The apostle of "Mere Christianity "converts a new generation
The road to England's Whipsnade Zoo is hardly the Road to Damascus, but it was dramatic enough for a brilliant Oxford don who traveled it one September day in 1931. As he later described his adventure: "When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion."
No blinding light or voice from heaven for Clive Staples Lewis; but his conversion on that picnic excursion had some of the impact of St. Paul's. The ruddy-faced writer's works were to lure innumerable souls into the precincts of belief. Fourteen years after his death at 64, this Pascal of the Space Age is the only author in English whose Christian writings combine intellectual stature with bestseller status.
Besides his eleven overtly religious books, C.S. Lewis ("Jack" to his friends) insinuated Christian themes into a variety of other works. Those included a widely read space fantasy trilogy and seven immensely successful children's stories known as The Chronicles of Narnia. As an expert on medieval and Renaissance English at Oxford and Cambridge he also produced standard works on Spenser, Milton, and 16th century prose and poetry.
Oxford University denied Lewis a professorship because his popular writings were deemed unseemly—as, indeed, was his outspoken Christianity. (He moved to a chair at Cambridge late in his career.) But Lewis has survived Oxford's judgment handsomely. Sales of Lewis' works in Britain and the U.S. have increased sixfold since his death, and this year readers in both countries will take home more than 2 million Lewis volumes. Says Lady Priscilla Collins, one of Lewis' publishers in Britain: "The trend is up and up and up."
In May, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich released a fantasy, The Dark Tower, that Lewis never finished. Macmillan of New York has recycled selections from other works into The Joyful Christian, a new volume out this week. In yet another new book, A Severe Mercy (Harper & Row), a memoir by Sheldon Vanauken, professor of history and English at Virginia's Lynchburg College, Lewis appears as a ministering angel in tweed jacket. Like so many other unbelievers, Vanauken and his wife Jean dipped into Lewis upon urgings of Christian friends, began devouring all the Lewis books they could find, and wound up, to their surprise, as converts. Then Jean died of a liver ailment, and Vanauken plunged into despair. It was an astringent letter from Lewis that enabled Vanauken to make some sense out of her death—and his life. Longtime Bachelor Lewis later suffered similar tragedy when he married a woman he knew was dying of cancer.