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The Group
The C.S.Lewis Reading Group at St.
George's has been reading and discussing
the works of this eminent Anglican since
1994 .
We have read and re-read the majority of
Lewis' literary publications, and
continue to be fascinated at how he
continues to speak to issues of faith and
the soul with stunning insight nearly
half a century after his death.
New members are always welcome on Tuesday
evenings at 7:30. Check the
Current Events page for meeting
changes. No advanced reading is
required. The current work under
discussion is listed in the
Weekly Orbit. In 2001 St. George's
installed a
stained glass window depicting Lewis
on the Great South Wall of the Nave.
Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis was added to
the Book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts
of the Episcopal Church in 2003. His
Feast Day is observed on November 22nd,
and his biographical summary from that
book follows.
About
Lewis
 "You must make your choice," Lewis wrote
in Mere Christianity.
"Either this man was, and is, the Son of
God, or else a madman or something
worse. You can shut Him up as a fool,
you can spit at Him and kill Him as a
demon, or you can fall at His feet and
call him Lord and God."
Lewis did not always believe this. Born
in Belfast on November 29, 1898, Lewis
was raised as an Anglican but rejected
Christianity during his adolescent
years. After serving in World War I, he
started a long academic career as a a
scholar in medieval and renaissance
literature at both Oxford and Cambridge.
He also began an inner journey that led
him from atheism to agnosticism and
finally to faith in Jesus Christ.
"Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his
faith too carefully," he later wrote of
his conversion to theism in
Surprised by Joy. "Dangers lie
in wait for him on every side... Amiable
agnostics will talk cheerfully about
'man's search for God'. To me, as I then
was, they might as well have talked about
the mouse's search for the cat. You must
picture me all alone in that room at
Magdalen, night after night, feeling,
whenever my mind lifted for even a second
from my work, the steady, unrelenting
approach of Him whom I so earnestly
desired not to meet. That which I
greatly feared had at last come upon me.
In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in,
and admitted that God was God, and knelt
and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most
dejected and reluctant convert in all
England." Two years later, his
conversion was completed: "I know very
well when, but hardly how, the final step
was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one
sunny morning. When we set out, I did
not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son
of God, and when we reached the zoo, I
did."
Lewis' conversion inaugurated a wonderful
outpouring of Christian apologetics in
media as varied as popular theology,
children's literature, fantasy and
science fiction, and correspondence on
spiritual matters with friends and
strangers alike.
In 1956 Lewis married Joy Davidman, a
recent convert to Christianity. Her
death four years later led him to a
transforming encounter with the Mystery
of which he had written so eloquently
before. Lewis died at his home in Oxford
on November 22, 1963. The inscription on
his grave reads: "Men must endure their
going hence."
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