Francis and Edith Schaeffer were celebrity evangelicals, active in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
Rachell Darnell is doing a series, Profiling Key Figures in the Biblical Womanhood Movement. Here is a clip from the start of Rachell’s episode Who Was Edith Shaeffer?
Go here to watch the entire video or read the transcript.
Like so many celebrities in evangelical Christianity, Edith and Francis Shaeffer were very different behind closed doors than they were in public. Their teaching and their public personas influenced generations of Christians. But their public personas were inauthentic, and therefore misleading. Let me show the evidence.
The youngest son of Francis and Edith Shaeffer is Frank Schaeffer. Below are some quotes from Frank Shaeffer’s autobiography 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. I have read all of this book and I find it very believable. Frank criticises himself severely, and when he describes the flaws of others he does so with compassion. Here I’m only quoting a few of his remarks about his parents and his older sister, but if you read the whole book you will be able to see that he also expresses compassion for his parents and his sister.
Trigger warning: these quotes describe what would be best labelled as
- a man’s verbal, physical and sexual abuse of his wife,
- deception and haughty spiritual abuse by that wife,
- child abuse.
Frank’s observations about his Dad:
Dad could be screaming at Mom one minute, or just bluntly muttering “I’ll kill myself one of these days,” and ten minutes later he would be down in the dining room earnestly answering questions from the guests. They never had any inkling about his state of mind — except when, once in a while, the yelling could be heard or when a tea tray or vase would be hurled down the stairs or over the balcony. But people pretended nothing was happening, except of course for Mom, who would work a sanitized version of her interminable fights with Dad into her talks as a demonstration of the way God was working in their lives “in spite of Frank’s weaknesses.”
— page 136
Frank says his Mom, Edith, always accompanied his Dad on trips, leaving young Frank in the care of his older sister, Susan, who was expected to homeschool him while Edith was away. During these times, Susan used extreme punishment methods to ‘discipline’ Frank, including winding him up in a bed sheet, pinning it behind so he couldn’t get free, and leaving him face up lying entombed on his bed for an hour or more.
Since I learned to read with the threat of Susan’s winding sheet and/or a solid slap hanging over me, I deeply resented Dad’s need for nightly sexual intercourse. If only, I thought, he could have gone for a week or two without Mom and let her stay home!
It never occurred to me that perhaps it was somewhat strange that, by age seven or eight, I had been told by my mother that Dad wanted sex every night. (Dad never ever talked about his private life, so I only have Mom’s version of this.) Nobody I know had a mother who shared this sort of Kinsey report on her bedroom activities with her children …
What Mom never explained was how her saying that she wanted to be home with us, rather than on the road with Dad, fit in with her wildly enthusiastic reports about how the Lord used her so mightily when she gave her talks. She would blame Dad for forcing her to go with him yet seemed to relish life on the road nevertheless. As a matter of fact, after she hadn’t been on the road with him for a while, Mom got downright bored and would sometimes look up at airplanes flying high overhead and say “I really want to travel again.” …
It seemed that more was happening on my parents’ speaking trips than daily sex, or Mom typing up Dad’s letters or doing his laundry and helping him with his Mood. Mom loved becoming an evangelical star. And so the competition between Mom and Dad became intense. …
Dad got in Moods, suffered bouts of depression, became discouraged. Mom never showed any weakness.
— pages 109-111
Some of my readers had parents who, behind closed doors, were a bit like Frank Schaeffer’s parents. Some of us had husbands who, behind closed doors, behaved like Francis Schaeffer. Some of us had mothers who behaved like Edith Schaeffer. Some of us had older siblings who behaved like big sister Susan. I may have left out options, so if this paragraph has not taken account of your experience, dear reader, please say so!
Most of us are taking a lifetime to unravel this stuff and learn how to become authentic so we do not buy into the false-mask-evangelicalism.
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I lived in this Schaeffer era. The spiritual intellect; L’brie in Switzerland. I was not in their class of spirituality, something many attained to and claimed to identify with. Is young Frank still living and interacting with their culture today?
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Frank is still alive. He became an atheist. In his book that I referenced in the post, he apologised for his part in helping set up and promote the Christian Right. He’s on Twitter and Substack.
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Barb,
In a way, I think Francis and Edith Schaeffer could be considered similar to my parents, especially the “facilitating the arts” expletive-deleted stuff….all for public appearance. And the bit about Edith Schaeffer and travel, where she could (paraphrasing) “shine on a public stage” is similar to my mother: Makeup, fancy (and expensive) clothing, fancy receptions and dinners, etc. And my mother continually commented that “real” conversations were about ideas, not people….yet she had no qualms about gossiping (and I mean, the real, actual, negative gossiping).
