C. S. Lewis’s "Mere Christianity": A Biography

173 Pages·2016·1.76 MB·English

by  George M. Marsden

LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS
C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity
A BIOGRAPHY
LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS
The Dead Sea Scrolls, John J. Collins The Bhagavad Gita, Richard H. Davis John Calvin’s Institutes
of the Christian Religion, Bruce Gordon The Book of Mormon, Paul C. Gutjahr The Book of
Genesis, Ronald Hendel
The Book of Common Prayer, Alan Jacobs The Book of Job, Mark Larrimore
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, George M. Marsden Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from
Prison, Martin E. Marty Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, Bernard McGinn The I Ching,
Richard J. Smith
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, David Gordon White Augustine’s Confessions, Garry Wills
FORTHCOMING
The Book of Exodus, Joel Baden
The Book of Revelation, Timothy Beal Confucius’s Analects, Annping Chin and Jonathan D. Spence
The Autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila, Carlos Eire Josephus’s The Jewish War, Martin
Goodman The Koran in English, Bruce Lawrence The Lotus Sutra, Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
Dante’s Divine Comedy, Joseph Luzzi The Greatest Translations of All Time: The Septuagint and
the Vulgate, Jack Miles The Passover Haggadah, Vanessa Ochs The Song of Songs, Ilana Pardes
The Daode Jing, James Robson
Rumi’s Masnavi, Omid Safi
The Talmud, Barry Wimpfheimer
C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity
A BIOGRAPHY
George M. Marsden
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2016 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41
William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire
OX20 1TR
press.princeton.edu
Jacket photograph: Oxford, Addison’s Walk, Magdalen College, 1937 / © The Francis Frith
Collection All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Marsden, George M., 1939– Title: C.S.
Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” : a biography / George M. Marsden. Description: Princeton, NJ :
Princeton University Press, 2016. | Series: Lives of great religious books | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015021760 | ISBN 9780691153735 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH:
Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898–1963. Mere Christianity. | Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898–
1963—Religion. | Authors, English—20th century—Biography. | Christianity and literature.
Classification: LCC PR6023.E926 Z7943 2016 | DDC 230—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015021760
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in
Garamond Premier Pro Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In Memory of Roger Lundin and Christopher W. Mitchell,
Two of My First Guides on This Journey
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1 War Service 19
CHAPTER 2 Broadcast Talks 35
CHAPTER 3 Loved or Hated 58
CHAPTER 4 A Classic as Afterthought 84
CHAPTER 5 Into the Evangelical Orbit 97
CHAPTER 6 Many-Sided Mere Christianity 116
CHAPTER 7 Critiques 139
CHAPTER 8 The Lasting Vitality of Mere Christianity 153
APPENDIX Changes in Mere Christianity Compared to the Original Three Books 189
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 193
ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORT TITLES FOR NOTES 195
NOTES 199
INDEX 245
LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS
C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity
A BIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
Mere Christianity has had a remarkable life story. Most books, even those
that make a big splash at the time of publication, eventually fade away
like the ripples on a pond. Only a relative few take on lives of their own
so that they are generating new ripples even a generation later. Far more
rare is a book whose life story tells not only of survival into future
generations but even of growing vitality. Such books become classics.
Perhaps it is too early to designate as a classic a book that is only a
few generations old. Even so, from the perspective of the early twenty-
first century we surely must say that Mere Christianity is one of the “great
religious books” of the twentieth century, if for no other reason than the
phenomenon of its continuing life. A survey of church leaders by the
influential American evangelical magazine Christianity Today in 2000
ranked it first among the “100 books that had a significant effect on
Christians this century.”1 Time magazine called Lewis “the hottest
theologian of 2005.”2 Since 2001 Mere Christianity has sold well over 3.5
million copies in English alone, far more than in the midcentury years
after it was first published. Although it has been translated into at least
thirty-six languages and has had an untold impact in many parts of the
world, including a sizeable readership in China, its most extraordinary
popularity has been in the United States. There and elsewhere, fans of
the work include Christians from across almost the whole spectrum of
denominations, from Roman Catholic and Orthodox to mainline
Protestant to evangelical and Pentecostal.
The lasting and even growing appeal of Mere Christianity is all the
more remarkable in that it was not designed to be a book. C. S. Lewis
originally presented it as four separate sets of radio broadcasts that he
was asked to deliver for the BBC during the grim days of the Second
World War. Lewis edited the talks and published them in three little
paperbacks. These enjoyed steady sales in both Great Britain and the