Sunday Reply

Good Morning,

I too am just a few pages into "The Lion's World." I'm fascinated by the book's concept as well as how we're starting this conversation. The truth is that I have very little familiarity with The Chronicles of Narnia. I haven't read all of C.S. Lewis' seven books. I really didn't care for what I have read or seen in the Narnia movies.   I'm more familiar with Lewis than with the series because I have read some of the author's other works such as Mere Christianity. I fairly readily set aside that book because I didn't agree with aspects of Lewis' dogmatic thoughts and imagery.

I therefore am acting much like someone you described in your post. I've hardly spent any time inside of the stories of CS. Lewis' Narnia. My impressions are shaped mostly by limited and dis-satisfactory exposure to the content as well as what I've heard secondhand about the books and movies.   In your words, I lack the full back story. At least, I haven't seen and discerned it all for myself. I find myself pondering this morning whether or not I need to be reading Lewis' Narnia chronicles before digging deeper into The Lion's World with you and our readers or if I should simply add another extant layer of thoughts and responses about Narnia through Rowan Williams' lens and wisdom regarding the material. Maybe I should read the chronicles before writing more about them?

This line of thought got me pondering about how important it is for me and other people to consider how and why we are climbing up "ladders of inference." Why do I think what I do about CS Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, Christianity, or why the San Diego Chargers lost to the Denver Broncos yesterday? What's my selected reality versus what's real? What assumptions have I (or anyone) made about Christianity. All such inquiries are based upon a variety of assumptions, expectations, and interpretation of facts. I imagine you know a great deal more about such matters given your expertise in creating survey, evaluating statistics and so on.

In summary,  I agree with you that the assumptions and opinions people form about contemporary Christianity are definitely shaped by anecdotal or second hand experiences. I believe too, at least speaking for me, my impatience in dealing with something or someone that I  initially take offense to or find inaccurate assuredly impacts whether or not I'm going to sit with that matter or person for a longer period of time. God often has a way of indicating to me that perseverance and fortitude are instead the virtues I should be exercising.

Williams writes something else in the introduction that caught my attention this morning He writes:

"What he (Lewis) says here (in a 1959 letter to a schoolgirl asking about the his purpose for the books) does underline that he is not in fact casting around for a set of disconnected symbols to carry a piece of concealed religious doctrine but allowing his characters to emerge in the course of the story itself and according to its logic." (Williams, 2012, p. 3).

Perhaps that's what we need to invite people to do when we encounter them inside and outside of our church walls. How should we suggest that they have received a false message from someone else about the Christian Faith. How might we rather invite them in a radically hospitable way to assess with us the reality and facts of Jesus' life and narrative? What might we learn from one another and hold different perspectives in tension with whatever selective realities and/or interpreted realities they/we are using to reach a conclusion about the Christianity?

Maybe many folks don't in fact "know" and, as Williams suggests are not deliberately considering Christianity as a possibility. I happen to think that's less probable in the United States than in Great Britain while also believe there are more and more unchurched yet spiritual people than every before here in the U.S. I hope that one of the things this blog may accomplish for you and me and anyone else who happens to read it is that we will be able examine what's latent as well as what's active in our shared and personal faiths in a way that helps us to live into God's reign just as CS Lewis, Rowan Williams, and others have done and are doing.

By way of introduction, we are reading “The Lion’s World,” by Rowan Williams (OUP, 2013).  It is a transcription of three lectures he gave during Holy Week 2011 about C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books.

I had expected to skim the introductory part of the book and plow into the “meat” of it to find things worth talking about, but I only made it a few pages before this caught my attention:

“Lewis [was] dealing with a public who thought they knew what it was they were disbelieving when they announced their disbelief in Christian doctrine.  The same situation is even more common today.  It is not true that large numbers of people reject Christianity – if by ‘reject’ we mean that they deliberately consider and then decide against it.” (I’m reading this on my Kindle, so can’t give page numbers)

I had not thought of the challenge of evangelism in this way before.  Working in New York, we were accustomed to thinking of it as a “missionary field.”  It was a commonplace to talk about the high level of biblical illiteracy and the proportion of the population that had never even been in a church.  We assumed that we were starting from zero, but perhaps that was not quite accurate.  Our culture is littered with reminders of Christian influence – Sunday closings, dry counties, churches in prominent downtown locations in cities and towns everywhere.  Being unchurched in a post-Christian society is not quite the same as being naïve to the Christian message.  This has implications for how (and what) we communicate.

I’m a great fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.  In them, he appropriates a riotously eclectic assortment of myths and folklore, modern cultural stereotypes, literary references, the triumphs and irritations of technology, and mashes it all into story lines that move at breakneck speed.  They flatter the reader who notices bits of Shakespeare or Platonic philosophy flying past, but should not be mistaken for careful introductions to those or any other topic. 

Something similar happens in the popular approach to the Christian story.  Almost everyone knows the general outline well enough that its key elements can be reduced to shorthand.  Lacking the full “back story,” the average person nonetheless takes those bits of the story and plugs them into other narratives – Christians and Christianity become agents of oppression, the Church is at best quaint and at worst toxic to the modern self-actualized soul, God becomes bitter and boring in His solipsism and total lack of irony.

Over time, this comes to represent the extent of what people “know” about Christianity.  No wonder they don’t come on Sunday.  (The ham-fisted attempts at proselytizing by many who claim to speak for Christianity don’t help either, but that’s another story.) 

This is where I am supposed to lay out my bold four-point plan to transform how we get the message to the unchurched but not unaware.  I wish I had one.  About all I have to fall back on as an opener is an appeal to mystery. 

Williams refers to an understanding between Lewis and Dorothy Sayers (a complex evangelist if there ever was one!) that there is value in stories in which the Christian message is “latent.”  Some would argue that in the Narnia books the religious content is scarcely hidden – Phillip Pullman certainly seemed to get worked up about it.  Others have criticized them for being too inconsistent and unsystematic to serve as wholesome catechizing literature – a Google search produces some hilariously shrill Evangelical critiques.  Maybe both extremes miss the point.  I’m willing to give latency a try.  How about you?