2 of 6

In August 1941, Lewis began a series of four 15-minute programs for the BBC, with the assistance of a Presbyterian minister named Eric Fenn. The first series, "Right and Wrong: A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe," was followed by talks on "What Christians Believe" and "Christian Behavior." The three series would form the basis for Lewis's masterwork of apologetics, Mere Christianity. He would appear 29 times on the radio, each with an estimated audience of 600,000 people.

The radio talks had to be brief, precisely scripted, approved by BBC censors, and then followed to the letter. Any unexpected pauses, as Justin Phillips pointed out in C. S. Lewis at the BBC, could have allowed the signal to be interrupted by the German propagandist "Lord Haw-Haw," broadcasting on the same frequency. Fenn coached Lewis in the art of writing for radio. This skill sharpened Lewis's writing, says Walter Hooper, Lewis's literary executor. "Lewis was born with a talent for clarity and impatience with vagueness," he writes, "but the BBC's contribution was requiring Lewis to write short, crisp sentences, each of which made a precise contribution to Christian theology."

The talks made Lewis a household name in Britain, says Christopher Mitchell, director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. "With the exception of Churchill," Mitchell says, "Lewis was the most recognizable voice in Britain."

Jerry Root, assistant professor of evangelism at Wheaton College, says that Lewis's academic credentials gave him "some credibility right off the bat." Also, Lewis had something to say when the opportunity came to him. "This wasn't a guy who fumbled when the spotlight shined on him," says Root.

Lewis's popularity grew through another technological innovation. "His books came out at a time when trade paperbacks were becoming popular," Root says. "Consequently, they were disseminated easily because he already had a [built-in] audience from the radio."

Concurrently with the broadcast talks, The Guardian, a Church of England newspaper, began running another of Lewis's literary inventions—a series of fictional letters from Screwtape, a senior devil, to his nephew, an entry-level tempter named Wormwood. The letters ran once a week from May to November 1941. Lewis's payment: £62.

When they were published in book form in the spring of 1942, The Screwtape Letters became an instant success. From 1941 to 1947, readers in the United Kingdom and the United States bought a million copies of Lewis's books, propelling him all the way to the December 1947 cover of Time magazine.

The timeliness of Lewis's message was matched by his clarity as a writer.

"You can't impact people if they don't know what you are saying," says Mitchell. "Lewis had just remarkable instincts about what to address and what not to address and how to address it."

In his fiction, especially The Chronicles of Narnia, Mitchell says, Lewis was subtler in his presentation of Christianity and talked about "smuggling the gospel past watchful dragons." In his apologetics, Lewis dispensed with subtlety. "He was not trying to be clever," Mitchell says. "He was not trying to engage in a nonoffensive way or leave some measure of ambiguity. He was not concerned about putting people off. He was concerned about communicating as clearly and as forcefully as he could what Christians really do say."

next page... |  2 of 6

share this page

December 2005, Vol. 49, No. 12