Not Your Father's Christianity--Or Anybody Else's

In a recent Christianity Today online article entitled “Not Your Father’s L’Abri," the famous ministry founded in the Swiss Alps by Francis Schaeffer was characterized as having changed from a retreat for philosophical skeptics to a haven for disaffected Evangelicals. It begins with the story of

. . . a tall brunette and the daughter of a Presbyterian Church in America minister, [who] has spent her life as ‘a poster child for the church.’ Toward the end of her four years at the University of Tennessee, however, that role proved harder to play. Her ‘Christian bubble’ dissipated as friends from church got married, and she found herself befriending people with different values: non-Christians, gay students, and pot smokers at the record store where she worked.

At university, [she] took classes on modern American religion. ‘That was eye-opening,’ she said. ‘I did a lot on Jerry Falwell, the conservative party, and the consolidating of the Christian right. It made me question everything I'd been taught. I was raised conservative, pro-life, anti-gay; I was taught that Christians should be in power. I came out thinking nothing I was taught had been right.’

I am at least as skeptical as she, but my skepticism has a great deal to do with what one does not hear from a good many characters like this, or from authors of articles who for reasons of their own elicit their readers’ sympathy for such very sad young people, victimized by excesses of--well, of Christianity in any credible form.

My guess is that she is typical of the many young Evangelicals who have also discovered, the statistics tell us, something else at college: sex without marriage, which she wishes to have, also contrary to her Christian upbringing, without guilt, repentance, or amendment of life. Experienced pastors, when faced with students who “lose their faith” at college, do not begin to argue back with them on matters philosophical or theological. They inquire into “lifestyle” issues in the attempt to ascertain whether there is a release to be gained from overthrowing the faith in which they were raised. There usually is. Real intellectual difficulties can normally be neutralized in favor of further study through reasoned discourse with educated believers who have entertained the same doubts--but only in the presence of a conscience that gains nothing from discovery that orthodox Christianity is wrong.

There is also this: If a person has come to believe, say, that Evangelicalism or conservative Presbyterians or Baptist preachers who get too mixed up with politics are wrongheaded, or that Francis and Edith Schaeffer had certain problems which detract from their credibility, a modicum of native intelligence--to which such people always profess, their difficulties, they always tell us, being the result of intellectual probing--should tell them these are not the only Christian witnesses available--only provided they are interested in any kind of Christian witness at all.

If they were, why would they repair to L’Abri to stock up on evidence of its deficiency rather than open the gates (O lover of intellectual freedom and hater of all restrictions thereto!) to wider parts of the Christian range? Schaeffer is guilty of a certain narrowness of vision? Then (O possessor of much-better-than-average intelligence!) pull down some Barth or Kierkegaard or Thomas Aquinas or Chesterton or Pelikan or Guardini or Tournier or Seraphim Rose or Calvin or Tozer or Reardon or Luther or Pascal or Wojtyla or Lewis. Why are your referents, the people to whose wisdom you are now referring in apposition to that with which you have been raised, suddenly now non-Christians, gay persons, and [!] pot-smokers--may we also add the sexually promiscuous?--and the like? It would seem that if one calls oneself a Christian it would be honest to give Christianity a chance first.

But this is not to be expected. The new-minted skeptic knows perfectly well what she shall find in these quarters: full agreement with her PCA parents, and the Schaeffers, on what are likely the real issues that trouble her, and substantive answers to whatever intellectual ones she is presenting--all with the stink of death that Christianity is to those who are selling their birthrights cheap.

Comments

[Russ]

I'm not one for "that was great" comments, but this deserves one. I hope a more developed version appears in the magazine soon.

[ropata]

The cultural and spiritual environment at university is also a huge factor; some skepticism is valid but most of it is simply hostility borne of ignorance. They are lovers of darkness rather than light, have exchanged good for evil, their minds are darkened. I have not felt such intense opposition to faith, hope and charity since I finished my studies. There's a stench of intellectual pride and a stronghold of Nietzschean hubris over many institutions.. the campus papers are little more than pornography. Fallen human nature is graphically illustrated as young people set their lives on a path to Hell.

