Francis, Frank, and Me: A Reflection on the Career of Francis A. Schaeffer

Twenty-five years ago in a predecessor of this magazine, The Reformed Journal, I asked a question that got me into a lot of trouble. The question was "Whatever Happened to Francis Schaeffer," a takeoff on one of Schaeffer's book titles. The RJ submitted the article for an award, which in due course it won; the essay was named "the best feature article in a religious magazine" for 1983. That got it some notoriety and the attention of the Schaeffers, who were not pleased.

In that article I reflected on my deep gratitude for the influence Francis Schaeffer had on my development. I, along with a large number of young Christian academics-in-the-making, was deeply influenced by the early work of Francis Schaeffer. Many of us thought we could make contributions as Christian scholars because of the inspiration given by Schaeffer's earlier work, such as The God Who is There (1968) and Escape From Reason (1969). Beyond the intrinsic worth of his work, Schaeffer caused us to believe in ourselves, that we could make it as academics, even though he was not an academic himself. When one reflects on the near-bankruptcy of intellect in Evangelical circles at the time, it was important to have a leader encourage those of us who were coming of age with a sense of a cause. Schaeffer thus marked an important way-station for our development, as much for readers who only had access to his books and tapes as for those fortunate enough to talk with him in person at L'Abri in Switzerland.

At the same time, in that article, I was critical of Schaeffer. Because of my admiration for and debt to Schaeffer, I was very disappointed to see, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, his shifts of emphasis from intellectual history, philosophy, and theology to a focus on contemporary American social and political issues. Many of us who were with him in the early years could not grasp why his later efforts had descended to bombastic essays that gave intellectual firepower to the then-new "Christian Right." Books like Whatever Happened to the Human Race? and especially The Great Evangelical Disaster were embarrassingly different from his earlier works.

That was the question I asked back in 1983. How did the intellectual hero of our generation move to be a person embraced by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, and Randal Terry? I was later dismayed to learn of Schaeffer's personal response to my ideas. He wrote some eminent Christian historians of my acquaintance asking that they "repudiate" and take steps to "silence" me. [For an explication of that part of the story see Barry Hankins' article in Fides et Historia, 39/1(2007):15-34.]

Now we have a much better handle on why Schaeffer moved to give intellectual leadership to the Christian Right. The answer comes unexpectedly from a flamboyant book written by Schaeffer's son, Frank (a.k.a., "Frankie"): Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of it Back (Carroll & Graf, 2007).

The book has not--to put it mildly--been kindly received by Evangelicals. For instance, in a recent issue of Books and Culture, Os Guinness hit Frankie with the harshest review I've ever read of any book. Among other things, Guinness insists, Frank was a "con artist," an "arrogant, pompous, and hollow young fraud." It was Frank who got his father into the political situations that the son says he now repents of; nevertheless, Guinness says, "Frank exposes and trumpets his parents' flaws and frailties" and then "skewers them with his characteristic mockery." Since Guinness knew all the Schaeffers better that almost anyone outside the family, there is reason to credit his testimony.

Crazy for God is interesting not because we want to know about the author but because we want to know about his famous parents. Yet, we have to endure reading how many times this out-of control adolescent masturbates, and in what places and with what company. It is embarrassing to learn that his mother, Edith Schaeffer, believed she needed to accompany Francis on his speaking tours because he required sex every night. Why would a mother tell this to her children? Even if she did, why would a child write it in a book, along with allegations of the verbal and physical abuse Francis was supposed to have heaped on Edith? What emerges is the picture of an extremely dysfunctional family that, the author insists, was driven "crazy" because of the ministry at L'Abri. As Os Guinness writes, the portrait Frank paints of his parents "amounts to the death-dealing charge of hypocrisy and insincerity at the very heart of their work. ...The thousands of people, who over the decades came to L'Abri and came to faith or deepened in faith, were obviously conned." Again, Guinness is right. I may have disagreed with Schaeffer's later work, but I did not fall for the "circus trick" that allegedly suffused the work at L'Abri. In my view there was deep integrity and powerful witness going on there, led by two remarkable--if flawed--people.

Frank Schaeffer doubtlessly was a spoiled and unhappy child. I only bumped into him once at L'Abri forty years ago, but those who know him well agree with his own assessment--he was out of control most of the time. His parents loved him but didn't know what to do with, or about, him in the little time at the end of the day, when, according to Frank, the abuse and sex were done.

One section of his book almost makes a sympathetic reader feel sorry for the troubled kid. Continuing on his rollercoaster ride of sexual exploration Frank tells how he got pregnant a young woman he eventually married. Later in the book he insists that he doesn't deserve the love of this good woman, a sentiment in which most readers of the book would concur. But this is the critical moment in young Frank's life--and it is vital to the question we want to know about: why Francis Schaeffer became the guru of the Christian Right.

Just at that time there was a rising chorus among Christians against abortion. Frank took it personally into his immature mind. He looked at his own infant daughter. He was horrified at the thought that, in other circumstances, another parent might have taken steps to abort a pregnancy and thereby snuff out the potential life of someone as precious as his daughter. So Frank took it as his mission thereafter to go into battle against abortion. He goaded his famous father to channel his work into galvanizing Christians in the U.S. in the cause. People who knew the Schaeffer family well say that Francis apparently agreed to join Frank on the abortion crusade out of a sense of guilt for having failed as a father.

To Frank's credit he now admits how damnably stupid all this was. We readers cringe on his behalf to see how this poorly educated and ill-equipped young man was forced onto lecture platforms and into writing dreadful books by people trying to exploit his father's legacy. We are embarrassed for the estimable person of Francis Schaeffer, knowing it was a poor decision to go on "The 700 Club," nevertheless taking Frank's cue to work with Pat Robertson. Further to Frank's credit he says that he now has a nuanced and balanced view on abortion rights and would no longer endorse what he once wrote and advocated on lecture platforms.

Crazy for God inflates Frank's own role in creating the Christian Right, and I think he knows that. But there is one tragic truth about what he says. In being present at the creation of the Christian Right, the Schaeffers lent an intellectual legitimacy to that nascent movement without ideas and thinkers. Even though Frank now says he has retracted support from ideas and causes he once championed with such bombast, the damage has been done. What he does not see, or at least does not repent of, is the Christian Right's role in helping to establish a conservative hegemony in American politics from Reagan to Bush (even Clinton had to take a moderately conservative line). That shift to the right in American politics produced vicious policies that have hurt the poor and the marginal, the "least of these," for whom the Gospel shows a marked preference.

This memoir leaves me sad in two respects. I feel sad for a confused kid, poorly raised by busy parents, who was thrust onto a stage where he had no business and on which he did damage to himself and to others who cared about justice and peace. And I feel sad for my early hero, Francis Schaeffer, who, perhaps forced by his failure as a parent, allowed himself to be put forward into a politically vicious movement for which he had no real heart and in which he had little experience.

I think we finally have the answer to that question from 1983. We know what happened to Francis Schaeffer. I am saddened by that knowledge. But I will always be grateful for his life and early work. The many people he inspired to a life of Christian scholarship give his memory the due honor that this book would shame.