Growing up Schaeffer

Religion: Crazy for God is a tell-all memoir in the best and worst sense | Warren Cole Smith

Frank Schaeffer has long been l'enfant terrible of the evangelical world.

The son of Francis Schaeffer, for years known as "Franky" Schaeffer, is—now that he's approaching 60—no longer l'enfant. But, as his new book Crazy for God makes clear, he remains terrible, in both the best and worst senses of that word.

The 400-plus-page book is a memoir of growing up Schaeffer at L'Abri, the center founded by Francis and Edith Schaeffer in Switzerland. The Schaeffers and L'Abri, French for "the shelter," have become a part of the legend of post-World War II evangelicalism. Theirs was a place where, according to that story, brilliant young seekers from around the globe could take time out from modernity to find Jesus at the feet of a goateed Francis Schaeffer. It was a Rivendell for hippies.