The following timeline is drawn primarily from Edith Schaeffer in L’Abri, 2d. ed. (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1992) and The Tapestry (Waco: Word Books, 1981).
Early Years
- Francis Schaeffer was born on January 30, 1912, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was the only child of working-class parents of German ancestry. Schaeffer’s parents were nominally Christian, but he did not consider himself raised in a Christian home.
- On his own, he attended a liberal Presbyterian Church. However, by his own confession he did not find any satisfying answers to the basic questions of life from liberal Christianity. As a result, he became an agnostic during his high school years. During his latter high school years he began to read in the area of philosophy in order to discover answers to life’s basic questions. Out of curiosity he also read the Bible. In 1930, after six months of reading Scripture, beginning with Genesis, he became a Christian. He was convinced that the Bible was true and that it provided the only adequate answers to the basic philosophical questions of life.
- After his conversion, he left trade school to complete college preparation classes at night. Although he had done poorly in school up to this point in time, his grades markedly improved. Against his father’s wishes, he began studies in 1931 at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. He graduated magna cum laude in 1935. He was selected the “outstanding Christian” in his class.
- The historic and theological context of this period of time was the fundamentalist-modernist controversies. By the early 1930s Schaeffer’s own denomination, the Northern Presbyterian Church, was being torn apart, both in the schools and in the churches. On one occasion in 1932, a sponsored youth speaker spoke on why the Bible is not God’s Word and why Jesus is not the Son of God. During the discussion time that ensued, Schaeffer, as a young Christian, rose to defend historic Christianity as best he could. But to his surprise there was one other person who stood and gave a very articulate defense both from the Scripture as well as utilizing arguments from the works of J. Gresham Machen. Her name was Edith Seville. On July 26, 1935, Francis and Edith were married.
Seminary Years
- In the fall of 1935, Francis Schaeffer entered Westminster Theological Seminary. Westminster had been founded in 1929 by J. Gresham Machen and other leading Presbyterian scholars who sought to provide a conservative alternative to theological liberalism. During his time at Westminster, Schaeffer was greatly influenced by the work of Machen, Cornelius Van Til, and Allan MacRae of Biblical Theological Seminary.
- In 1936, the Northern Presbyterian Church defrocked Machen for his conservative stand. This led to conservatives breaking from the denomination, including Schaeffer. Sadly, due to some conflict within the conservative groups at Westminster in 1937 a new seminary was formed, Faith Theological Seminary in Wilmington, Delaware, under the leadership of Allan MacRae. Schaeffer moved to Faith to complete his studies and graduated from Faith in 1938. Schaeffer would later look back at this time in his life and regret some of the bickering and in-fighting that had occurred among the conservatives. He would later call for the need of a “loving confrontation” that would simultaneously stand for truth and a visible love.
Pastoring Years
- From 1938-1948, Schaeffer pastored various Presbyterian churches in Grove City and Chester, Pennsylvania, as well as St. Louis, Missouri. It was during their time in St. Louis that he and Edith began an organization called “Children for Christ”—an outreach ministry to children that eventually spread to other churches and denominations.
- In 1947, Schaeffer was sent by the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions and the Foreign Relations Department of the American Council of Christian Churches to evaluate the spiritual needs of youth and the church’s confrontation with theological liberalism in post-war Europe. As a result of his three months in Europe, Schaeffer sensed that God was calling his family to minister in Europe.
The Move to Europe
- In 1948 the Schaeffers moved to Lausanne, Switzerland to be missionaries to Europe. By this time, the Schaeffers had three daughters, Priscilla, Susan, and Deborah. Later their son, Franky, was born in 1952.
- As they came to Europe they first established “Children for Christ,” as a missionary outreach to children. Schaeffer also continued to warn about the dangers of theological liberalism, as well as against the subtle threat of neo-orthodoxy. In 1949, the Schaeffers moved to the mountain village of Champéry, Switzerland.
- In 1951, Schaeffer experienced a major spiritual crisis in his life for at least two reasons. First, he did not see the reality of the gospel at work in the lives of those who fought for historic Christianity and this concerned him. Second, he acknowledged that in his own life his experience of the Lord was not as vibrant as it once had been. This crisis caused him to re-think everything—even the truthfulness of Christianity. From this experience, Schaeffer came to the firm conclusion that there were good and sufficient reasons to know that the God of the Bible does indeed exist and that Christianity is true. He also came to a better understanding of the finished work of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. It was from this experience that his book, True Spirituality, was later born. Even more than that, it was out of this crisis that L’Abri was born. Schaeffer always said that without this time of struggle to find reality in the Christian life, L’Abri would never have come to exist.
- In 1955, through a series of miraculous circumstances, the Schaeffers moved into Chalet les Mélèzes in Huémoz, Switzerland. They had not only received the necessary funds to purchase the Chalet, but they had also been granted visas to stay in Switzerland after they were told by the Swiss government that they had to leave the country permanently.
