Why Can't You Be More Like C.S. Lewis?

I want to pick up on a post where I discussed a while back about Christians writing fiction.

As I stated previously, I wrote that Christians should write the stories they are called to write whichever category they might be called to write.

Others who want to dissuade writers from writing explicitly Christian Fiction have made other arguments. Chia Woychik of Port Yonder Press argues that Christians should write crossover fiction or secular fiction to be taken seriously. You can write Christian if you want but she has a warning:

4) if you’re still insistent on writing Christian Fiction, then do realize that not only is the market glutted with such, but once the excitement wanes, your book may well fade into oblivion as so many others have done. Make a plan for excellence and longevity before you conceive another book.

She makes a good play to authors' sense of vanity. Anyone who has ever written who is worth their salt has a fantasy where their works are remembered in the epochs of fiction and they live on forever.

Reality is that 98% of all novels published last year are unknown to 98% of the population. Writing fiction is tough to make a living in. It's even tougher to get recognition as she seems to suggest that the road to literary success and prestige lies through abandoning explicitly Christian themes. However, there are millions of secular books that have never won a Hugo, National Book Awards, or a Pulitzer prize. And the reason Christian fiction books haven't won this has quite a bit less to do with quality than with other factors.

She then raises this point:

if you’re intent on including faith-shadowing, do as C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, L’Engle and others did: consider using allegory.

Lewis and Tolkien have been mentioned frequently in these discussions. They're kind of like those siblings who seem to be doing better to you that your parents constantly compare you to.

L'Engle does not get mentioned much because of her heterodox views on universalism. However, even with that Unilateralism, however the London Guardian noted, "She was attacked for being too religious by the most secular of critics." So much for Ms. Woychik's wrote to secular respectability.

What of Lewis? I suppose, if one limits their understanding to The Chronicles of Narnia, you can point to him as a master of allegory. However, his allegories were often quite thin even if you read a story like The Magician's Nephew. If you read his other works like Pilgrim's Regress or the Science Fiction trilogy, particularly That Hideous Strength, you see a very overt Christian theme running through that story.

In addition to this, one of Lewis' greatest characters is that master demon Screwtape in essays that are both well-remembered and very explicit in their Christian theme. Lewis' subtlety varied from work to work. What ultimately made Lewis successful is that he wrote well, he wrote the stories that were on his heart and mind and was led by his imagination. I wonder how well he would have done if he were to listen to critics who advised him on to appeal to secular markets and how to not to make his works too religious.

The other key point to remember about Lewis was that he was from another time. He came to national prominence during World War II proclaiming the basic truths of Christianity over the BBC.

Great Britain at the time, if not the sentinel of Christian thought it once was, understood basic Christian truths. Famously at the Battle of Dunkirk sent a message, "but if not." The simple phrase was linked in people's minds immediately to the Daniel 3:18 in which Daniel's three friends declared their faith in God's ability to deliver them from the hands of an idolatrous king, " But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” It communicated resolve and determination to fight the last and refuse to submit to the Nazis.

Imagine today, besieged soldiers sending a message, "But if not." Soldiers on the receiving end of the message would say, "What the heck?" Indeed, many Christians would as well.

Western Civilization has become much more secularized since Lewis' day. When c.S. Lewis wrote in allegory and symbolism, he called to mind with unfamiliar things, familiar lessons that people had learned in Sunday school or from a maiden Aunt. Using this tactic becomes much harder when a growing part of your audience has no frame to even interpret the underlying message.

This is particularly true in the higher levels of publishing and academia with which Ms. Woychik seems to think Christian writers ought to focus on currying favor.

This is particularly true of the Hugo Award. One finds in the secular science fiction establishment, a large number of atheists, pagans, and practitioners of the occult. And committees for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize are only slightly less overt in their contempt.

The only type of Christianity in fiction that they accept would be works that challenge Orthodox Christianity or are very good with a form of Christianity that is neutered down to nice feelings. The idea of trying to win the world's approval as a key to success seems folly for the Christian writer, particularly as Christ said it wouldn't happen. (John 15:19)

In the end, we cannot be like C.S. Lewis because we are not him and we don't live in his time. The one way we are like Lewis is that we can write according to the vision and talents we have been given. Then that's a better course than being distracted by promises of fame, fortune, and respectability.