Rather than presenting the latest modern ideas about Christianity, he was presenting an essential Christianity that had been around “long before I was born and whether I like it or not” (ix).
He accordingly defined “mere Christianity” as “the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times” (viii). When Lewis himself was on his journey to becoming a Christian, he came to realize that there was good reason to put one’s trust in ideas that had lasted a long time, rather than in the latest fads that would come and go. Lewis, as a student of history, recognized that many of the “latest ideas” of one’s own day will look quaint to future generations. One of the strongest habits of thought both in Lewis’s day and in our own is to think that newer understandings of the most basic aspects of life and reality are better than older understandings. Lewis, but each of us might learn from him how best to communicate our faith to others. Given the remarkable successes of this book, an edifying question to ask is, What were the qualities of Lewis’s communication of the faith that made it so lastingly effective? None of us is another C.S. But it was not until 1952 that he collected them into one volume with a new introduction as Mere Christianity.
Lewis had these published as separate little booklets soon after the broadcasts. It arose out of four sets of radio addresses that Lewis gave on the BBC during some very stressful years of World War II, from 1941 to 1944.
Mere Christianity was not even originally written to be a book. New York Times columnist David Brooks quipped that when he was contemplating commitment to Christianity, acquaintances sent him about three hundred books, “only a hundred of which were different copies of C.S. It is still the favorite go-to book for those considering Christianity or having doubts about their faith. In English alone, it has reached something like four million copies since 2001. Lewis’s Mere Christianity so lastingly compelling? While most books fade in popularity, Lewis’s apologetic volume has sold even better in the twenty-first century than it did when it was first published.
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