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November
7, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 19Oakland,
CA
Disney’s
‘Narnia’ fuels fascination with author
C.S. Lewis
LOS ANGELES—When 8-year-old Douglas Gresham met
C.S. Lewis, the man who would become his stepfather, he was disappointed.
The American boy had expected the British author of “The Chronicles
of Narnia” fantasy books “to be wearing silver armor and carrying
a sword with a jeweled pommel.”
Instead, Lewis “was a stooped, balding, professorial-looking gentleman
in shabby clothes, with long, nicotine-stained fingers,” said Gresham,
now 59, speaking on the phone from his home in Ireland.
More than 40 years after Lewis’ death, people still have their own
ideas about him. Depending on whom you ask, Lewis was a scholar, fantasy
writer, Christian saint—or all that and more.
As Disney prepares to release its much-anticipated movie “The Chronicles
of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” on Dec. 9, more
people than ever are asking: Who was C.S. Lewis? And what is his legacy?
To many, Lewis is an icon of orthodox Christianity. Despite growing up
believing that there was no God, Lewis turned to Christianity as an adult.
He then dedicated himself to promoting the faith and did so, his admirers
say, using simple language and logical reasoning that anyone could understand.
Lewis’ Christian devotees find meaning in his religious works such
as “Mere Christianity,” a collection of radio addresses Lewis
gave in the early 1940s that explains the common beliefs among Christians
of different denominations.
Christians also see symbolism in Lewis’ children’s books.
Aslan, the great lion in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,”
who sacrifices himself for a human sinner and ultimately is resurrected,
becomes a representation of Jesus Christ, for instance.
In some evangelical circles, Lewis is revered. On the 100th anniversary
of Lewis’ birth, the evangelical magazine Christianity Today published
a piece calling Lewis “our patron saint” and citing a poll
in which the magazine’s readers chose Lewis as the most influential
writer in their lives.
“It is a bit of a paradox that C.S. Lewis, an Anglican, has emerged
as a virtual ‘saint’ among American evangelicals,” said
Mark Sargent, provost of Gordon College, a Christian school in Wenham,
Mass. “But it was Lewis, more than any other author, who rekindled
the life of the imagination within the evangelical community.”
Gresham, who became Lewis’ stepson when his mother, Joy Davidman,
married the man, cautioned against any such interpretation of his stepfather.
“If you want to remember him,” Gresham said, “remember
him as a man with all the foibles and difficulties and dark times in his
life that men have – not as some kind of plaster saint.
“He wasn’t like that at all,” said Gresham, whose book
about Lewis, “Jack’s Life,” was released Oct. 1. “He
was a man of great humor, great warmth. He was a fun bloke to be around.”
Nobody is saying Lewis was perfect, said Bruce Edwards, evangelical author
of the new book “Further Up & Further In” about the spiritual
messages in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
“Is there hero-worship involved in how people admire Lewis?”
Edwards asked. “Sure.”
But Edwards warned against linking evangelicals’ admiration for
Lewis to a naivete about the world. “It’s a convenient caricature
to say, ‘Oh, they’ve got their Bibles, and they’ve got
C.S. Lewis’ ‘Mere Christianity,’ and they’ve got
Narnia, and they don’t need to look outside their window anymore,”
Edwards said. “I’ve never met anybody like that, who has such
an ostrich-like view of the world.”
Hero-worship of Lewis is not isolated to evangelicals.
“He’s very popular among people who keep the old faith, and
not so popular among the modernists,” said Richard Purthill, Catholic
author of the book “C.S. Lewis’ Case for the Christian Faith.”
Purthill praised Lewis as a Christian “apologist,” one who
gave people a rational basis for believing in Christianity.
Stan Mattson, president of the C.S. Lewis Foundation in Redlands, Calif.,
which encourages Christians to openly participate in scholarship and the
arts, said the group chose Lewis as its mentor, because Lewis was a respected
scholar who “was not prepared to check his faith at the door.”
Describing himself as a “mere Christian,” Mattson said he,
like Lewis, belonged to the wider world of Christianity.
Lewis “wouldn’t be comfortable, really, being co-opted by
any one group,” said Mark Tauber, vice president and deputy publisher
of HarperSanFrancisco, the division of Harper Collins that publishes Lewis’
non-fiction books.
Tauber said he was continually surprised by the broad appeal of Lewis,
who wrote more than 30 books. Recently, Tauber received a call from a
Mormon leader who mentioned that religious school teachers were using
“Mere Christianity” in the classroom. “We had no idea
that the Mormons were into Lewis,” Tauber said.
While many see Lewis as a Christian hero, others remember him as an academic
who taught literature at Oxford and Cambridge universities.
“C.S. Lewis was primarily an excellent Renaissance and Medieval
scholar of the old-fashioned breed,” A.N. Wilson, Lewis’ British
biographer, said in an e-mail.
Wilson, who renounced his own Christian faith, described Lewis’
religious works as “unworthy” of the scholar. “They
peddle false arguments which, when unraveled, would lead to the collapse
of faith, not its strengthening,” he said.
As for Lewis’ children’s books, Wilson called them “crude
and derivative.”
Yet many readers know and love Lewis through these stories about the magical,
snowy world of Narnia, ruled by the evil White Witch. The books in the
seven-volume series have sold more than 85 million copies worldwide since
“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” first appeared in 1950.
The late C.S. Lewis, a Christian apologist and children’s writer of “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
50th anniversary edition of ``The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’’ the first volume in C.S. Lewis’ children’s series.