L’Abri (“The Shelter”)
- L’Abri Fellowship was officially born in 1955. It began with friends of Priscilla coming to the Schaeffer home from the university and asking questions about Christianity, truth, and the issues of life. L’Abri operated on four basic principles: (1) They would not ask for money, but would make their needs known to God; (2) They would not recruit staff but depend on God to send the right people; (3) They would only plan short-term so as to depend on God’s guidance; (4) They would not publicize themselves but trust God to send them people in need.
- At first, meetings and services were held in the Schaeffer’s home. But then it moved to an abandoned Protestant church. By word of mouth, the news spread to university students that there was a place in the Swiss Alps where one could get honest answers to life’s deepest questions. In short order, students were coming to L’Abri every weekend. They developed a pattern of meals, walks, talks, and a Sunday church service all geared toward providing an atmosphere that would stimulate conversation about philosophical and religious ideas.
- The key emphasis of L’Abri was on honest answers to honest questions in the context of a hospitable environment and observational love. In the early days there was no thought of books, films, and audiotapes. In fact, in the case of audiotapes, this only came about reluctantly by a microphone being hidden amongst some flowers and the conversations of the evening then taped. It was only when Schaeffer realized that the tapes could be used to reach others that he allowed for the tape program to begin. Eventually people came to study and work at L’Abri. Already by 1957, 25 people were coming every weekend.
- L’Abri expanded beyond Switzerland. In 1958, it began in England. Today, L’Abri’s are found all over the world in such places as Australia, Canada, Holland, South Korea, Brazil, and South Africa, as well as in the USA in Massachusetts and Minnesota.[1]
1. For more information on the ministry of L’Abri Fellowship today, see https://labri.org/.
- By 1960, L’Abri had grown to such an extent that it attracted the attention of Time magazine. Tapes were now being distributed worldwide and Francis was getting invitations to speak in Europe and North America. These were difficult times at L’Abri as well. With more and more students coming, money and food was short.
- In 1965, Schaeffer traveled back to North America and held lectures in Boston. He then went to Wheaton College and gave lectures that later became the basis for his book, The God Who is There. At this time, the students appreciated him very much, but the academic community was much slower in accepting him. At Wheaton, for example, he spoke on issues that most in evangelical circles had never heard of or were not allowed to discuss such as the films of Ingmar Bergman and Fedrico Fellini and the writings of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Martin Heidegger.
- During the next ten years, the Schaeffers became one of the most well-known families in evangelicalism. Francis published numerous books and booklets, most of which came out of lectures he had been giving since the founding of L’Abri, and Edith also published a number of books dealing with marriage, the family, theology, and the L’Abri story.[2]
2. For a complete list of books, tapes, and videos by Francis and Edith Schaeffer see https://labri.org/.
The 1970s
- It was during the 1970s that Schaeffer became well-known for a number of crucial issues.
- In 1974, Schaeffer spoke at the International Conference on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland where he strongly emphasized the importance of biblical inerrancy. In 1977, he helped found the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy.
- It was also during the 70s that he began to speak out against abortion due to the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision. In 1977 he began a 22 city seminar and speaking tour for the film series “How Should We Then Live?” He also began work on the film series “Whatever Happened to the Human Race? with C. Everett Koop and Frank Schaeffer which resulted in a speaking tour in 1979.
- In his works, Schaeffer’s critique of culture and his defense of historic Christianity led him to also speak up on such issues as: doctrinal and life purity, abortion, euthanasia, ecology, war and peace, and civil rights. Schaeffer spoke long and hard against the church standing for the status quo, especially in terms of her adoption of the American philosophy of life that had permeated society since the 50s—living merely for “personal peace and affluence.” He called for a new generation of Christians who would truly be “revolutionary” in their stand for truth in both doctrine and life.
The 1980s
- In the 1980s, Schaeffer became increasingly alienated from evangelical academics and politically liberal evangelicals due to his perceived shift to “conservatism.” This was especially due to his publication of A Christian Manifesto (1981) that not only praised the rise of the Moral Majority, but which also called for Christians to stand against abortion and if necessary to practice civil disobedience. Schaeffer himself did not see any shift in his thinking from the 70s. Rather, he saw his work in the 80s as the logical extension of a commitment to the practice of truth and an outworking of the lordship of Christ over all of life, whether that be in the womb, in the church, or the university classroom.
- In 1984, while still battling cancer that he had been diagnosed with since 1978, Schaeffer literally on his death-bed did a thirteen-city tour visiting ten Christian colleges in connection with his last book, The Great Evangelical Disaster. In this last tour, he passionately spoke on behalf of the gospel, warning and pleading with the evangelical church not to compromise biblical authority in both doctrine and practice, even naming names of those whom he believed had done so. He called for a new generation of Christians to take a stand for truth, to be in his words—“radicals for Christ.”
- On May 15, 1984, a month after the tour was complete, he died in Rochester, Minnesota.
