num_pages: 288
description: Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) was probably the single greatest intellectual influence on young evangelicals of the 1960s and '70s. He was cultural critic popular intellectual mentor political activist evangelist Christian apologist and the author of over twenty books and two important films. Along with his wife Edith he founded L'Abri a loving community of intellectual and spiritual exploration where visitors ranged from European existentialists to American evangelicals and even some radicals. In America he lectured widely on college campuses where he encouraged world-wary evangelicals to engage the culture around them. Along the way he attracted a great many admirers a few critics many admirers who became critics and a few critics who learned to admire him. It is in short impossible to understand the intellectual world of evangelicalism today without understanding Francis Schaeffer.Barry Hankins has written a critical but appreciative biography that explains how Schaeffer was shaped by the contexts of his lifefrom young fundamentalist pastor in America to greatly admired mentor to lecturer and activist. Drawing extensively from primary sources including personal interviews Hankins paints a picture of a complex sometimes flawed but ultimately prophetic figure in American evangelicalism and beyond.
language: English
title: Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America
publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.