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.
