Literature: Lewis in the New Yorker

After reading this article on C.S. Lewis in the New Yorker, I planned to write a comprehensive response; however, after rereading it, I realized that it would take far too much time. Thus, my comments will be limited only to the opening and closing of the piece:

The British literary scholar, Christian apologist, and children's-book author C. S. Lewis is one of two figures—Churchill is the other—whose reputation in Britain is so different from their reputation in America that we might as well be talking about two (or is that four?) different men. A god to the right in America, Churchill is admired in England but hardly beatified—more often thought of as a willful man of sporadic accomplishment who was at last called upon to do the one thing in life that he was capable of doing supremely well. In America, Lewis is a figure who has been incised on stained glass—truly: there's a stained-glass window with Lewis in it in a church in Monrovia, California—and remains, for the more intellectual and literate reaches of conservative religiosity, a saint revered and revealed, particularly in such books as "The Problem of Pain" and "The Screwtape Letters." In England, he is commonly regarded as a slightly embarrassing polemicist, who made joke-vicar broadcasts on the BBC, but who also happened to write a few very good books about late-medieval poetry and inspire several good students. (A former Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, "couldn't stand" Lewis, because of his bullying brand of religiosity, though John Paul II was said to be an admirer.)

I assume Adam Gopnik is an intelligent man--he certainly has the vocabulary of one--but he seems to be oblivious to a rather obvious fact. America is both very conservative (by European standards) and very religious, while England is hardly either. That a nation among whom only 7% attend Christian services weekly should think little of an orthodox Christian apologist is hardly surprising. Does anyone question why Bertrand Russel isn't honored more among Americans? Likewise with Churchill, though I would suggest that it would behoove Gopnik to take note of a not too distant survey. That an Archbishop of Canterbury "couldn't stand" Lewis is not altogether surprising either, since the current archbishop seems to be preoccupied with other things than even "mere Christianity." I also heartily appreciate the designation of Lewis' faith as "bullying." Not for anything he did on behalf of his faith, mind you, but because of his faith: a faith that believes in absolutes. This condemnation begs the question by what standard do you call Lewis' faith bullying?

Gopnik finishes his article on a similarly ignorant note:

For poetry and fantasy aren't stimulants to a deeper spiritual appetite; they are what we have to fill the appetite. The experience of magic conveyed by poetry, landscape, light, and ritual, is . . . an experience of magic conveyed by poetry, landscape, light, and ritual. To hope that the conveyance will turn out to bring another message, beyond itself, is the futile hope of the mystic. Fairy stories are not rich because they are true, and they lose none of their light because someone lit the candle. It is here that the atheist and the believer meet, exactly in the realm of made-up magic. Atheists need ghosts and kings and magical uncles and strange coincidences, living fairies and thriving Lilliputians, just as much as the believers do, to register their understanding that a narrow material world, unlit by imagination, is inadequate to our experience, much less to our hopes.

The religious believer finds consolation, and relief, too, in the world of magic exactly because it is at odds with the necessarily straitened and punitive morality of organized worship, even if the believer is, like Lewis, reluctant to admit it. The irrational images—the street lamp in the snow and the silver chair and the speaking horse—are as much an escape for the Christian imagination as for the rationalist, and we sense a deeper joy in Lewis’s prose as it escapes from the demands of Christian belief into the darker realm of magic. As for faith, well, a handful of images is as good as an armful of arguments, as the old apostles always knew.

These two paragraphs contain almost too much too critique; a book, at the least, is required. First, I would argue that the argument Gopnik makes here is more of a slam against Atheists than against Christians. He seems to arguing that atheists turn to fantasy to willfully deceive themselves into thinking that there is some order in the world. The Christian, even if he is wrong, is at least honest. Gopnik's view on religion is also revealed here as almost helplessly prejudiced. He seems to think that organized religion is equivalent to the worst stereotypes and lies of about 1950's Catholicism. I, for one, find it odd that the means one chooses to escape the "necessarily straitened and punitive morality of organized worship" is to read works of literature dedicated to defending just such a morality. Tolkien spent nearly his entire life writing The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and saw them as deeply rooted in his faith, apparently he was merely trying to escape from it. I also find the notion strange that Lewis' writing grows stronger the further he gets from Christianity. Some of the most powerful scenes in The Chronicles involve Aslan. Lewis, better than any other writer, makes goodness seem interesting.