Francis Schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer gave the Christian right its philosophical vocabulary. Through L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland and a series of influential books and films — especially 'How Should We Then Live?' (1976) and 'Whatever Happened to the Human Race?' (1979, with C. Everett Koop) — Schaeffer argued that secular humanism had replaced Christianity as the West's foundation, and that Christians had a duty to resist. His framework cast abortion as genocide and positioned political engagement as spiritual warfare. Schaeffer is the crucial bridge between theological conservatism and political militancy: he gave educated evangelicals a reason to fight. His son Frank Schaeffer later repudiated this work, describing it as deliberate radicalization.

Documented themes

• Christian Nationalism
• Political Strategy
• Abortion Politics
• Gender & Patriarchy

Connections from Francis Schaeffer

• influenced → Chuck Colson / BreakPoint (1977) — Chuck Colson encountered Francis Schaeffer's work in the late 1970s, after his conversion and release from prison, and Schaeffer's framework became the intellectual spine of everything Colson subsequently produced. Schaeffer's central argument — that secular humanism had systematically displaced the Christian foundations of Western civilization, and that Christians therefore had an obligation not merely to personal piety but to cultural and political engagement — gave Colson both a diagnosis and a mission. BreakPoint, launched in 1991, was Schaeffer applied to daily news: each four-minute commentary translated current events (a court decision, a film, a piece of legislation, a scientific controversy) into evidence of the Schaefferian thesis. A ruling expanding abortion rights was not merely policy — it was the logical consequence of secular humanism's assault on the sanctity of human life. A popular film promoting relativism was not mere entertainment — it was a symptom of the Western civilization's abandonment of Christian foundations. This framework — received from Schaeffer and delivered through Colson — was among the most systematically distributed worldview formation tools in American evangelical culture from 1991 through Colson's death in 2012.
• influenced → James Dobson (1976) — Schaeffer's framing of secular humanism as civilizational enemy provided Dobson with the theological justification for political engagement.
• influenced → D. James Kennedy (1976) — Schaeffer's 'worldview' framework — the argument that Christianity must govern every sphere of human life and culture, not just private piety — was the direct philosophical foundation of Kennedy's 'Reclaiming America' project. Schaeffer's 'How Should We Then Live?' (1976) and 'A Christian Manifesto' (1981) gave Kennedy's political theology its intellectual scaffolding. Both men drew on Cornelius Van Til's presuppositionalism, but Schaeffer translated it into a form accessible to mainstream evangelicals.

Sources

• Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 78-90
• Crazy for God — Frank Schaeffer (2007)