Edith Schaeffer

Life

Edith Schaeffer was born on November 3, 1914, in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, the daughter of missionary parents. Her maiden name was Edith Rachel Merritt Seville. On June 26, 1932, she first met Francis Schaeffer at a meeting at First Presbyterian Church in Germantown, Pennsylvania. At the meeting, a Unitarian speaker denied the deity of Christ; Unitarianism rejects the doctrine of the Trinity. According to one account, Edith was about to offer a rebuttal when Francis rose first and answered the speaker. The two married in 1935 and had three daughters, Priscilla, Susan, and Deborah, and a son, Frank.

In 1948 the Schaeffer family went to Switzerland as missionaries, sent by the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. Their son Frank was born there. After her husband's death in 1984, she remained connected with L'Abri. Following a long illness, she died at her home in Gryon, Switzerland, on March 30, 2013, the day before Easter, at the age of 98.

Ministry and Accomplishments

In 1955 the Schaeffers began L'Abri in a chalet in the Swiss Alps. L'Abri is French for "the shelter." It was a community that welcomed as guests people seeking intellectually honest answers to questions about God and the meaning of life, living alongside them and engaging them in conversation. Edith sustained the ministry through her hospitality, opening her home and her table to those who came. L'Abri later spread to England, Germany, Canada, Brazil, the United States, Australia, and elsewhere.

She was also the author of seventeen books. Her best-known works include the following:

• L'Abri (1969): an account of the beginnings of L'Abri.
• Affliction (1978): a treatment of Christian suffering.
• The Tapestry: an account of the couple's life.
• Christianity Is Jewish
• What Is a Family?

Affliction received the Gold Medallion Book Award of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) in 1979, and The Tapestry received the same award in 1982.

Influence on the Korean Church

Several of her books have been translated into Korean. The Korean edition of her L'Abri story (translated by Yang Hye-won; Hong Sung Sa, first edition 2001, revised edition 2018) is the best-known work introducing the L'Abri community to Korean readers. The following books have also been published in Korea as devotional books, dealing mainly with family life, child-rearing, and the life of prayer:

• What Is a Family? (Word of Life Press)
• A Living Prayer Life (Korean title)
• The Marriage Story of Francis & Edith Schaeffer (Korean title)
• God, the Greatest Artist (Korean title)
• Discipline God's Way (Korean title)

Assessment

Evangelical media generally remember her as a co-founder of L'Abri and as a woman of hospitality. The American magazine World remarked that her hospitality complemented her husband's anguish over lost souls.

She has also drawn criticism. Journalist Kathryn Joyce has focused on one of her books on the family, arguing that, regardless of its intent, the book became an important text in the United States for advocates of "Christian patriarchy" and "biblical womanhood."