Crazy for God

by Frank Schaeffer

  Dad said that middle-class values, bereft of their Christian foundation, were empty. He sided with “the kids” against their “uptight parents.” Dad warned that once the memory of the truths upon which “middle-class Western norms” were built—in other words, biblical Christianity—had been forgotten, that within a generation those values would be swept away. “Then people will want order at any price.”

  L’Abri was now on the radar screen of a whole generation of backpacking bohemian travelers, on their way to or from ashrams in India, London’s trendy Carnaby Street, or San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. Dad’s answer to the rebellion of the “happening generation” was that the hippie analysis of our plastic culture was correct but that their solution—free love and drugs—would not work. Mankind had a God-given moral character. If you did not obey God’s law, you were flying in the face of reality because “The universe is what it is, no matter what we say it is.”

  Dad’s answer was not to return to middle-class ways but to accept the truth of the Bible and then encourage the artists, poets, and rebels to rebel with a purpose: to restore truth to its rightful place, and to redeem all of creation through putting Christ back at the center of our lives. While they did this, there was no need to conform to “petty bourgeois rules.” You could keep your hair long and your music hip, and smoking a little pot was no better or worse than that martini your uptight parents drank every night. Rock and roll was fine. It often told the truth about the human condition far, far better than all those American “plastic preachers” did.

  On a speaking trip sometime in 1967 or early 1968, Dad took me along. (I forget if this was during a holiday before I ran from St. David’s, or just after.) We were in California, where Dad was speaking at Westmont College in Santa Barbara. I hooked up with the daughter of a L’Abri worker who happened to be a freshman at the school. I spent a pleasant evening necking with her on a bench overlooking the sports facility while she steered my hands away from her crotch.

  In one lecture I did attend, Dad berated the administration for not acquiescing to the demands of a local environmental group. The school had refused to spare some trees that some local hippies were trying to save when the school built a new wing. Dad had found out about this while walking around the neighborhood. The school revisited the issue and, because of Dad, a stand of trees was saved. (Not too long after that incident, Dad wrote a pro-environmentalist book that went more or less unnoticed in the evangelical market, at least compared to some of his best-selling works.)

  One night in San Francisco, Dad and I went to the Fillmore West and heard Jefferson Airplane. Dad loved the concert and stayed the whole night. When the hippies packed around us passed a joint our way, Dad smiled and mouthed the words “No, thank you” but cheerfully handed it on down the line. The next day, Dad bought several Airplane albums. After that, once in a while he played them at top volume in his bedroom. He was the coolest dad anyone I knew had, and the only one who knew the words to “White Rabbit.”

  Bob Dylan scheduled a visit to L’Abri, then at the last minute didn’t come. Mick Jagger also failed to show up at the last minute. (He and Keith Richards had a chalet in Villars and called to say they were on their way down to us several times.) My cousin Jonathan (his mother was Aunt Janet, of the Communist Party and later of the Closed Brethren) was hanging around London with Paul McCartney. Dad was carrying on a long handwritten correspondence with Leopold Senhor, President of Senegal (a famous African poet in his own right). When I met Jimmy Page, lead guitarist for Led Zeppelin (in 1969 or thereabouts), he had a paperback copy of Escape from Reason in his back pocket and pronounced it “very cool.” Eric Clapton had given him Dad’s book, Page told me. One of Joan Baez’s best friends was at L’Abri.

  Of course, we were all hoping Joan Baez would come to L’Abri and get saved, because that would be a “great way to reach so many young people for Christ.” The more famous, the more hip the convert, the more “the Lord could use that person.” There was a type of unofficial aristocracy. A born-again Wheaton College student (Wheaton is a major evangelical school in Illinois), who showed up just to do Bible studies and to “deepen her walk with the Lord,” was low on the totem pole compared to, say, a British heroin addict-artist who was hanging out with Keith Richards.

