The same year he married Edith Seville, the daughter of missionary parents who had been with the China Inland Mission founded by Hudson Taylor.

Schaeffer then enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary in the fall and studied under Cornelius Van Til (presuppositional apologetics) and J. Gresham Machen (doctrine of inerrancy).

[14] In Crazy for God, Schaeffer's son Frank presents a portrait of his father that is far more nuanced and multi-dimensional than was suggested by his public persona.

"[16] Frank Schaeffer initially supported his father's ideas and political program, but has since distanced himself from many of those views, first converting to the Eastern Orthodox Church[17] and later becoming a liberal and a self-described "atheist who believes in God.

"[20] J. Budziszewski summarizes the article about this middle path approach by writing: Presuppositionalists, he held, are right to assert that the ultimate premises of Christian and anti–Christian systems of thought are utterly at odds in relation to their origin.

The reason for this point of contact, he argued, is that nonbelievers cannot bring themselves to be completely consistent with their own presuppositions, and this inconsistency is a result of what many call common grace and is in fact the reality of God having made, and spoken into, a defined and unavoidable creation.

"[3] The Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation in Gryon, Switzerland is led by one of his daughters and sons-in-law as a small-scale alternative to the original L'Abri Fellowship International, which is still operating in nearby Huemoz-sur-Ollon and other places in the world.

Covenant Theological Seminary has established the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute directed by a former English L'Abri member, Jerram Barrs.

The concept centers around Christians taking dominion of seven societal spheres of influence: "family, religion, education, media, art, economics, and government.

"[27][28] Francis Schaeffer is credited with helping spark a return to political activism among Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists in the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially in relation to the issue of abortion.

Schaeffer's diagnosis is that the decline of Western Civilization is due to society having become increasingly pluralistic, resulting in a shift "away from a world view that was at least vaguely Christian in people's memory… toward something completely different.

"[citation needed] He writes that the decline of commitment to objective truth that he perceives in the various institutions of society is "not because of a conspiracy, but because the church has forsaken its duty to be the salt of the culture.

"[31] A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state and hidden his Jewish neighbors from the German SS Troops.

[37]Christian conservative leaders such as Tim LaHaye have credited Schaeffer for influencing their theological arguments urging political participation by evangelicals.

began exploring the intellectual and ideological connection between Schaeffer's political activism and writings of the early 1980s to contemporary religious-political trends in the Christian Right, sometimes grouped under the name Dominionism, with mixed conclusions.

[citation needed] Sara Diamond and Frederick Clarkson[39] have written articles tracing the activism of numerous key figures in the Christian Right to the influence of Francis Schaeffer.

According to Diamond: "The idea of taking dominion over secular society gained widespread currency with the 1981 publication of...Schaeffer's book A Christian Manifesto.

[43] Other authors argue against a close connection with dominionism, for example Irving Hexham of the University of Calgary, who maintains that Schaeffer's political position has been misconstrued as advocating the Dominionist views of R. J. Rushdoony, who is a Christian Reconstructionist.

Congresswoman and 2012 United States presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has cited Schaeffer's documentary series How Should We Then Live?

They can be roughly split into five sections, as in the edition of his Complete Works (ISBN 0-89107-347-7): In addition to his books, one of the last public lectures Schaeffer delivered was at the Law Faculty, University of Strasbourg.

Zeoli was instrumental in providing the Schaeffers with introductions to wealthy American evangelicals who would eventually bankroll the How We Should Then Live film project.

By contrast, the Bible, understood as the revealed revelation from God is able to provide a fundamentally sound basis for societal norms as well as a base for science.