A WaPo review of the last volume of C.S. Lewis’ letters (edited by Walter Hooper).

Has some interesting tidbits including the hint (provided by Lewis in a letter to Sheldon Vanauken) that Lewis married Joy Davidman so she wouldn’t have to return to the U.S:

Although many have impugned the motives of Davidman, the reason is revealed in a footnote: Lewis confided to his friend Sheldon Vanauken that he had married "to prevent the Government deporting her to America as a communist." She had been a prominent party member, and the congressional red scare was in full swing when she fled the United States.

Yet within a few months, Lewis was writing to Sayers, "My heart is breaking and I was never so happy before: at any rate there is more in life than I knew about." And elsewhere: "We are crazily in love."

The reviewer unfortunately ends with a swipe at the "religious right," whom she claims might well be surprised at the breadth of their hero’s interests:

It’s time to reclaim Lewis from the religious right, which has made of him an unlikely champion. The same audience would, perhaps, find it hard to square its adulation with his genuine curiosity about Hinduism, his love of The Iliad, his endorsement of Zoroastrianism as "one of the finest of the Pagan religions," and his eagerness to see more recognition for the Persian epic The Shahnameh. They might be more surprised that he supported his elder stepson’s eventual entrance into a yeshiva. Lewis’s religion was nuanced. He didn’t believe in word-for-word inerrancy of the Bible, saying that too few "know by the smell. . . the difference in myth, in legend, and a bit of primitive reportage."

In any case, Lewis’s wry, erudite, often spiritually profound letters are too good to be co-opted. He could be a bit of a prig, but his inner life is no dusty relic, irrelevant to our world today. In fact, in an era of New Age fuzziness, his mental clarity refreshes. ·

What is this "religious right" that honors Lewis and is apparently unaware of his, er…career?

It seems that by "religious right" this reviewer really means "typically stupid and parochial American Christians." The truth is, there is no such animal with a consistent set of stripes, and some very interesting conversations and, yes, battles about Lewis have taken place over the past few decades among Christians.

He is not uncontroversial and the reviewer is correct in saying that certain aspects of Lewis are conveniently ignored by some of his readers.

I suppose some Lewis fans operate out of an idealized image. Certainly there have been interesting conversations about various ends of the Christian spectrum choosing to ignore certain aspects of Lewis’ life. Certainly, there have been smirks and jibes back and forth between Anglicans, RC’s and evangelicals about "claiming" Lewis (not that RC’s can exactly "claim" him at all…), with certain parties commenting on certain other parties’ attitudes toward smoking and drinking and Lewis’ enjoyment of same. They’ve fought over the wardrobe, for pete’s sake. I’ve no doubt that if you looked, you could find a substantial subculture of fundamentalist Christians who have no use for C.S. Lewis in any way, shape or form. Some Christians have reservations about his Anglicanism, his views on sacrament and ritual, or, on the other end, even his "mere Christianity" and his methods of apologetics.

But I really don’t think this "religious right" is as stupid as the reviewer suggests. I think Lewis’ contemporary audiences appreciate what his individual pieces of writing, from Narnia to Mere Christianity to A Grief Observed have done for them – and how they have, in fact, changed their lives. And they’re grateful, simply for that.

The Lion