[JS Bangs]

Hmmm. This strikes me as a little too glib. Having been there, done that, and come back, this doesn't describe me logic on the way down or the way back. I have no idea what may be the case of the girl described in this article, but I don't think Hutchens does either.

As for the character of contemporary L'Abri, I think that they key quote from the article is this one: Though most hold firmly to conservative social values, they resent the assumption that their faith is chained to a prescribed political position. That's a sentiment I strongly agree with and heartily applaud. The rest of the article does little to suggest that L'Abri is becoming an agent of liberalism. It is, rather, a conservative place through which a lot of non-conservatives pass, as it always has been.

[labrialumn]

I studied at Southboro L'Abri in the late 1980s. I went to many Bible studies in Mrs. Schaeffer's home during the 2nd half of the 1980s. I've been to many of the local conferences and discussion nights. Several of my friends from seminary presently are L'Abri workers.

The CT article is a classic example of propaganda. True information salted with lies and distortions creating something that I don't recognize.

When I was a student at L'Abri, we talked intensely with the families at meals that lasted typically two hours. We debated with each other. My fellow students were there to find truth. Some were Christians, some had been raised in separatist fundamentalist circles and were giving Christianity one last chance.

To this very day at L'Abri conferences and Friday night discussions, there is much questioning and debate.

I challenge the claims that Schaeffer deliberately distorted history. From the primary source documents he is correct. His popularizing works were directed at popular audiences, not at scholars.

I do understand how young evangelical scholars, embarrassed and ashamed of their faith in the presence of non-believing dissertation committees, want to distance themselves as far as they can. But I don't see such actions as having integrity.

There certainly are those who have turned from the faith for the sake of the world, or the social and political pressure at the universities, but I still maintain that Schaeffer's analyses, when taken for what they are, are among the best available, and were remarkably prescient. _The Great Evangelical Disaster_ his last book, describes his critics very well.

[smh]

Please note, folks, that this posting is not very much about L'Abri. The subject is the allegation of loss of faith through the acquisition of knowledge when the real problem is more likely connected to the loss of virginity--and yes, I include the males here, too. My own experience of the phenomenon has led me to agree not only with the pastors to whose observations I refer, but with E. Michael Jones' thesis in Degenerate Moderns that embracing modernity (here expressed in the form of the "loss of faith at college") is not much more than the rationalization of sexual misbehavior. Not all the bases are covered perfectly by this, but it is a reasonable approximation of the state of affairs.

[Ethan C.]

While I don't think I agree with the degree to which E. Michael Jones reduces many matters of modernist skepticism to a desire for sexual license (I think Freud proves that it's rather easy to overdo such reductions, for whatever purpose), I have little doubt that there is a strong connection between the two. I saw it among my Evangelical friends at Wheaton. It is, perhaps, only through the grace of Providence that I did not go down that path myself (my excessive pride might have helped me--Satan's house was divided against itself).

I have no opinion as to what effect L'Abri is having on this phenomenon, whether positive or negative. In the Evangelical culture, however, it certainly seems to me that sexual and sexual-political matters have eclipsed straight intellectual difficulties as a reason for abandoning the faith.

Perhaps this is actually a result of the success Christianity has had in the past quarter century of reasserting its intellectual strength. I credit Schaeffer with playing a strong role in this process, however much I may disagree with certain points of his historical analysis (I like his "line of despair," but I disagree with his location of certain thinkers in relation to it).

That being said, let me further agree with Dr. Hutchens: this transition from philosophical skepticism to sexual-political skepticism has more the nature of an unmasking than a replacement.

[Ethan C.]

