Thank You Donald Drew R.I.P.

Last updated on: March 12, 2015 at 5:41 pm by Frank Schaeffer

Thank You Donald Drew R.I.P. 2015-03-12T17:41:19-06:00 Frank Schaeffer

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Donald Drew 1920 — 2014, was a L’Abri worker when I was living at that evangelical retreat and study center founded by my parents in Switzerland. After I ran away from a British boarding school in 1968, in 1969 Donald was assigned to be my tutor. He’d been a teacher in England before coming to work with my parents. I learned to love Shakespeare from Donald. I also broke his rib.

When we’d get tired of reading Macbeth and Jane Eyre out loud together and were discussing the many other plays and books we read– we’d wrestle. Sorry about the rib!

Then again, it’s a bad idea to wrestle in a painter’s studio in a cramped chalet attic! I had a big solid oak easel and we tumbled onto it and D caught the corner on the chest. (By the way Donald I’m painting again, I should have listened to you 40 years ago and stayed away from the big time evangelical world altogether and stuck with art. Sorry I didn’t take your good advice! Better late than never!)

I’ll always remember how Donald went against the conventional fundamentalist “wisdom” about sex and virginity that was current when I was a teen. Donald was so kind when I got my then girlfriend Genie pregnant when we were 17 and 18. After Genie got pregnant Donald told us that he didn’t care what anyone else said when it came to sex before marriage and that just because we were having sex and even though Genie was pregnant, was no reason we had to get married. In those days this was heresy!

When Genie and I decided to get married Donald said, “Only if you two really love each other.” We did. Then Donald supported us one hundred percent. If every evangelical was as kind and sensible as Donald was, Christianity might even have a good name.

After Genie and I were an item, Donald began to do A-Level English lit classes with us both, listen to classical music with us, encouraged my movie making, ran film festivals at L’Abri, and 15 years later, after I fled the evangelical world altogether and wrote my first novel Portofino, (it’s a work of humor at the expense of fundamentalism that became wildly successful and also angered many evangelicals) Donald wrote to me to say that he loved the book.

Genie and I are married, happy and doing child care every day for two of our four grandchildren and awaiting the fifth. One of the reasons we found 43 years of happiness together is because of the love and support Donald — amongst many other wonderful people at L’Abri, including my parents — gave us.

Others have put together a better biography of Donald than I can. You may read it HERE. You’ll learn that Donald had a remarkable life.

For example he was a conscientious objector in World War II. Talk about guts! I mean this was the “good war” right? During the war Donald had become a committed Christian. He was friendly with Dr Donald Soper who frequently preached from a soap box at Speakers’ Corner and had a considerable influence on Donald. Donald was also a great admirer of Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones and regularly attended his sermons at Westminster Chapel.

At university Donald was active in the Christian community and became President of the Cambridge Intercollegiate Christian Union, many of whose members were to go on to influential careers in the church. Years later, besides his life as a teacher, and his work in L’Abri, Donald also carried out many lecture tours in America and was twice a Visiting Professor at Geneva College in Pennsylvania. He has also lectured widely in the UK and Australia. Donald wrote several books including Images of Man: A Critique of Contemporary Cinema; A Guide to Reading; The Status of Man and Woman in the Modern Novel.

In later years Donald stuck with his evangelical faith but continued as a pacifist, a leftist politically (at least by North American evangelical religious right “standards”) and a lover and promoter of the arts.

Thank you Donald. You loved people more than rules, movies, good writing, art, the girl I married and me. We loved you back. Thank you my friend. Peace!

Love,

Frank

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Frank Schaeffer is a writer and artist. His latest book — And God Said, “Billy!“ exploring the roots of American religious delusion, and offering another way to approach true spirituality, is on Kindle, iBook and NOOK for $3.99, and in paperback. It spent 8 weeks as Amazon’s #1 best seller for Political Humor.

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