When 8-year-old Douglas Gresham met C.S. Lewis, the man who would become his stepfather, he was disappointed.
The American boy had expected the British author of The Chronicles of Narnia fantasy books “to be wearing silver armor and carrying a sword with a jeweled pommel.” Instead, Lewis “was a stooped, balding, professorial-looking gentleman in shabby clothes, with long, nicotine-stained fingers,” said Gresham, now 59, speaking on the phone from his home in Ireland.
More than 40 years after Lewis’ death, people still have their own ideas about him. Depending on whom you ask, Lewis was a scholar, fantasy writer, Christian saint — or all that and more. As Disney launches its much-anticipated movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, more people than ever are asking: Who was C.S. Lewis? And what is his legacy?
To many, Lewis is an icon of orthodox Christianity. Despite growing up believing there was no God, Lewis turned to Christianity as an adult. He then dedicated himself to promoting the faith and did so, his admirers say, using simple language and logical reasoning that anyone could understand.
Lewis’ Christian devotees find meaning in his religious works such as Mere Christianity, a collection of radio addresses Lewis gave in the early 1940s that explains common beliefs among Christians of different denominations.