Stephen Rowland: A night with C.S. Lewis stirs theologians on both sides of theater aisle

My wife Susan and I just returned from Nashville having watched the TPAC performance of “The Great Divorce,” a book written by the famous 20th theologian C.S. Lewis.

Right before that performance, I sat there noting a few incongruities:

Growing up in the Church of Christ in Illinois, Susan had never heard of C.S. Lewis.

We attribute that mainly to one fact: Clives Staples Lewis was never a member of a Church of Christ. Perhaps there are secondary issues, such as Lewis never had a problem with instrumental music in Christian worship, but basically most church denominations “promote their own.”

I was raised in Pentecostal churches and never heard C.S. Lewis’ name mentioned.

I think that was mainly because Lewis was never a member of any Pentecostal church, but I am sure there are secondary issues. “Speaking in tongues” was never a big issue for Lewis, so that, by definition, made him one of the others not “in our group” and not “in the know.”

We promoted our own. Add to that the fact that most of us came from uneducated families and didn’t know any theologian by name, and actually were a little suspicious of anyone who did go off to a seminary or took on the appellation of “theologian” — that would have made us suspicious. Finding out that Lewis enjoyed an evening pint of beer sealed the deal for us.

I sat there and observed the audience and came to the conclusion that there were a lot of pastors of churches in attendance. They looked like they were still in their “church clothes” having rushed to lunch after Sunday morning service, then rushed to TPAC for the performance. Pastors from all sorts of differing denominations whom “promote their own” sitting under one roof enjoying the musings of a famous theologian who was not “one of their own.” Imagine that! I wondered if any of them were a bit apprehensive about being recognized and suspicioned of being influenced by a theologian not on their denomination’s approved speaker list?

I didn’t know anything about C.S. Lewis until after having graduated from college and rediscovering my Christian faith. Some of his books that had an impact on me were “Mere Christianity”; “The Screwtape Letters”; “The Great Divorce”; and “A Grief Observed.” As I worked my way through Bible College towards completion of a Master's degree, I noticed several authors of our textbooks similarly had a very high regard for Lewis.

And authors and scholars from different church denominations all had been influenced by his writings to a degree. That actually gave me a tiny bit of hope that perhaps Protestantism isn’t hopelessly divided into a thousand different branches stemming from the Christianity tree that are mutually hostile to each other. I think he had a way of drawing Christians together back to some very basics. That’s refreshing for a change.

Lewis was a master of the imagination, of writing fiction and somehow by analogy relating it back to basic Christian beliefs and principles. Perhaps his “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” is his best known example. “The Great Divorce” is an imaginary tale of taking a bus from hell (Grey town) to the outskirts of heaven, then watching character after character find their narcissistic reasons for refusing heaven and taking that same bus back to grey town.

A really memorable line from his “The Problem With Pain” is that the “doors of hell are locked on the inside.” A literalist may find that offensive, but figuratively speaking it’s often a lifetime of selfish personal choices made that end up making our character for the worse and sealing our own doom through the simple exercise of our own free will.

We become self enslaved to sin in our successful rebellion against God.

I enjoyed the performance and found it pretty faithful to his book. I’m actually glad to see anything of a Christian nature at TPAC.

I’m sure it thoroughly irritates those who seem to think that anything pertaining to Christianity should be kept a private matter at home and kept out of any public venue for fear of offending a non-Christian.

You will find plenty of public plays or movies that display an agnostic or outright atheistic orientation, but you won’t find me getting all worked up into a frothy irritated lather over it. They have their freedom of speech and expression; so do we.

The answer to our tolerance obsessed generation is not censorship — rather more free speech and expression.

Let opposite sides have their day. Let the viewer decide.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Herald: Stephen Rowland: A night with C.S. Lewis stirs theologians