Polemics & Exchanges
No Mere Christian The cover of your November issue suggests the truth that we, conservatives and especially conservative Christians, are engaged in spiritual warfare. And yet, smack in the middle of that issue, you print an article, “Remembering C. S. Lewis.” The reader is led to believe that this man has been a powerful instrument of truth and has fought the good fight of faith to the very end. In Lewis’s
Surprised by Joy (1955), we discover that he defended pederasty and perversion as “the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in”…. Then, we come to the more sordid aspects of his life. He had a relationship with a schoolmate, Arthur Greeves, and throughout his life wrote more letters to him than any other person… Later biographies disclosed that Mr. Greeves was a homosexual. It appears that Lewis was never moved by the impulse to separate as is mandated by both the old and new covenants.
Apr 8th, 2021 5 min read
COMMENTARY BY
Director, Simon Center for American Studies
Joseph is the director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies and AWC Family Foundation Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. The figure of a fallen soldier of the First World War and an exterior of the Bank of England in the City of London, on 1st March 2021, in London, England. Richard Baker / In Pictures / Getty Images
Key Takeaways
Lewis reminds us that poetry has a unique power to communicate the grief and rage instigated by seemingly meaningless suffering.
World War I, preceded by an attachment to utopian illusions, produced a generation of authors utterly disillusioned with the ideals of Western civilization.