  When former Harvard professor and LSD drug guru Timothy Leary came to Villars and stayed in a hotel for several days to meet with Dad, we canceled everything and had a special day of fasting and prayer. “Just think of what it will mean if he gets saved!” Mom exalted. When Bob Dylan didn’t show up, “the Devil won a victory.”

  According to Dad, Samuel Becket, Jean Genet, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, et al., were doing God’s work. They were preparing men’s hearts, in “pre-evangelism,” and “tearing down the wall of middle-class empty bourgeois apathy.” Jimi Hendrix was right to scorn that plastic business, man! All we needed to do was provide the answer after the counterculture rebels opened the door by showing people that life without Jesus was empty.

  The great thing was that since Jimi Hendrix saw the problem—“the problem” was materialistic middle-class life without eternal values—listening to Jimi became essential to “understanding our generation” and “reaching them.” As Dad said, “We have to speak their language.”

  Since that language was rock and roll, art and movies, it suited me perfectly. Not only had the fundamentalist taboos of my childhood lapsed; they were reversed. In fact, during our many arts weekends I was encouraged to play the latest records, and then we would have discussions on what it all meant. Dropping out and turning on was cool now, so I was going with the flow, no longer an oddity.

  The twenty-year-olds I was hanging out with were not interested in necking, but in having sex. They weren’t smoking a little dope; those on drugs were addicts or had hitchhiked through India and arrived at L’Abri like backpacking private pharmacies. There were some who had attempted suicide, girls who talked about the multiple abortions they had had. Everyone wore clothes like a badge. How long your hair was defined who you were.

  I grew my hair past my shoulders and organized shows of my art and photography in the L’Abri chapel from time to time, as did other artists visiting L’Abri, as did the poets who read at poetry evenings, as did the composers and musicians who performed at the many concerts, from Jane Stuart Smith’s classical recitals to protest songs. The art was not some Christianized pablum; it had an edge. Poems were often pornographic, my paintings were sometimes of nudes, and the music was loud.

  It was imperative that we “go into the world” and paint, compose, write, and direct movies. I was not only allowed to go to movies but organizing film festivals for L’Abri, including Fellini and Bergman. And there were a host of Schaeffer clones who were starting to get into the be-cool-for-Jesus business, too. Os Guinness, Dick Keyes, and many others who were at one time or another L’Abri workers, learned their I-can-explain-everything-to-modern-people strategies for evangelical intellectual renewal while sitting at Dad’s feet.

  The dorms were full. Discussions in the chapel were packed. At two AM on any given day, we were up discussing the world and everything in it. And my studio was a great place to chat up a bird.

  Mom and Dad had completely abandoned even a pretense of parental guidance. They were now so busy writing books, getting famous, and working night and day in L’Abri, or on the road speaking, that had I died they might have gone a week or two without noticing. (As a parent, I look back at this time with stunned wonderment.)

  I found stability in my friendships within the ever-changing kaleidoscope of guests, helpers, and workers. One sweet young woman provided my transition from childhood crushes to almost-grown-up love. (Years later, when I saw the movie Rushmore, I completely understood and identified with the protagonist and his hilariously humiliating quest to be taken seriously by a woman ten years older than him.)

  Kathy was a student at L’Abri, then became a worker. I think she got to L’Abri when I was about thirteen,
and left when I was almost sixteen. For a year or so, I was wildly, madly in love with her. She was about twenty-five, had a rounded kindly face, bright blue eyes that glittered when she laughed, dimples to die for, and frosty gold-blonde hair. And Kathy was kind, and yet frighteningly virtuous.

  She let me tag around after her, but she kept a very appropriate physical distance from this lusting man-boy. Kathy kept me so busy with unrequited longing that she prevented me from chasing many more available but—in retrospect—much less wholesome young women. (I probably didn’t contract syphilis, herpes, or gonorrhea from the hitchhiking crowd that year because of Kathy.)

  I have a “snapshot” of Kathy pleasantly fixed in my brain: the-endlessly-frustratingly-wholesome-pietistic-super-evangelical-female in our vegetable garden, brushing a strand of golden hair out of her face with the back of her hand as she picked peas, while looking as if she was in some scene cut from The Sound of Music, my very own Julie Andrews.