Having read the article in toto, I'm also inclined to agree with Labrialumn about its nature: it seems to go out of its way to paint Schaeffer badly. As to its judgment about the current state of L'Abri, it seems confused whether to blame the organization for being out of touch with students or blame the students for being superficial.

There is one person whom the writer quite clearly likes, however: John Sandri.

"He wanted me to withdraw from a teaching role in the community," said Sandri, who is bronzed and wiry at 71, thanks to his hobby of long-distance Alpine running.

(Schaeffer didn't like him) + (he's good looking) = (one cool dude)

[pilgrim kate]

Having read over the past few months the fallout from Frank Schaeffer’s tell-all book, I wonder if perhaps the conformist transition among evangelical youth that Dr. Hutchens is pointing out is one aspect of a changed sensibility among evangelicals, one that seems to have granted some evangelicals (not just the callow youth) the freedom to adopt an ‘oprahfied’ approach to public discourse, all in the name of honesty or authenticity or whatever the current word is for soft-slander.

[Bob]

Wow, I only now figured out what Labrialumn's name means. I'm that slow, I guess.

I read Schaeffer for a bit, until I saw the nonsense he wrote about Dante. Nobody who gets Dante that wrong can be very worth reading on anything else.

[thomas]

"embracing modernity (here expressed in the form of the "loss of faith at college") is not much more than the rationalization of sexual misbehavior. Not all the bases are covered perfectly by this, but it is a reasonable approximation of the state of affairs."

Yes, that matches almost all the experiences for which I've enough info to form a reasonably accurate opinion.

[GL]

Of course, it may not apply to everyone, but the license to engage in illicit sex certainly influenced my own season of doubt in college, not to mention the license to get plastered on the weekends. The results of exercising that license, likewise, influenced my return to the Faith (or should I say, my truly embracing the Faith for the first time). At last, it was not merely a philosophy or a part of my culture, it was my salvation. Christ was no longer a great moral teacher, He was my Redeemer, by Whose stripes I was healed.

I cannot help but believe that abandonment of the Faith so that one may sin without guilt may be less permanent than abandoning it for intellectual reasons. The former carries with it natural consequences from which one may learn humility. That latter often results in an attitude of self-importance that never goes away.

[Joe Long]

"Her ‘Christian bubble’ dissipated as friends from church got married, and she found herself befriending people with different values: non-Christians, gay students, and pot smokers at the record store where she worked....'I was raised conservative, pro-life, anti-gay; I was taught that Christians should be in power. I came out thinking nothing I was taught had been right. '"

Translation: "I parroted the entire Christian worldview unreflectively but comfortably among my old friends. Now, I parrot the entire left-wing worldview unreflectively among my NEW friends." Poster girl? A poster prodigal - let us hope she looks up, one day, past the walls of the pigsty, and remembers: "My father's servants are treated better than this."

[Bill R]

Well put, GL. Immaturity is often easier to deal with than pride.

[Nick Milne]

While I echo others' concerns about placing too much importance on the sexual element, I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Mr. Hutchens' placement of it at or near the center of "the problem."

More significant to me, though, is what he has said about the level of intellectual honesty actually present in the great mass of those who consider themselves to be "honest doubters." It is not for me (or for anyone) to tell these people about the state of their own interior lives, but his description of the hesitancy to actually research Christian answers to secular objections is entirely accurate. My apologetical efforts of earlier days saw me ministering (at first out of spite, but it's a long story) to people on internet message boards, and so very many of them were in positions similar to the woman being quoted above. The worst part of it was that, in spite of how poorly-equipped they were to deal with any serious religious discussion, they took this poor equipment as being all they could ever need. That is, that they went to Catholic school (or whatever) for a few years without retaining any of what was taught somehow renders them immune to any criticism or correction. Who are we to lecture them about the religion in which they have been formally trained? The nerve.

They're in the astonishing position of having received a very poor education, falling away from their faith because of it, and thereafter holding up an education that they would themselves admit was lacking as evidence of the authority of their rejection! It's madness.

