A Thinking Reed

Lewis and the evangelicals

Written by

Lee M.

in

CT interviews Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis’ stepson, who’s just written a biography of Lewis.

Snippet:

Americans have latched on to C. S. Lewis, and yet here’s a guy who was a chain smoker, who liked his pints, who told ribald jokes, and in general, wouldn’t fit what we think of as the “typical evangelical.” And yet we’ve all wrapped our arms around him. Why is that?

Gresham: One of the reasons is that through the—if you can excuse the expression—the bulls— that has come to be taken so seriously in American Christianity, through all of that, they can still see the essential truth that Jack represented. The problem with evangelical Christianity in America today, a large majority of you have sacrificed the essential for the sake of the trivial. You concentrate on the trivialities—not smoking, not drinking, not using bad language, not dressing inappropriately in church, and so on. Jesus doesn’t give two hoots for that sort of bulls—. If you go out and DO Christianity, you can smoke if you want, you can drink if you want—though not to excess, in either case.

But I think that even past the trivialities, many evangelical Christians can see the ultimate truth to what Jack wrote. I think that’s why he’s so popular.

See also this somewhat critical article on American evangelicals’ idolization of Lewis.

See the trailer for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe here.

Comments

6 responses to “Lewis and the evangelicals”

  1. Eric Lee

    I read The Lion, Witch, and the Wardobe in 4th grade, but that is the extent of my C.S. Lewis. Places like the BoarsHeadTavern(.com) list Lewis as their “Patron Saint.”

    I’m sure his writing is good, I just haven’t gotten into it yet. I’m borrowing a paperback collection of 4 of his works including The Great Divorce and Screwtape Letters. I have a feeling I’m going to like his fiction better than his non-, though.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    I make no bones about my love for Lewis, but some people do seem to adopt an uncritical WWJD (what would Jack do?) attitude towards him.

    Reply
  3. Joshie

    I like Lewis but the way people sometimes fawn over him irritates me. Sure Lewis is interesting but what about Aquinas? Luther? Calvin? Anselm? Origen? Augustine? Teresa of Avila? Branch out people.

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  4. Lee

    Ironically, Lewis himself urged people to read older Christian writers. See, especially, his introduction to an edition of Athanasius’ On the Incarnation:

    http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm#ch_0

    Reply
  5. Camassia

    I remember when I visited Minnesota, Dwight (of Versus Populum) said the main flaw he saw in Lewis’s Christian apologetics is that he doesn’t have much of anything to say about the role of the church — he focuses very much on the individual. That probably helps him be so popular across denominations. But that seemed related to my own complaint about Lewis that I blogged a while ago, which is that he hangs a whole lot of theology on a person’s free will. When I read the first half of Mere Christianity as a nonbeliever a few years back, it gave me the impression that God is sort of leaving us alone in the dark to make the decision on which our eternal fate depends. Needless to say, it didn’t exactly send me running to church.

    Reply
  6. Lee

    I think that’s a fair criticism, though, in Lewis’ defense he was himself a faithful churchman and had a high view of the sacraments in particular. I think you’re probably right that his desire to write as a “mere” Christian had a lot to do with his lack of attention to the church in his writings.

    (And for what it’s worth I think some of our contemporary ecclesio-centric writers sometimes go to the other extreme. The church looms so large that the individual threatens to get swallowed up.)

    But for me, Lewis was valuable not so much for his positive arguments for Christianity, but for his critical arguments that the naturalistic worldview rested on a lot of unsupported assumptions. That’s probably why I like Miracles more than Mere Christianity.

    Reply

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