Mere Christianity

Although Mere Christianity has no characters in the usual sense, C. S. Lewis himself is a key presence in the work. Best known today as the author of the Narnia series, Lewis was a British literary scholar and amateur theologian. Born in 1898 in Belfast, Lewis was raised in the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion) but became an atheist as a teenager following the death of his mother. His experiences serving during World War I deepened his sense of skepticism and spiritual despair, but he would eventually return to Christianity thanks to the influence of his colleagues at Oxford (including his fellow fantasy novelist, J. R. R. Tolkien). At the time he wrote Mere Christianity, Lewis was unmarried; however, in later life he would marry the American writer Joy Davidman.

Lewis’s personal history forms an important backdrop to Mere Christianity, which frequently refers to both his wartime experience and his former atheism. The latter in particular makes him an accessible and engaging narrator for those who might otherwise disregard religious arguments; Lewis’s openness about his own spiritual journey and his willingness to take skeptic’s arguments makes his writing at once thoughtful and conversational in tone. As a narrator, Lewis is also given to dry humor, as when he responds to some of the more simplistic critiques leveled at Christianity:

There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of ‘Heaven’ ridiculous by saying they do not want to ‘spend eternity playing harps’. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grow-ups, they should not talk about them (137).

Nevertheless, Lewis also displays many of the prejudices of his time, particularly where women are concerned.