But Mr. Hutchens is also right about the power and comprehensiveness of the answers that thoughtful Christians can provide to the objections and concerns that are bound to come up when the pablum of the nursery meets the acid bath of university. There are three elements to the hesitancy to seek further information, being laziness, skepticism, and hostile suspicion.

The first of these is the most prevalent; maybe Thomas Aquinas really did have something useful to say about something that's been troubling me, but his books are enormous and old! Who has that kind of time? And this Chesterton guy's collected works run to over thirty-five volumes of about 600 pages each (so far). Not likely.

The second is the most defensible of the three, though it doesn't get as much play as it ought to. While many young and troubled Christians are aware in a sort of abstract sense that earlier thinkers have dealt with these things before, there remains an anxiety that the answers they might provide would be similarly unsatisfying, if not worse altogether. This is frequently coupled with the tortured, beautiful arrogance of youth, which assumes that all things were made fresh at one's birth, and that nobody could possibly understand or have experienced the same problems that one is facing.

The third, and the worst of them from an intellectual perspective, is the conviction that other Christian thinkers simply aren't to be trusted. That is, that they're "in on it," too, and are speaking from positions of self-interest and deception. So C.S. Lewis had a great explanation for why pre-marital sex is wrong? Well, he would, wouldn't he? They all do. I've heard it all before.

For my own part, I was not raised a Christian, nor exposed to it in any way by my parents or the circle of friends I had. What I learned about it came largely from the internet, which, by what I guess is a sort of dumb luck, led me first to people like J.P. Holding of the Tekton Apologetics Ministries, who is a strange sort of guy but whose work is both substantial and informed by people like N.T. Wright, Francis Beckwith and Norman Geisler. The extraneous reading that all of this occasioned has left me in a position where I feel as though apostasy would be intellectually impossible, quite apart from any spiritual considerations. The arguments for Christianity are compelling, and the answers to objections thereto are robust.

It's a shame that such arguments and answers remain so widely uninvestigated by those who need them most.

[labrialumn]

There is -some- truth in the article. L'Abri workers have bemoaned to me that today's students are more and more interested in dealing with personal psychological problems rather than intellectual problems, that today's students don't seem to care about the concept of truth (Schaeffer -did- deal with that in his day, and may have invented the term 'postmodern' to describe it in 1967 when writing his _Escape From Reason of 1968). But they roll with it, taking what God sets before them to do.

I think that the force of the government school systems (and those Christian parochial systems which also follow the progressivist model) has a lot to do with this; the elimination of the category of objectively-real truth as "arrogant" in favor of immersing the students in State-relativism in every subject starting with kindergarten. Parents often think that as long as the child goes forward in an altar call, or was baptized as an infant, that the government schools can't take them from Christ, and that they are 'good kids'. Exceptions probably exist, but those parents are generally profoundly deceived.

I have noticed changes at L'Abri, but very slight ones, like when the breeze shifts in the country and you scent something different in the air. But nothing one could call them on as of yet. Nothing more than a slight feeling.

I do know that Mrs. Schaeffer is very unhappy with the increasing Calvinism of L'Abri workers. Very unhappy. As is Udo Middelmann, whom to my perspective, may have gone too far in the other direction in reaction with his "open sovereignty.

Another significant error in the article is the confusion of van Til's TULIP-reductionist fideism with Schaeffer's *very different* existentialist approach to presuppositions. Very precisely that you *can* talk rationally with unbelievers and can examine each others presuppositions, and ought to do so and encourage their examination of ours. It was van Til who said that could not and should not be done. van Til suspected Schaeffer of not being a full Calvinist, though Schaeffer thought that he was. I think that van Til was right on that one point. It seems to me from Schaeffer's writings and tapes, and the book by Brian Follis _Truth in Love_, which I recommend, that Schaeffer's views on predestination, the gospel and the human being were much closer to Lutheran views (apart from the abandoned _Bondage of the Will_), though concerning the sacraments he remained fully Presbyterian.

