Marvin Olasky on Francis Schaeffer's "Political Legacy"

Christopher (Against the Grain, March 6, 2005) writes:

Writing for Townhall.com, Marvin Olasky (author of Compassionate Conservatism) attributes the election of evangelical Christian George W. Bush not to strategists like Karl Rove but rather the political legacy of Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), the Presbyterian theologian who founded the Christrian community of L'Abri in Switzerland.

I had the opportunity of studying at L'Abri for one year back in the 1970s. Then as now it was a beautiful place with intelligent students engaged in the pursuit of serious discussions about what is true, good, and beautiful-- a wonderful place. [The Les Dents du Midi mountain range, pictured right]

Reflecting on Christopher's own comments about Schaeffer [pictured left], I couldn't help observing a number of things. Good ol' Schaeffer! While he was being treated for the cancer that eventually killed him, Schaeffer refused to be treated in a Baptist hospital because it performed abortions, and insisted on being moved into the Catholic hospital across the street from it. He died a Protestant, but one well on his way towards articulating the bankruptcy of evangelical Protestantism, as he did in his book, The Great Evangelical Disaster. His son, Franky, converted to Orthodoxy, but there's no telling what his father would have done had he lived longer. Surely he would have at least re-thought his "critique" of St. Thomas Aquinas, which was overly simplistic and formulaic (well-critiqued by Arvin Vos in his excellent book, Aquinas, Calvin, and contemporary Protestant thought: A critique of Protestant views on the thought of Thomas Aquinas).

Schaeffer's thought may not be as subtle and sophisticated as many would like--and as a Catholic I certainly don't agree with all of his conclusions--but one could do far worse that revisit his now classic little apologetical volumes such as Escape from Reason, which you mention, or The God Who Is There, or He is there and He is not silent--all of which are now available in the form of a trilogy: The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy: The 3 Essential Books in 1 Volume/the God Who Is There/Escape from Reason/He Is There and He Is Not Silent. Even if young Catholics garnered the basics he has to offer them, they'd be well on their way to acquiring the kind of background necessary for a much better understanding of the relevance of their own faith in the contemporary world. Archbishop Fulton Sheen loved Schaeffer's work.