Thursday, January 30, 2025

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 30th of January 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Quick: who belongs in the 20th-century Mt. Rushmore of Evangelicals? (And yeah, I’m back on my Mt Rushmore business. It was bound to happen).

Billy Graham? Easy.

C.S. Lewis?

Who else? May I suggest a third on today's show- which happens to be the anniversary of the birth of this person- on this day 113 years ago?

[and my mind is racing with the 20th century. Mt Rushmore options… send me yours]

He was Francis August Schaeffer- born on this the 30th of January in 1912, and however one might categorize him- he was a giant of evangelical thought, especially when it came to creating a reasonable and defensible worldview in light of post-war modernism that was increasingly antagonistic to supernatural religion.

Schaeffer was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1912 to Bessie and Franz Schaefer- they were, by his account, nominal Christians, and he came to doubt as a teenager. However, the story is told — something with teaching a Russian foreign exchange student English and a text on the history of Western Philosophy and Bam! He is ready to head off to the Seminary.

First, he’s married to Edith- nee Seville; she would become a thinker and writer in her own right. But the question of seminary may have been more difficult- at least eventually.

He would not choose Princeton as the split with Westminster had just occurred. He would go to Westminster initially but was wooed by the Bible Presbyterian Church- they would take a more strident stand against modern culture than those who would be called the OPC, or Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Schaeffer would make a name for himself in post-War Europe- sent by the Bible Presbyterian Church to see how the church might help Europe rebuild. And Francis found over there that it wasn’t theological liberalism which was the primary foe- but rather a kind of nihilism setting in as the logical conclusions of a people, as Schaeffer saw them, who had unmoored themselves from God.

He would make his ministry not in a church but in the Swiss mountains in a community called “L’Abri” (which is French for “the shelter”)- it would serve as a “shelter” for thousands during the tumultuous 60s and 70s- many who would go on to guide the church in the wake of the Jesus Revolution were directly touched by Schaeffer’s brand of intellectual inquiry for the serious Christian. With regards to his apologetic method, he noted the ultimate absurdity of the non-theist's position but sought to find points of contact for preaching the gospel- he called his apologetics “pre-evangelism”- there to answer objections but not ultimately to convert.

His books included works on philosophy and theology such as “The God Who is There” and “He is There, and He is Not Silent “

His “True Spirituality” is partly a result of an inner conflict he had in the early 1950s and lays out a spirituality vastly different from the new age spirituality’s of the 1960s and 70s.

How Should We Then Live was a book and film, maybe his most famous, along with “What Ever Happened to the Human Race” with one-time Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. His “Pollution and the Death of Man” gives us a nice picture of the flourishing world of Christian ecological thought in the 1960s.  

If I may, having spent the 90s in evangelical and adjacent circles, I read a lot of Schaeffer and can’t recommend “The Great Evangelical Disaster” his own take on the schism with Machen and Princeton in the 1920s- not only is it a personal take he takes himself and others for the manner in which they split and saw the general divisiveness in the church (that he took part in!) As resulting from a poor split.

While he brushed shoulders with theonomists (those who would have the laws of the Old Testament resurrected by a “Christian America”), he would disavow their radical calls and relied on the 1st Amendment of the Constitution to rebuff them.

With over 20 works and numerous papers and talks, he is intellectually significant, but even more so perhaps in the leaders that he helped to nourish and teach- among those were our own dearly departed Drs Montgomery and Rosenbladt and then filtered down through so many of our authors. 

Today, we remember that giant, that 3rd head on my Evangelical Mt. Rushmore, on what would have been his 113th birthday- which is far too long; we’re glad he’s in glory: Francis A. Schaeffer died in 1984 at the age of 72.

 

The last word for today from the daily lectionary- from Acts 10 and the ministry of Peter:

44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. 46 For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.

Then Peter said, 47 “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” 48 So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 30th of January 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who wonders who would be on the Mt Rushmore of “Heads-carved-into-mountains.” He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man thinking that 4th spot might be Henrietta Mears or Elisabeth Eliot… hmmm, I’m Dan van Voorhis. 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.