Finally, though I've said it before, the thing to remember is that Schaeffer was trying to communicate basic ideas in order to make Law and Gospel plausible to college-educated people. He was not writing academic discourse. (And your average undergrad college student today isn't even going to be able to understand much of what he said, due to the decline in education.) College-educated people aren't going to go read Kierkegaard in the original. They aren't going to be able to understand William Lane Craig or know who Thomas Aquinas -is-, but many can grasp, with some help and discussion, what Schaeffer was saying. Many have found Schaeffer's works a springboard to the academic realm, where they discover that he generalized where specifics would have been poor communications, and where he sometimes made errors (but more than say Richard Dawkins or Jacob Bronowski? I think not). But to despise him and his work because it was written to the common BA and not for academic publication, is arrogant and ignorant.

[labrialumn]

Never trust a spell-checker or bad eyes. That should be "Schaeffer's *very different* evidentialist approach to presuppositions" NOT 'existentialist'!!!

[labrialumn]

It occurs to me that it might not have been evident that I have been throughout this thread responding to Miss Molly Iforgethersurname's article in CT, not S. M. Hutchens!

[Mairnéalach]

I agree with SMH.

I went to university as a believer. Even though I had done no reading in apologetics at age 18, I found the supposed materialstic worldview unconvincing. I saw right through it, for the most part, with eyes of simple faith.

I did walk away from the faith for some time, however, and the real reason for it was the new-found moral freedom I had. It was much easier to indulge myself in college than it had been when I was with my parents.

This may not be true for all people in my situation, but the standard anti-christian philosophical bogeymen, in my case, had little or nothing to do with my long period away from the church.

[Steve Nicoloso]

How many of the freshmen who come up to Oxford from religious homes and lose their Christianity in the first year have been honestly argued out of it? How many of our own sudden temporary losses of faith have a rational basis which would stand examination for a moment?

--Lewis, "Religion: Reality or Substitute?"

[Clifford Simon]

In the "Names Have Been Changed To Protect the Ignorant" department, I can't help but tell you the folly of a church I used to attend (I've since moved). Free sex as a mechanism for loss of faith, was discovered by them long ago. They came up with something very wise. Very, very wise. In their own eyes. It goes like this: No dating in college. If you're in college, you get urged by all your spiritual leaders to break up. Sheer evil genius!

I confess to being so infuriated by them, that I used to find myself rehearsing insults. From the fanciful (Why I don't I bring the local gay bartender over here, so he can learn what it is you do to make young folks change partners so speedily?) to the direct-and-rude (I'd tell my Baptist pastor that it'd be far better to be a good Roman Catholic - or other - who treats his girlfriend right, than a Baptist who does what you teach). I haven't quite got to "Raca" yet, but you can pray for me that I don't.

Well, some of us who "kept our faith" have gone on to discover that true "faith" has something to do with "faithfulness" in our dealings toward women...

[Stuart Koehl]

I went to Georgetown with no religious faith at all. If I had had any, I suppose my exposure to the Jesuit faculty would have weaned me off of it pretty quickly. As it was, however, I took their snarky, pseudo-sophisticated approach to Christianity as an example of intellectual arrogance--something I really hate in people other than me. And so, prompted to look into the matter for myself, if for no other reason than to dismantle their arguments and give them a hard time, I began checking out Christianity's claims and slowly became convinced of their truth.

Thanks, godless Jebs! Sorry things did not work out according to your plans.

[Nick Milne]

Stuart--

That's almost exactly what happened with me, though replace "Jesuit faculty" with "twenty year-olds on internet message boards." The more elaborate I tried to make my counterarguments (the better to aggravate them), the more convinced of those arguments' verity I became. I could not now actually mark the point at which trolling became evangelism.

It's a funny and beautiful world, sometimes.

