This article originally appeared in print journal March/April 2001.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a novel about a British youngster who attends a school for witches, was a runaway bestseller in 2000, selling millions of copies to kids and adults alike. This followed up on the widespread popularity of the three earlier volumes in author J.K. Rowling’s series: The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Chamber of Secrets, and The Sorcerer’s Stone.

Of course, the books’ popularity provoked heated debate. Most folks expressed gratefulness that today’s media-saturated kids were reading ANYTHING. And Charles Colson praised the books’ creativity and the way they addressed moral issues.

But others argued that the books came straight out of the pit of hell and were destined to escort young and impressionable readers to the same place. In a brand new book entitled Harry Potter and the Bible (Christian Publications), author Richard Abanes writes about “the menace behind the magick” and argues that the books will inoculate young people to the real dangers of witchcraft.

Regardless of what you think about the Harry Potter books and their potential impact, perhaps it’s time to celebrate the work of another writer whose books have been entertaining young and old alike for half a century.

Once upon a time—and long before Harry Potter—a childless, bookish bachelor created a series of best-selling and wonder-inducing children’s books featuring now familiar literary elements like witches, magic, and battles between good and evil.
The time was 1950 and the writer was C. S. Lewis, a Fellow of English at Magdalen College, Oxford, who was best known for scholarly works of literary criticism and popular books on Christian theology.

Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia surprised his academic peers but wowed readers of all ages, including an American youngster named Douglas Gresham.

“I was fascinated by the books and enthralled with Narnia itself,” says Gresham, who would become Lewis’s stepson in 1956 after his mother married Lewis in a slow-blooming romance explored in both Lewis’s book Surprised by Joy and the acclaimed 1993 film, Shadowlands.

Today, Gresham is a consultant to the C.S. Lewis Company, which oversees the legendary literary legacy of the prolific author who also wrote volumes of poetry and science fiction before he died on Nov. 22 1963—the same day John F. Kennedy was killed.

And many share Gresham’s fascination with Lewis’s work. Every year, people around the world buy an estimated two million copies of his books. The Narnia series accounts for about half of these sales.

In 2000, publishing giant HarperCollins renewed its efforts to make sure people keep buying and reading Lewis, issuing new editions of six of his most popular theological works, including 1942’s The Screwtape Letters and 1952’s Mere Christianity.

The company also released new 50th anniversary full-color editions of all seven Narnia books, featuring Pauline Baynes’ original cover art and introducing inside illustrations recently colored by the artist (for information, visit the publisher’s website at www.narnia.org).

Lewis, who grew up near Belfast, Northern Ireland, said he wrote the Narnia series because they were the kinds of stories he would have enjoyed when he was a child.

Children have been devouring them ever since. Like the Harry Potter books, they make for exciting reading. In addition, youthful Narnia characters like Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy—who appear in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and other volumes in the series—are both lifelike and likeable.

Adults enjoy the stories but are also attracted to the allegories Lewis weaves out of the Christian themes of sin and redemption. For example, Narnia’s talking lion king Aslan is seen as a symbol for Christ, complete with a sacrificial death and resurrection, while the White Witch is a Devil figure.

Lewis loved myth and fantasy, as did fellow Oxford professor J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the best-selling Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is currently being made into a major Hollywood movie series. (The first film debuts on Christmas, 2001.)

Tolkien joined Lewis for meetings of the Inklings, a small group that regularly met in Oxford pubs to drink, smoke, share recent compositions, and heatedly debate theology and literary theory into the wee hours of the morning.

Hailed for his depth of intellect, Lewis argued that it was not the mind but the imagination that allowed people to receive spiritual truth. And his fantastical stories were designed to baptize readers’ imaginations.

Many readers, including Gresham, believe that Lewis’s substantial literary talent and skill were aided by divine inspiration. “I believe that while he was the writer of the works, their true author was the Holy Spirit from whom all wisdom comes,” says Gresham, author of 1988’s Lenten Lands, which is one of some 50-plus books written about Lewis.

Lewis has also inspired numerous international groups and reading societies dedicated to his work. Among the best known is the Redlands, California-based C.S. Lewis Foundation, which is dedicated to “celebrating the life and legacy of C.S. Lewis and to encouraging a renaissance of Christian scholarly and artistic expression.” The foundation organizes literary conferences and events in the U.S. and England (for information, visit the website www.cslewis.org).

And although Lewis wasn’t a card-carrying evangelical, evangelicals have been some of his most devoted fans. The magazine Christianity Today even called Lewis “our patron saint.”

As with other saints, there is disagreement among those claiming possession of Lewis’s holy relics. Both Wheaton College in Illinois and Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California claim ownership of the wardrobe described as the threshold to Narnia.

Stan Mattson of the C.S. Lewis Foundation deems both pieces of furniture from Lewis’s Oxford house to be official, if imperfect, relics.

“Neither are to be confused as being literally ‘the wardrobe’ described in the Chronicles, which is depicted as having a mirror on its face, which neither of them do,” says Mattson.

But there’s no debating Lewis’s long-lasting literary legacy, which remains the true source of his veneration.

Perhaps if you haven’t yet read any of Lewis’s masterful youth fiction, you should give it a try, beginning with the beloved volume, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Maybe you should even consider reading the book, or other Lewis volumes, with your kids. As the Harry Potter books have shown us, young people like to read—so long as the stories are good, the characters are believable, and the issues dealt with are relevant to their lives.

For decades, Christians have honored Lewis as a towering literary figure who combined his deep faith with his deep love of literature. By exposing your kids to his work, you could be introducing them to certifiable Christian classics, while at the same time igniting their imaginations in powerful and positive ways. n