Recommendation, L’abri

When I was first a Christian – I was fifteen and mostly interested in girls and music – I sat in the middle of mostly old people who struggled with Jesus Music. Nary a soul in church talked about science and faith, or art and faith, or even philosophy. Along the way, groping for something substantive, I bumped into Francis Schaeffer. I don’t know where. Or how? Or with who. But I found a compatriot. We spent many hours together.

For starters…c’mon…he lived in Switzerland and had a hippie beard. In every way, he struck me as a cool old Christian guy ready day or night to talk about Nietzsche or Caravaggio, or physics. In the late 1940s, he moved with his family to Switzerland and started what still exists today. Here’s a photo.

It was, and still is, called L’abri. French for the shelter, Schaeffer intended L’abri to be just what the name implied: a shelter where people could explore faith and culture with other Christians in an accepting but serious and challenging environment.

I never got to go. I was too young when I learned of it, and the business of kids and school and work took over my later years. The closest I came to anything near it was a Wednesday afternoon class at my church with the pastor’s daughter teaching. She had just returned from Switzerland and put together a class for anyone interested. She showed Schaeffer’s film How Should We Then Live, and talked about the film and her experiences at L’abri. As an aside, it was one of the first times I learned that ‘finding your people’ often means eating alone in the cafeteria. The church I was attending had dozens of offerings like this, and a class called How to Buy a House might overflow into four classrooms, but we had four lonely souls in our philosophy and faith class.

I still remember a scene from the movie that has changed me to this day. Schaeffer shows two scenes with the same riot footage. In the first showing, newscasters talk quietly and concerned, like professors explaining how the rioters want freedom and rights and how the state thwarts them in every way. It’s tuned upside down in the second clip. Here is the same group of rioting kids, but these newscasters call them lazy and dirty, unwilling to work and wanting everything for free.

What I learned was that the difference was, surprisingly, my reaction. I knew how I was being manipulated, but I still leaned toward whichever newscasters were speaking, for or against the rioters. I’ve mistrusted news organizations ever since.

I don’t know the timeline – if Francis was alive or not – but there was friction with their son Frank. He wrote a mostly derogatory book about living with his parents at L’abri. He claimed his father sometimes abused his wife and was prone to depression. I read it, and knowing my bias, read carefully, not claiming to know if anything was true or false. In this cold read, he came off to me as a pouting child, a brat. Other reviewers, many of whom had lived at L’abri, were less kind.

If Schaeffer is brought up at all today, it’s usually in unison with Christian nationalism or the current woes of evangelicalism. His popularity with these groups ebb and flow with the topic. He was vociferously pro-life and felt it was his duty as an American to use any means – especially the voting both – to halt what he believed to be the epitome of cultural immorality. He also helped author what is called the Seven Story Mandate. In it, the authors argued for a strong Christian influence in the seven spheres of family, religion, education, media, art, economics, and government.

I’m not sure how Schaefer would respond to his efforts today. He wrote in the shadow the Viet Nam War, and long before Internet anonymity had crushed thoughtful discussion about differences. It seems to me that the modern Internet is the exact opposite of what the Schaeffers meant to begin and promote at L’abri.

Who will like this? If you have ever nodded yes to anything on the Unbelievable podcast, I guarantee you’ll find interesting and useful stuff here. Or if you wonder how your Christianity lines up against Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, then you’ll be right at home.

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The recommendations:
The L’abri Ideas Library. This is an enormous repository of sermons, writings, and lectures. It covers hundreds of topics. Lots of good stuff here.

Besides the library, there’s L’abri itself. Find it here.
Here’s L’abri on Wiki.

Wiki on Francis Shaeffer.

Amazon has Schaeffer’s books here. And yes, I am an affiliate seller. so buy lots.
FWIW, my favorite is How Should We Then Live? It’s here.
My next Amazon purchase will include True Spirituality.

If interested, Frank Schaeffer’s book, Crazy for God, is here.