Many people who today ask hard questions about faith, science and the meaning of life find in Francis Schaeffer a conversation partner who never ran from doubt. He himself went through a personal crisis of faith before becoming one of the most widely read apologists of twentieth century evangelicalism.
Born in 1912 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, Schaeffer grew up in a modest family and converted to Christianity at age 18, after months of reading the Bible. He trained as a Presbyterian pastor and, in 1948, moved with his wife Edith to Switzerland as a missionary to Europe.
Around 1951, already an experienced pastor, Schaeffer went through months of deep doubt about the sincerity of his own faith, walking through the Swiss mountains in search of answers. Biographers record that afterward he carried a difficult temperament and episodes of depression, even while serving as a spiritual guide to so many.
Out of that crisis came the conviction that would drive the rest of his life: the Christian faith can withstand honest questions. In 1955, Francis and Edith opened their own home in Huémoz, Switzerland, naming it L’Abri, the shelter, to welcome skeptical young people, artists and travelers searching for meaning.
From there came books such as The God Who Is There and Escape from Reason, both from 1968, in which he examined the collapse of reason in Western philosophy. In 1976, the book and film series How Should We Then Live? carried his cultural critique to an even wider audience.
In his final years, already facing a lymphoma diagnosed in 1978, Schaeffer joined surgeon C. Everett Koop to write Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, defending life against abortion and euthanasia. He died in 1984 in Rochester, in the United States.
His mark lives on in the L’Abri communities scattered around the world and in generations of Christians who learned from him to take seriously the questions of those who do not yet believe. For Schaeffer, hospitality and argument walked hand in hand in the task of proclaiming the gospel.
