The C. S. Lewis Test

I’ve written before about the need for American evangelicals to press the pause button on their love affair with C. S. Lewis, and in particular for American evangelical writers to take a break from quoting Lewis as well as a dozen other big names like Chesterton, Tolkien, Guinness, Chambers, Schaeffer, Henry, Graham, Kuyper, Piper, Keller, Stott, Packer, and Machen. Not because they’re not worth reading, learning from, or excerpting, but because their prominence in Protestant writing is so prominent that it crowds out other voices. More to the point, focusing overmuch on these figures—lionizing them, quoting and re-quoting them, treating them like the only doctors and saints the church has to offer or learn from—fails to learn the first lesson one ought to take from their example, namely, their vast erudition and mastery of fields and authors not themselves. I call this “aping the Inklings.” And we should cut it out, myself included.

Having said that, I’ve realized over the years that, when I’m reading non-evangelicals or non-Christians, I find myself unconsciously applying to them a kind of inverted test. Call it the C. S. Lewis Test. It is what it sounds like: I want to know whether the author in question, if he or she lived and wrote in the last seventy-five years, appreciates Lewis’s work. By “appreciates” I do not mean “is a fan of,” much less “worships at the feet of.” I mean, simply, “appreciates.” Lewis is renowned for a reason. He was a wonderful stylist, a sharp thinker, and a medieval scholar. He wrote poems, allegories, novels, children’s stories, essays, reviews, academic monographs, and apologetics. The man had, and has, much to edify anyone with an open mind, on any number of subjects. He was catholic and ecumenical in his tastes, his friends, his topics. I’m thinking, for example, of his late (recorded and transcribed) conversation with Kingsley Amis on the subject of science fiction. These two writers couldn’t have been more different. But you can sense each of them feeling the other out, poking, jabbing, teasing, querying. And each man comes out unscathed, with, I take it, a measure of respect for the other.

So, as I say, when I read someone—anyone—writing since World War II, if I read much of his or her work, I wait for the choice Lewis quote, the unapologetic citation, the sly allusion. If the writer is worthy of respect, be he pagan or skeptic or anything else, it usually comes. You don’t have to love Narnia to appreciate his criticism, or to like his Space Trilogy to value his writing on education, or to share his faith to take his philosophy seriously. And it also tells me the writer in question isn’t ashamed to quote someone as popular or ostensibly middlebrow as Lewis, as if associating with a writer that evangelicals love might sully one’s reputation with readers who matter. It tells me, in other words, that the writer cares more about truth, style, or both than about superficial appearances. And that’s enough to win over this reader.

Aping the Inklings

Who are the most-quoted, oft-cited authors in popular (American Protestant) Christian writing from the last half century?

The names that come to my mind are Lewis, Chesterton, Tolkien, Guinness, Chambers, Schaeffer, Henry, Graham, Kuyper, Piper, Keller, Bonhoeffer, Barth, Brueggemann, Stott, Packer, Machen, Niebuhr, Hauerwas. Also (from philosophy) MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, James K. A. Smith. For more academic types, you’ll see Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Hauerwas. For Reformed folks, you’ll see Piper and Keller, Kuyper and Schaeffer. For biblical scholars, you’ll see Packer and Stott and Brueggemann. For Catholic-friendly or philosophical sorts, you’ll see Chesterton or Tolkien, MacIntyre or Taylor.

I’m sure I’m missing some big names; I’m pretty ignorant about true-blue evangelical (much less bona fide fundie) writers and sub-worlds. And I’m not even thinking about American Catholicism. But with those qualifiers in place, I’d say this sampling of names is not unrepresentative.

I’m also, by the way, thinking about my “four tiers” of Christian writing outlined in another post. Not professional (level 3) or scholarly (level 4), but universal (level 1) or popular (level 2) writing. What types of names populate those books? The list above includes some big hitters.

That’s all by way of preface. Here’s what I want to say—granting that it’s a point that’s been made many times by others. I’m also, it should be clear, addressing the following to myself as a writer above all. Here it is, in any case:

Popular American Christian writing would benefit from taking a break from constantly quoting, self-consciously imitating, rhetorically centering, or otherwise “drafting” off these figures.

Why? Here’s a few reasons.

First, it generates an unintended homogeneity in both style and perspective. When everyone’s trying to ape the Inklings, even the most successful attempts are all doing the same thing as everyone else. The result is repetition and redundancy. My eyes start rolling back into my head the moment I see that line or that excerpt quoted for the umpteenth time. We all know it! Let’s call a ten-year moratorium on putting it in print. Deal?

Second, it ensures a certain derivative character to popular Christian writing. Whereas, for example, Lewis and Chesterton and Barth and Niebuhr had their own domains of learning in which they were masters, and on which they drew to write for the masses, Christian writers whose primary “domain” is Lewis, Chesterton & co. never end up going to the (or a) source; all their learning is far downstream from the classics (not to mention unpopular or unheard-of texts) that directly informed the more immediate sources they’re consulting.

Put it this way: Evangelicals are to the Inklings as J. J. Abrams is to George Lucas. Lucas, whatever other faults he may have had, was creating an epic cinematic myth based on Akira Kurosawa, Joseph Campbell, and countless other (“high” and “low”) bits of source material. Abrams and his “remake as sequel” ilk don’t play in the big boy sandbox, creating something newly great out of old great things. They play in the tiny sandbox Lucas and others already created. That’s why it feels like cosplay, or fan fiction. They’re not riffing on ancient myths and classic archetypes. They’re rearranging toys in Lucas’s brain.

At their worst, that’s what evangelical and other Protestant writers do when they make the Inklings (or similar popular modern classics) their north star.

This is a problem, third, because the evangelicals in question mistake the popularity of the Inklings as a sensibility or strategy that can be emulated rather than the unique result of who the Inklings were, when and where they lived, and what they knew. Maybe we should set the rule: If you are an Oxbridge don or Ivy League prof, and if you are a polymath who has read every book written in Greek or Latin or German or Old English published before the birth of Luther, and if you are a world-class writer of poetry, fiction, and apologetics, then you may consider the Inklings’ path as one fit for walking. Otherwise, stay in your lane.

Now, I trust it is obvious I’m being facetious. As I said earlier, I’m talking to myself before I’m thinking of anyone else—I’ve quoted most of these figures in print, and I have books for a Tier 2 audience coming out next year that cite Barth, Hauerwas, Lewis, and Bonhoeffer! Nor do I mean to suggest that a Christian writer has to be as brilliant as these geniuses to write at all. In that case, none of us should be writing. Finally, there do continue to be scholars and writers (few and far between though they be) who have useful and illuminating things to say about the actual Inklings—Alan Jacobs comes to mind—not to mention the other authors in my list above.

All I mean to say is this. On one hand, the way to imitate these masters is by doing what they did in one’s own context and realm of knowledge, not by becoming masters of them and making them the sun around which one’s mental planet orbits. On the other hand, if you want your writing to be original, creative, distinctive, stylish, thoughtful, and punchy—if you want it not only to be good but to stand out from the crowd—then the number one thing to do is not make these guys the beating heart of your writing. Doing that will render your work invisible, since such writing is a dime a dozen, and has been for three generations.

What then should your writing be like? Who or what should it “draft” off of? That’s for you to discover.