Book Review of Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America, Barry Hankins, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008, 272 pp.
My friend Ron Dart asked me to review this book. As it turned out I read Ron’s well-marked copy. In that it was published in 2008, there have been many reviews. One from a peace theology perspective by Ted Grimsrud is excellent: Barry Hankins, Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of ... It summarizes in greater detail than I the three phases of Schaeffer’s ministry.
So what can I “add”? Nothing. Well, a personal angle: which multiple thousands of contemporary Evangelicals can as readily do, Ron Dart included. Nonetheless… I hesitated. I delayed in reading the book; in beginning the review.
Why? I had long since thrown away all Schaeffer’s publications, all formerly devoured, some repeatedly, that had been published prior to 1974. No later publications were read, though I saw the 1977 movie How Should We Then Live?, and perused the book by that title, that Hankins claims was Schaeffer’s “best (p. 167)”. 1974 was the year of a visit for several weeks to both Swiss and Dutch L’Abris. It was also the year I had limped back (just after the two L’Abri visits) to Canada from a two-year short-term missionary experience in West Berlin that had gone spiritually sour. Perhaps saying my nickname had been “Francis” amongst friends and missionary colleagues the previous few years might explain. Schaeffer had begun that year to be a guru gone sour too. In 1975, Schaeffer gave the commencement address to (Vancouver) Regent College’s “Diploma” graduating class of which I was part. That cinched the disenchantment. I have had no yen since to revisit Francis Schaeffer.
Why further? I explored this in a larger context in a novel, Chrysalis Crucible, that started out as a reflective story on that question with reference to my Plymouth Brethren “quintessential fundamentalist” (Ernest Sandeen) upbringing. The protagonist though fictional gets jokingly called “Francis” and does travel to L’Abri as well.
Click here to download the rest of this Book Review
Comments