And in a way, now I can put my “picture” into words 😊….I think my parents wanted to (and tried to) — in their own way — “run a L’Abri”. Not in terms of having people live with us, etc., but a whole lot of the other Francis and Edith Schaeffer L’Abri expletive-deleted stuff (and I’m not meaning the abuse).
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Good morning,
There seems to be a lot of things coming out about sex trafficking. I’m noticing the gruesome details about how the government, elites and Hollywood all se [Although the remainder of Sarah’s comment seems to have gotten lost / be missing, I chose to Publish it anyway. Like the Schaeffer’s, recently there have been a number of documented cases in the news of abusive famous musicians, abusive Hollywood celebrities, etc. coming to light. Reaching Out.]
[Paragraph break added to enhance readability. Editors.]
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Hi Sarah,
For your safety and protection, I changed the screen name you submitted with your comment to Sarah, the screen name you’ve used on our blog. 😊
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Wow. I’ve heard of the Schaeffers but wasn’t aware of their hypocritical lifestyle. Sadly, it seems like stories such as this are becoming more prevalent (e.g., Ravi Zacharias) in the church. Only God knows if people we read about are / were truly born again, but it seems that if they are / were, the devil sure wants to creep into the ministry and ruin it all.
Also, it’s obvious that “fame & fortune” are the lure that appeal to our selfish human nature, but there should be mechanisms (accountability in the church, etc.) in place for us to remain humble and focused on staying close to the Lord and on the task ahead that He has called us to. I just pray that the Lord redeems these situations and those affected by them.
I will pray for Frank. I can relate to him w/ his sister’s abuse — I have an older brother (narcissist) who did similar (not as bad as Frank’s sister though) things to me when I was 5-7 years old and who still lies about me to my other brothers.
To sum up my thoughts, we are all hypocrites to a certain degree, so I guess these stories present an opportunity to each of us to remain humble and to strive to seek even more humility, love w/ out hypocrisy (Romans 12:9) and continually examine ourselves (2 Corinthians 13:3-5; 1 John 1:8-10).
God bless you all.
[Paragraph breaks added to enhance readability. Editors.]
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Hi Remain Humble,
For your safety and protection, I changed the screen name you submitted with your comment to Remain Humble. 😊 If you’d prefer a different screen name, please email me at reachingout.acfj@gmail.com.
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Thanks for your comment, Remain Humble. I like the way you summed up your thoughts. :)
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I’ve just discovered your blog. Thank you for sharing your passion and your work.
I read with interest your remarks on abusers and agree with you that someone who is an abuser may claim they are in Christ but (in my words) don’t have the fruit as proof.
The fruit of a person’s work, or ministry, may be immediately evident or it may take time to manifest. Francis Schaeffer wasn’t transparent about his personal life, but there’s enough for us to know that he was an abuser. Edith appears to have been a very driven individual as well, ambitious and competitive like her husband.
I have my own experience with L’Abri and have talked to others who, like myself, have an unfavorable view of the ministry. This is not the popular view among L’Abri aficionados, however. I had considered communicating with someone in L’Abri regarding my experience and observations but I believe the problem is systemic.
Francis and Edith Schaeffer continue to be highly regarded within L’Abri and I get the impression their son’s accounts are by and large disregarded. I certainly haven’t seen or heard anything about any course corrections and the Schaeffer’s are definitely lionized within the organization.
Yet, a bad tree cannot produce good fruit, try as one may. From my perspective L’Abri is a cult, a parachurch organization that preaches the importance of local church involvement while elevating the ministry of L’Abri in the lives of those “on staff” to that of “a church”, which is what a staff member told me it was.
I’m wondering if you’ve heard from people who have expressed concerns about L’Abri’s “ministry” and the lack of good fruit? Of problems that aren’t addressed or of individuals who are involved in the organization who are acting like genuine believers but are in fact blind guides?
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Hi, neonreon, thanks for sharing your experience of L’Abri’s “ministry”, and why you think it is a cult.
Apart from what I wrote in this post, I haven’t heard from people who have expressed concerns about L’Abri’s “ministry” and the lack of good fruit. Nor have I heard of problems at L’Abri that aren’t addressed or of individuals who are involved in the organization who are acting like genuine believers but are in fact blind guides.
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