Political tribalism split apart concerns that, as Francis Schaeffer demonstrated, can be held consistently and passionately within a biblical worldview. Schaeffer wrote of once going out of his way to compliment the residents of a lushly landscaped hippie commune which stood on the other side of a deep valley from a treeless Christian school campus he was visiting. Those who warmly greeted him noted that he was the first to come from “across the ravine.” In the decades since, the chasm between socially conservative evangelicals and planet-conserving environmentalists has only grown wider.

Francis Schaeffer wouldn’t recognize the religious right he helped create.