  I recently tracked Kathy down via e-mail (we had been out of contact for forty years) and asked her how she remembered my parents. Her reply is a good representation of the absolute devotion that so many evangelicals have to them even today, and also of their disapproval of me, or anyone, that might do anything to diminish their worshipful regard for my parents.

  February 17, 2007

  Dear Franky, (Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to call you Frank, unless you insist, that is). . . . What I can tell you is that I absolutely adore and admire your parents. Of course, I was the closest to your mother. She taught me how to cook and how to pray. I was inspired by her creativity and energy and strong faith. After I left L’Abri I couldn’t wait until the “Family Letters” arrived and I read each one the moment I received it, hanging on to every word. There isn’t a book that she wrote that I did not read enthusiastically, once again treasuring all her details and gleaning from her words of wisdom. . . . I also have to be honest and tell you that I heard about a book you wrote [Portofino] that was very hurtful to your parents.

  Your friend from almost 40 years ago (Yikes!!!), Kathy

  Kathy left L’Abri, and just before she did I lost my virginity to Mandy, a beautiful twenty-year-old, all because Dad took me along on a speaking trip to Covenant College, an evangelical school located on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Actually, I lost it back in L’Abri with Mandy a few weeks later; but I met her at Covenant, where I kissed her in the library and, while Dad was lecturing to the whole student body, got my hands down her panties while on the bed of Dr. Barnes, the college president. (Mom, Dad, and I were staying in his home.) When Mandy traveled to L’Abri, I met her at Geneva Airport and we necked for an hour, all the way from Geneva to Aigle station. We had cheerless intercourse in my attic studio a few days later. I ejaculated after about three seconds and two thrusts. Within a few weeks, I was able to manage five or six thrusts. Why she was interested in sex with a young bad lover, a horny dolt, remains a mystery. Maybe it had something to do with me being the guru-of-the-moment’s son.

  I played sex like I played soccer: no hands and go straight for the goal. She had had six other boyfriends and an abortion, she said. Our “relationship” lasted for about three months. Kathy-the-virtuous used to pound on my bedroom door when she knew we were having sex, trying to make me behave according to the principles L’Abri officially stood for. My parents, as usual, were nowhere in sight, either to reprimand me or to tell me to use condoms. How their failure to be effective parents squares with Kathy’s worship of my mother and father as people oh-so wise, I don’t know.

  The odd thing was how the line between whom we were trying to reach for Jesus, and those doing the reaching—in other words, my parents—was blurring. American pastors would sometimes visit and compliment my parents on being able to “reach,” and put up with, “all these hippies.” What they didn’t realize was that we Schaeffers had become these hippies.

  Mandy modeled for me, and most of the modeling sessions ended in my lickety-split version of in-out bad sex. My nude paintings from that period seem rather hurried.

  During the period Kathy remembers so fondly, Dad was at his angriest. And my sister Priscilla was about to have her first complete nervous breakdown. A fight was brewing between my brothers-in-law that would eventually split L’Abri. On some days, Mom was hiding bruises on her arms; on other days, she was flirting shamelessly with Roger, a handsome “sensitive poet” from San Francisco, twenty years younger than her. This was the source of my parents’ biggest fights.

  Mom would take Roger to pray with her in the woods, to her prayer trees—a great and unique honor!—where he would collect moss, twigs, and flowers and make lovely Japanese-style arrangements. Dad was reduced to glaring fury by these activities. He never so much as picked a bunch of flowers, and now here was this Roger, writing poems, empathizing with Mom’s “if-only” wistful remembrances of opportunities lost, and endlessly seeking her spiritual advice.

  My grandparents, Jessie and George Seville, Shanghai, China, 1905.

  My grandfather, Francis Schaeffer III, in his U.S. Navy uniform, age eighteen.

  My father with my sister Priscilla, Germantown, Philadelphia, 1938.

