A Tribute to Edith Schaeffer

If my house were burning to the ground and my family was safely outside, there’d be one book in my library I’d most hope to save from the fire: a paperback of Edith Schaeffer’s 1975 book What is a Family? Mrs. Schaeffer (as she’s still known in L’Abri circles) signed this particular edition for me when she was in the States visiting friends nearly ten years ago. In her characteristic fashion, she’d drawn mountains in the background with birds flying over them and wrote a brief personal note for me beneath it. The picture below makes an interesting contrast to Francis Beckwith’s signed book, which was given to him 19 years before and was written with a far steadier hand.

Receiving a book signed by Mrs. Schaeffer was, for me, like coming face-to-face with a hero from another world. Meeting the Schaeffers ranked in my mind alongside meeting C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton, so the thought of actually receiving a book signed by one of them addressed to me… it meant more than I can say and still does to this day. I first discovered the Schaeffers’ books when I picked up Francis’s Escape from Reason in 8th grade in the church library. Even though I didn’t get much, what I got was opened doors I’d never known existed. Having grown up in a fundamentalist dispensational church, the Schaeffers were the ones who introduced me to the fullness of the Gospel, to the idea that (as a friend would later explain it to me) the scope of God’s redemptive work is just as broad as the scope of his created work. There’s nothing in creation left untouched by the Gospel. Additionally, the Schaeffers taught me to love the beauty of God’s creation and about our responsibility to steward it with affection. They gave me license to love the world, to love the good things that God had made and to recognize that there was no conflict between loving creation and creator.

Additionally, as one of the many millennials to grow up in the church and become disillusioned with it, the Schaeffers, along with C.S. Lewis, were the orthodox voices that stayed with me as I studied more liberal brands of Christianity (I entered college in 2007 right as Brian McLaren was becoming a prominent figure in Christian circles) and even considered abandoning the church entirely during my late high-school and early college years. In fact, it was two summer terms spent at the Rochester L’Abri with two couples that had lived with and been mentored by the Schaeffers that were pivotal in my remaining in the church and finding my way to the Reformed stripe of evangelicalism that continues to be my church home to this day. My debt to the Schaeffers is immense.

Of course, I’m not alone in that respect.