Schaeffer, Edith.

Person

Staff Only

Biographical Statement

Born November 3, 1914 to missionary parents serving with Hudson Taylor and his China Inland Mission, Edith Rachel Merritt Seville attended Beaver College in Germantown, Pennsylvania. On June 26, 1932 she met her future husband, Francis A. Schaeffer, who had finished his first year at Hampden-Sydney College and had returned home to work for the summer. They were married July 6, 1935 and after Francis attended seminary at Westminster Theological Seminary and gained ministry experience they were sent in 1948 to Switzerland by the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions.

Schaeffer, with her late husband, Dr. Francis Schaeffer, co-founded the well-known Christian evangelism and retreat community in Switzerland, L'Abri Fellowship. The work of L'Abri began when their family was young in 1955 in the village of Huémoz, Switzerland. Today L'Abri has six branches around the world - one each in Switzerland, England, Holland and Sweden and two in the United States. During the years of their marriage, Edith was an intellectual equal to her husband. During their early years together it was Edith who helped direct his reading list.

Edith is the author of seventeen books on a variety of topics and is a speaker and counselor in the United States and abroad. Affliction (1978) was written during and just prior to times of significant difficulties. She wrote Tapestry (1981) as a chronicle of their lives together.

She is the mother of four children. Priscilla, their first child, was born on June 18, 1937 while in Delaware. On May 28, 1941, Edith gave birth to their second daughter, Susan while they were living in Grove City, Pennsylvania. During a pastorate in St. Louis, Deborah Ann Schaeffer was born, May 3, 1945. It was during the Schaeffers’ early years in Switzerland that Francis August Schaeffer V, or Franky, was born, August 3, 1952.

The Schaeffers returned to the United States permanently in 1978 so Francis could undergo cancer treatments at the Mayo Clinic. She has lived in Minnesota since his death in 1984. Since her husband’s death, Mrs. Schaeffer resided for a while in Rochester, Minnesota, but returned to Switzerland to live nearer to her family. She died in 2013.

Found in 2 Collections and/or Records:

Christianity Today Records

Collection

Identifier: CN 008

Brief Description Correspondence, memos, forms, financial reports, minutes of meetings, study papers, clippings and other records of the Evangelical Christian publishing organization. The records describe the founding of the organization to publish the magazine Christianity Today and its creation or acquisition of other publications such as Campus Life, Leadership, Leadership 100, Partnership, and Your Church. Besides material on the editing, publishing and distribution of these periodicals, the files also...

Dates: Created: Majority of material found within 1930, 1954-2002

Found in: Evangelism & Missions Archives / Christianity Today Records

Collection 279 Oral History Interview with Elizabeth Evans

Collection

Identifier: CN 279

Scope and Contents Oral history interviews with Elizabeth Morrell Evans (1899-1976) in which she discusses her childhood; education at Wheaton College; work with J. Elwin Wright; her Christian education activities; the development of the New England Fellowship, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the World Evangelical Fellowship; and her work as a missionary in Taiwan. The time period covered by the interviews is 1899-1976.Elizabeth Evans was interviewed by Robert Shuster on October 8,...

Dates: Created: 1984-1985

Found in: Evangelism & Missions Archives / Collection 279 Oral History Interview with Elizabeth Evans

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Archives of Wheaton College