Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020)
Article: Contending For The Lamb
Author: Ranald Macaulay

SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020) p. 11

Contending For The Lamb

Ranald Macaulay

Ranald Macaulay was born in South Africa. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1956 to do a law degree at Cambridge. At the end of his second year he met the Schaeffers. They had just recently started L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland. He visited them at the end of 1959 and decided to join the work. He and Susan Schaeffer were married in April 1961. In 1964 they started the English L’Abri in London. There Ranald completed a BD Hons in theology, at King’s College, London. In January 1971 they moved to Hampshire to start a residential branch of L’Abri. In 1978 Ranald co-authored the book Being Human with Jerram Barrs (IVP Academic, 1998), on the nature of spiritual experience. A number of his articles have appeared in Evangelicals Now and other journals. When Francis Schaeffer died in 1984 the family returned to Switzerland for four years. In 1996 they moved to Cambridge where Ranald founded Christian Heritage at the Round Church—the second oldest building in the city built in 1130 AD. Since 2017 he and Susan have been back in Hampshire near the L’Abri house.

Contact

My earliest contact with Francis and Edith Schaeffer was in Cambridge. It was early June 1958. I had just finished a field hockey match and was late for an informal get-together with them. The academic year was almost done, exams were over, but vacation-plans needed to be finalized, May Balls to be danced, May Bumps to be rowed, farewells to be said and so on. Life was still busy.

The Schaeffers were staying at a hotel in London, guests of a young English woman who had recently visited them in Switzerland. It was suggested, last minute, that a train-ride to Cambridge would make a pleasant mid-week outing. They’d never been before and this would give them an opportunity to meet a group of newly converted undergraduates—several from South

SBJT 24:2 (Summer 2020) p. 12

Africa, including myself. Michael Cassidy, my closest school friend in Natal, was arranging things our end, understandably reluctant because everyone was busy and the Schaeffers complete strangers.

While I cycled back, red-faced and sweating, half-a-dozen friends, mostly colleagues in St. Catharine’s, were gathering at the top of ‘C’ staircase. Suspicions ran high. What was an American pastor doing living and working in a small village in the Swiss Alps? Perhaps he was connected to Moral Rearmament, a cult we’d been warned about. His home wasn’t far from its international headquarters above Montreux. Maybe!

After preliminary chit-chat Edith suddenly interjected: “Fran, aren’t you going to say something to these young men. We’ve come all the ...