A world war, the atomic bomb, and the rise and fall of communist Russia are just a few of the dramatic things that have played a prominent role the world stage in the last 80 years. Add to these the human genome project, the world wide web, and the smart phone and you get a succession of things that have captured the imagination of people and transformed the way we live. In more recent years, soccer has grown in popularity, video downloads now count one billion a day, Left Behind and Shades of Gray have run away with the market, and religion takes a nosedive in the United States.
Then last year: a global pandemic, the worldwide movement for racial justice, and the most consequential presidential election in a century.
But through it all, the up and downs, the give and takes, the new and the old, one thing (at least) has remained constant.
C. S. Lewis!
Since he first rose to publishing success during the war years of 1939-1945, his books have remained in print and sales have continued to grow.
Remarkable, for a mostly single scholar of medieval literature ensconced at the epicenter of two of the most iconic institutions of the western world: Oxford University and Cambridge University—or Oxbridge, as they are known collectively.
He was born in 1898 and died in 1963, famously on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Only seven people attended his burial at the small Episcopal Church in Headington, England, not far from the home he named The Kilns.
You can visit that home today; it has been restored. And you can walk the beaten path through the cemetery to the marble slab that sits over his burial site.
Or you can join any of the scores of C. S. Lewis clubs that exist around the world, buy any of the books he ever wrote or any of the thousands that have been written about him, or visit any of the millions of web sites that cater to the irrepressible interest of people around the globe.
It is hard to explain this popularity. Yes, he was brilliant, and clever with words and stories, and endowed with a wonderful voice and a humble spirit. But his life narrative is not so unusual: born into a middle class, Christian family in Ireland, educated in public and private boarding schools (during which he abandoned his faith), called to fight in the first world war, and graduated with high honors from a top-flight university. He became a college professor and started teaching and writing…and underwent a thorough religious conversion. He lived with his bachelor brother and an old cantankerous woman before falling in love with a dying woman. Whom he married and learned to love.
What’s so special about all this?
Not much, but the inner life of Clive Staples Lewis poured out onto paper in essays and sermons, stories and fantasies, arguments and illustrations, confessions and controversies, and letters and letters and letters and letters. Much of all of his was oriented toward explaining and defending the Christian faith.
The letters are the best part, in my judgment, especially as collected into three hefty volumes by his life-long editor Walter Hooper. I read them all when they were published in 2006 and 2007. In fact, I culled out of these massive volumes sentences and statements that appealed to me, that stirred my imagination or interest. These I gathered into a manuscript which I called “A Wave of the Hand: Selections from The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis” (2009). There is only one copy, and I am keeping it in eyesight as I write this column. I wonder if I should publish this manuscript of 185 pages, if there are other people who would appreciate it.
What stirred up all this in me is yet another book about C. S. Lewis, by my friend and first-rate Lewis scholar Harry Lee Poe. It is volume two in his planned three-volume work. I read the first one; and he and I talked about it on my radio show. I’ve read this one, The Making of C. S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist (1918-1945). It covers his education, his conversion, his friendships, and his remarkable career as an Oxford scholar. And, of course, his writing.
Volume three will tell about Narnia, his move to Cambridge, his marriage to Joy, and his death. I will read it also.
It is amazing, to understate the truth, that in and around all the incredible things that have happened in the world since Lewis first started writing, people like me—perhaps like you—are still reading what he wrote and finding pleasure and inspiration in so doing.
Thanks be to God!
(July 2021)
A world war, the atomic bomb, and the rise and fall of communist Russia are just a few of the dramatic things that have played a prominent role the world stage in the last 80 years. Add to these the human genome project, the world wide web, and the smart phone and you get a succession of things that have captured the imagination of people and transformed the way we live. In more recent years, soccer has grown in popularity, video downloads now count one billion a day, Left Behind and Shades of Gray have run away with the market, and religion takes a nosedive in the United States.
Then last year: a global pandemic, the worldwide movement for racial justice, and the most consequential presidential election in a century.
But through it all, the up and downs, the give and takes, the new and the old, one thing (at least) has remained constant.
C. S. Lewis!
Since he first rose to publishing success during the war years of 1939-1945, his books have remained in print and sales have continued to grow.
Remarkable, for a mostly single scholar of medieval literature ensconced at the epicenter of two of the most iconic institutions of the western world: Oxford University and Cambridge University—or Oxbridge, as they are known collectively.
He was born in 1898 and died in 1963, famously on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Only seven people attended his burial at the small Episcopal Church in Headington, England, not far from the home he named The Kilns.
You can visit that home today; it has been restored. And you can walk the beaten path through the cemetery to the marble slab that sits over his burial site.
Or you can join any of the scores of C. S. Lewis clubs that exist around the world, buy any of the books he ever wrote or any of the thousands that have been written about him, or visit any of the millions of web sites that cater to the irrepressible interest of people around the globe.
It is hard to explain this popularity. Yes, he was brilliant, and clever with words and stories, and endowed with a wonderful voice and a humble spirit. But his life narrative is not so unusual: born into a middle class, Christian family in Ireland, educated in public and private boarding schools (during which he abandoned his faith), called to fight in the first world war, and graduated with high honors from a top-flight university. He became a college professor and started teaching and writing…and underwent a thorough religious conversion. He lived with his bachelor brother and an old cantankerous woman before falling in love with a dying woman. Whom he married and learned to love.
What’s so special about all this?
Not much, but the inner life of Clive Staples Lewis poured out onto paper in essays and sermons, stories and fantasies, arguments and illustrations, confessions and controversies, and letters and letters and letters and letters. Much of all of his was oriented toward explaining and defending the Christian faith.
The letters are the best part, in my judgment, especially as collected into three hefty volumes by his life-long editor Walter Hooper. I read them all when they were published in 2006 and 2007. In fact, I culled out of these massive volumes sentences and statements that appealed to me, that stirred my imagination or interest. These I gathered into a manuscript which I called “A Wave of the Hand: Selections from The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis” (2009). There is only one copy, and I am keeping it in eyesight as I write this column. I wonder if I should publish this manuscript of 185 pages, if there are other people who would appreciate it.
What stirred up all this in me is yet another book about C. S. Lewis, by my friend and first-rate Lewis scholar Harry Lee Poe. It is volume two in his planned three-volume work. I read the first one; and he and I talked about it on my radio show. I’ve read this one, The Making of C. S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist (1918-1945). It covers his education, his conversion, his friendships, and his remarkable career as an Oxford scholar. And, of course, his writing.
Volume three will tell about Narnia, his move to Cambridge, his marriage to Joy, and his death. I will read it also.
It is amazing, to understate the truth, that in and around all the incredible things that have happened in the world since Lewis first started writing, people like me—perhaps like you—are still reading what he wrote and finding pleasure and inspiration in so doing.
Thanks be to God!
(July 2021)
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