A chalet in the Swiss alps was the unlikely incubator of ideas which equipped evangelicals to engage constructively with changing western culture, yet paradoxically also helped lay intellectual foundations for America’s culture wars.

Midterm elections in the United States revealed the contrast between these two expressions of public Christianity, as noted by several political commentators. 

In 1955, Francis (1912–1984) and Edith Schaeffer (1914-2013) founded L’Abri—French for the shelter—in Huémoz, Switzerland. Welcoming seekers wrestling with questions of truth, meaning, freedom and faith into their chalet, the Schaeffers shaped the lives of countless hippies and sceptics.

All Evangelical Focus news and opinion, on your WhatsApp

One such seeker was Wim Rietkerk, theologian, pastor, author and politician, my guest on this month’s Schuman Talk. After first visiting Huémoz in the ’60s, Wim has spent the rest of his life involved with L’Abri and served as its international chairman.

He experienced first-hand Edith’s gift for hospitality and teaching on family which nurtured the sense of acceptance and openness seekers felt as they dialogued with Francis about the relevance of Christian faith to philosophy, politics, art and society.

Schaeffer listened to doubters rather than dismissing them. He believed honest questions deserved honest answers.

He was among the most influential evangelical thinkers of the twentieth century. L’Abri showed evangelical Christianity at its most attractive: intellectually serious, culturally curious, spiritually rooted and radically hospitable.

He challenged the evangelical tendency to retreat into a religious subculture. Christianity, he insisted, was not merely about saving souls for heaven.

Offering a worldview addressing the whole of reality, his thinking resonated with that of the Dutch statesman-theologian Abraham Kuyper, who famously insisted that Christ claimed every square inch of creation. He was aware of Kuyper’s concepts of common grace and sphere sovereignty that allowed room for pluralism.

I was among the early leaders in YWAM deeply influenced by Schaeffer’s books. They gave me much-needed oxygen during my university years.

After visiting L’Abri, Floyd McClung started the Dilaram Houses in Kabul, Kathmandu and Delhi, reaching out to world travellers and seekers through L’Abri-type friendship evangelism.

The Schaeffers also influenced Loren and Darlene Cunningham, founders of YWAM, also based in the early 70’s in Switzerland. Edith’s emphasis on hospitality shaped one of YWAM’s foundational values.

Loren began in 1975 encouraging believers to engage in the various social spheres, overcoming the isolationist influence of his own Pentecostal background.

From dialogue to confrontation

Yet Schaeffer’s legacy is both inspiring and troubling. For he also fuelled a movement increasingly characterised by political confrontation. 

Ironically, his European ministry began with a very open spirit, emphasising both truth and love. In both The Mark of the Christian (1970) and in The Church Before the Watching World (1971) Schaeffer had argued that love and unity among Christians served as the definitive ‘mark’ given by Jesus, the ‘final apologetic’ to prove the reality of the gospel to a watching world. 

Yet by the late 1970s, his emphasis had shifted dramatically. He increasingly interpreted Western history as a confrontation between biblical Christianity and secular humanism. He warned that Western civilisation was abandoning its Christian foundations.

He began spending more time in America campaigning against abortion and mobilising previously politically disengaged evangelicals. Leaders of the emerging Religious Right and Moral Majority recognised the potential of this newly mobilised constituency to attack ‘secular humanism’. 

Schaeffer died in 1984, long before Donald Trump appeared on the political horizon. He cannot be held responsible for everything that followed. Nevertheless, there is a disturbing paradox.

A movement that originally encouraged empathetic engagement with culture became increasingly defined by fighting it. Christians who claimed to defend biblical morality sometimes embraced political leaders whose conduct contradicted the character of Christ. 

Likewise Cunningham’s ‘seven spheres’ was reinterpreted by others as ‘seven mountains’ to be conquered and controlled by Christians. A call to service became a programme for dominion and cultural conquest within the religious stream of Trump supporters.

A different Christian voice

Secular commentators this week remarked how the midterm elections revealed a more ‘Christ-like’ Christianity, with several winning senators emphasising neighbourly love, compassion, justice and human dignity.

Commentator Peter Wehner in The Atlantic described the results as ‘a good night for Christian faith’. Bill McKibben, writing in The Guardian, saw evidence of a Christianity centred on compassion, care for vulnerable people, justice and love of neighbour gaining renewed public credibility.

Alister Campbell, Tony Blair’s former PR man who once notoriously said ‘we don’t do God’, admitted on The rest is politics that, although he still ‘didn’t do God’, he could listen to James Talarico who won in Texas on a ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ theme ‘because he was so authentic’.

At L’Abri in Huémoz, truth and love belonged together. People were welcomed before they were persuaded. For Christians on both sides of the Atlantic, the challenge is clear.

Will we be known for the enemies we fight—or for the neighbours we love?