C. S. Lewis Society founded in Denmark

Pastors inspired by Oxford trip to found a society interested in both Lewis' theology and litterary works.

The name of C .S. Lewis has reached the farthest points of the universe thanks to the stories of Narnia, but the present writer recalls him best through The Screwtape Letters (1942), the subtitle of which describes the contents exactly: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil. Screwtape is an experienced devil. His nephew Wormwood is beginning his demonic career and is assigned to secure the damnation of a young man who has just become a Christian. The letters were dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis’s friend at Oxford University and the man who helped him to recover his lost childhood faith.

 

This is by way of introduction to the news that a group of Danes, including 8 pastors, have founded the C.S. Lewis Society in Denmark. The new chairman, Pastor Jakob Sandal, told Church News that their trip to C. S. Lewis country in and around Oxford earlier this year had inspired them to found a society which is just as interested in Lewis’ theology as in the chronicles of Narnia. Lewis taught English at Oxford from 1931 until he moved to a professorship at Cambridge in 1954. The Danish society are also keen to study and spread the thoughts and style of the famous Inklings Club, which counted J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams among its members.

 

C.S. Lewis and theology
“Lewis is best known now for his Narnia books,” says Pastor Sandal, “and many pastors have incorporated the Narnia stories and films into their youth work, but we also want to look at the Christianity that informs these stories as well as at Lewis’s theological thinking. This we find in Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and in the other works that are barely known in Scandinavia. We can learn from Lewis’s direct address to people in an everyday language – his ‘common-sense Christianity’. We also admire the style in which The Inklings debated intellectual problems from a Christian perspective. The debate was at a high level, academic yet practical, and without prejudice – we need more of this kind of debate in Scandinavia.”

 

The newly-founded society, the first in Scandinavia, will hold its first AGM in connection with the C. S. Lewis conference it is planning for the coming autumn. This will include a seminar on the challenges facing Christianity in modern society. a talk on Lewis by noted Danish scholar, Hans Hauge.

Picture: Some of the society's founders in Oxford - private photo 

By: Edward Broadbridge

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