George M. Marsden - C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: A Biography

LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS

C. S. Lewiss Mere Christianity

A BIOGRAPHY

LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS

The Dead Sea Scrolls, John J. Collins

The Bhagavad Gita, Richard H. Davis

John Calvins 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. Lewiss Mere Christianity, George M. Marsden

Dietrich Bonhoeffers Letters and Papers from Prison, Martin E. Marty

Thomas Aquinass Summa theologiae, Bernard McGinn

The I Ching, Richard J. Smith

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, David Gordon White

Augustines Confessions, Garry Wills

FORTHCOMING

The Book of Exodus, Joel Baden

The Book of Revelation, Timothy Beal

Confuciuss Analects, Annping Chin and Jonathan D. Spence

The Autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila, Carlos Eire

Josephuss The Jewish War, Martin Goodman

The Koran in English, Bruce Lawrence

The Lotus Sutra, Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

Dantes 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

Rumis Masnavi, Omid Safi

The Talmud, Barry Wimpfheimer

C. S. Lewiss 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, Addisons 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. Lewiss 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), 18981963. Mere Christianity. | Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 18981963Religion. | Authors, English20th centuryBiography. | Christianity and literature.

Classification: LCC PR6023.E926 Z7943 2016 | DDC 230dc23 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

LIVES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS

C. S. Lewiss 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.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 United States, helped by C. S. Lewiss popularity as the author of The Screwtape Letters. Then in 1952 he combined the three earlier books under the title Mere Christianity. The title page specified that this was a revised and amplified edition, with a new introduction. As a repackaging of earlier works, Mere Christianity came out without fanfare or reviews. From these modest beginnings, the book steadily grew in popularity over the decades.

So the question the present volume seeks to answer is this: what is it about this collection of informal radio talks that accounts for their taking on such a thriving life of their own?

The answer to that fascinating question will inevitably have a number of dimensions. First, one has to know something about the author of the book because an author initially gives a book its life. Second, one has to know something about the circumstances under which the book was written, the authors purpose in writing it, and its intended audience. Third, one has to consider how it has been received over the years by differing audiences and communities. What factors in their cultural and religious settings contributed to the books popularity? What has been its public reception? Who have been its most influential promoters, and how did its influence grow? What have been negative factors and criticisms of the book that point to limitations in its appeal? Finally, taking all these sorts of factors into consideration, what qualities in its character give the book its ongoing life or lasting vitality?

Recounting the life of a book such as this has some limits. Normally the story of a book after its publication has to do primarily with its public reception. Especially in the case of books that are officially sacred scripture for a particular tradition, the story is largely about differing interpretations or about controversies related to the book. Sometimes a book makes the news if it influences some well-known people, institutions, or major movements. Those matters constitute what might be called the public life of a book. Mere Christianity does have something of such a public life, and that will be a major topic in the present biography of the book. Yet one must keep in mind how much must remain untold. Once it is published, a book such as this takes on a life of its own. Or it might be more accurate to say that it takes on millions of lives as it intersects with the actual lives of its many readers. There is no adequate way to begin to tell about or even to categorize all of these, because readers reactions doubtless have varied from disgust or disinterest to finding their reading of the book the major turning point in their lives. And everything in between.