[ropata]

Thankyou clifford, I had the misfortune to attend a "shepherding" church where dating was bad; people were supposed to form romance by some kind of divine intervention. Thoroughly emasculating.

[labrialumn]

I converted to evangelical, Trinitarian Christianity within weeks of starting college, so I did not encounter that dynamic in myself. I rebelled in the other direction, I guess. It seemed that most of the serious believers stuck it out, but I did see quite a few just nod their heads believing their professors in the religion department, as they'd never been taught to think or question in church, let alone the government schools.

[Clifford Simon]

I know friends on both sides of the sex issue. One grew up in a the church, was hurt there (truly or just felt that way, I'm not sure which), went to college, hooked up, became a critic of Christianity. Another grew up un-churched - "ready to go to hell with my eyes open," he said - went to college, hooked up; then was taken aback when folks at my church were willing to give ear to his criticisms of Christianity, and give him some honest answers. He became a Christian before his senior year in college.

[Kevin]

I'm always slow in getting my comments in, but Joe Long has the translation exactly right.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>"My father's servants are treated better than this."<<<

What if you like carob husks?

[Tim]

I'm not sure if this is relevant enough to the discussion, but when I was reading David Brook's piece on “The Mental ABC’s of Pitching, a book by a sports psychologist named H.A. Dorfman," something seemed relevant with the notion that pitchers must use self-discipline to drive behaviors that will in turn bring the mind along to the service of the task at hand. Seems we often rely too much on our minds driving our behaviors (a dubious exercise on today's libertine campus - "openness" or "open-mindedness" seems to mean you can and will readily find an intellectual rationalization for your behavior somewhere if you only look around, unless, of course, the behavior reflects a way in opposition to "open-mindedness"!) Seems to back up, though, to what is the task at hand; get laid or get saved? Enjoying the fruits of youth seems so "natural" and attractive, but immature fruit doesn't stay with one long. And who wants to listen to all those old fuddy duddies who can't seem to say anything but, "no!"? The peaches look so good ...

The part in the article about encouraging a pitcher to "pretend" to be aggressive on the mound even if he is not "feeling" aggressive also reminded me of Lewis's advice to the new (and continuing) Christian to "pretend" to love God with behaviors that one could expect a lover of God to perform, even when one does not "feel" in love. Seems feelings may be beautiful and yet ... (I'm thinking that is a line from a song somewheres; anyone remember that one?)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The part in the article about encouraging a pitcher to "pretend" to be aggressive on the mound even if he is not "feeling" aggressive also reminded me of Lewis's advice to the new (and continuing) Christian to "pretend" to love God with behaviors that one could expect a lover of God to perform, even when one does not "feel" in love.<<<

Christianity is 90% mental and half hard work.
---(With apologies to Yogi)

[Matthew Lorfeld]

It isn't my father's Christianity... it is Christ's... and that point seems to be lost in this article as the descriptor of "falling away" is a "fall" from Eisenhower moralism. Now I am by no means a Gospel reductionist, in fact the Law has a very important role to play (namely its condemning role and penultimately its civil and didactic roles), but a fall from Christianity that does not involve a "fall" from Christ is no fall whatsoever... the person was already either dead on the ground or still, in the very weakness of their faith, a child of God.

The Cleavers are now dead... welcome to the world my fathers throughout the history of Christendom have been engaged in.

[James A. Altena]

C. S. Lewis was actually echoing Pascal's statement in the "Pensees": "Practice shapes belief. Pray every day for a year, and one day you will wake up a Christian."

Lewis also gives the mirror image of this in "The Screwtape Letters," in the passage where Screwtape tells Wormwood that Hell has truly lost when a man is reduced to absolute despair, and can see no reason whatsoever to continue to believe, and yet persists in so doing. (I can testify to this from personal experience.) Sheer force of habit is one of Heaven's mightiest weapons for seeing us through the dry spells of our faith, and should not be disparaged or underestimated.