  Edith Schaeffer about to leave for Europe, 1948.

  My mother with me the week I was born, Champéry Switzerland, August 1952.

  Part of the village of Champéry, Switzerland.

  My sisters, 1949 (left to right: Debby, Priscilla, and Susan).

  Mom writing her L’Abri Family Letter, 1958.

  Dad teaching a Bible class, with my sister Priscilla next to him, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1956.

  Chalet Les Mélèzes, 1960 (Mom, Dad, and me on the balcony; my fourteen-year-old cousin Jonathan, Aunt Janet’s son, in the foreground).

  Mom, Debby, Dad, Mrs. Johnson, with me after my operation, Smithtown, Long Island, 1959-60.

  My grandmother, Bessie Schaeffer, 1967.

  Susan, Ranald Macaulay, and me, Huémoz, Switzerland.

  Mr. Gordon Parke, headmaster, Great Walstead School, Sussex, UK (date unknown).

  Dad and me. I’m in my Great Walstead uniform, 1963.

  At fifteen, I’ve just run away from school, 1967.

  A slide I took during a light show rock “happening” in L’Abri chapel, circa 1967.

  Dad leading a discussion at a L’Abri conference, in 1982 (credit: Gary Gnidovic).

  Winter 1969 just after Genie arrived at L’Abri (left to right: me, Pam Walsh, and Genie Walsh).

  Genie at our New York opening, Frisch Gallery, 1970.

  Mom speaking at Wheaton College, Illinois, date unknown (credit: Gary Gnidovic).

  Back in my studio painting, 1970.

  John Sandri and Gracie Holmes at our wedding reception.

  Jessica and baby Francis, Chésières, Switzerland, 1973.

  Genie with my paintings at the opening of my first show at the Chante Pierre Gallery, Aubonne, Switzerland, 1972.

  Dad, me, and Billy Zeoli (right), 1974.

  Jessica, Genie, and me on the set of How Should We Then Live? 1974 (Genie and Jessica are “Roman martyrs”; credit: Mus Arshad).

  I’m directing Dad, How Should We Then Live? 1974 (credit: Mus Arshad).

  Dad dusting “David” on the set of How Should We Then Live? 1974 (credit: Mus Arshad).

  Genie and the children return with me to my beloved Portofino, 1976.

  One of the seminars for How Should We Then Live? 1976.

  Dr. Koop, Dad, and me on stage at Whatever Happened to the Human Race? seminar, 1979.

  Dad (with the bust of Marcus Aurelius) on the set of How Should We Then Live? 1974.

  Book cover of one of our bestsellers.

  Francis, Dad, John, and Genie gather around the bowl of water in which Dad has just baptized John in our kitchen, 1981.

  “The Gang” in my first feature: Wired to Kill, 1985 (Merritt Butrick to the left).

  John in South Africa, 1988.

  “Baby,” me, and Carol Kane, filming Baby on Board in Toron
to, 1992.

  Wired to Kill (1986).

  Baby on Board (1992).

  Genie and her parents, Stan and Betty Walsh.

  John, Ted Koppel, and me on the set of Nightline promoting our book Keeping Faith.

  Francis, Ben, Genie, Jessica, Amanda, and John, Parma, Italy, 2004.

  Edith Schaeffer, age ninety-one, at Chalet Tzi-No, Huémoz (2006).

  In other words, my parents were no better or worse than most people and went though a few really bad patches. But groupies have to believe in something or someone.

  35

  I had become an art- and sex-driven wraith haunting L’Abri and our mountainside. I was in The Work, but not of it. The intrusion of the students, the hurly-burly of the comings and goings, the growing crowds of people who came on Sunday to church in the summer, the constant noise around the house, everything made me hate where I lived—and love it.

  The chalet contained all the swirl of activity any teen could want, but none of the privacy. It was all action all the time. I would retreat to my bedroom or to my studio; do everything I could to carve a little privacy out of the groupings and re-groupings of the students.