I have long departed from the theology and much of the historical analysis he did, but he made an impression on me early in college (about 1968 if I recall), and opened my vision in a way that continued to have a very positive impact. I never went to L'Abri, but read his key early books in those days. What they did was help me see the interconnections of academic disciplines and how the history of ideas tends to flow and intermix with cultural factors. It really opened me to history and to a broader interest in and understanding of worldviews, etc... things that stayed with me, and ironically, are at least indirectly much of the reason I no longer find his or others' Evangelical apologetics or basic theology to be adequate.

James

Posted: November 20, 2008 12:45 PM

In the interest of engaging the culture, Schaeffer did use the Enlightenment language and themes in shaping his apologetic and I think masterfully so. He took what modern man was saying and showed how flawed his reasoning is, that it only leads to despair. Man beginning only from himself and using reason ends up with no absolute truth, sociological law, religion, etc. Truth is the majrity vote of that nation that can lick all others" as Oliver Wendell Holmes once stated. It's frightening but he was a former justice of the US Supreme Court, and even more frightening sounds like some we have on the court now. I have read and re-read How Shall We Then Live and noted how many issues he nailed on the head that we face today but he wrote about 35 years ago! Read the chapters on "Our Society" and "Manipulation and the Elite." Despite whatever personal flaws he may have had he should be referred to as Saint Francis. We need more like him in this age of absolute relativism!

Page: 1

E-mail this page

Write CT

Print this article

Post a comment