The following excerpt from Christianity and Culture of 1940 is one example among many of Lewis’ fascinating and nuanced takes on the relationship between culture and Christianity (in this case culture understood as study and enjoyment of the arts):

“There is another way in which [culture] may predispose to conversion. The difficulty of converting an uneducated man nowadays lies in his complacency. Popularized science, the conventions or ‘unconventions,’ of his immediate circle, party programmes, etc., enclose him in a tiny windowless universe which he mistakes for the only possible universe. There are no distant horizons, no mysteries. He thinks everything has been settled. A cultured person, on the other hand, is almost compelled to be aware that reality is very odd and that the ultimate truth, whatever it may be, must have the characteristics of strangeness—must be something that would seem remote and fantastic to the uncultured. Thus some obstacles to faith have been removed already.”

It is not surprising and it is a good thing that so many emergent/emerging believers display, initially at least, something like a congenital predisposition towards the writings of C.S. Lewis. I think it a safe assumption that Lewis himself will exceed virtually all if not all of his readers in knowledge and appreciation for culture and so will be in position to satisfy and instruct but also to warn others similarly enamored of the arts as to their potentialities but also their limits, weaknesses, and dangers.

The “tiny windowless universe” Lewis describes may also characterize the “believing universe” in some quarters, and many emerging believers point to the conservative Christian communions from which they have emerged and against which many now pride themselves in protesting. Well and good. Now liberated from the suffocating narrowness and pat-answer-permeated confines of conservative evangelical churches, some preen and pose proudly in the new superior world of mystery they now inhabit. Elasticity of meaning and belonging before believing now shapes the religious milieu they prize.

Lewis will be in a position to calm them down I expect and demonstrate both proper and improper acknowledgement of mystery. Where God has revealed truth, escape into the vagueness of mystery for the sake of peace or unity or to evade politically incorrect recognition of and submission to divine commands (Brian McLaren and homosexual behavior is a case in point) is not deep or sophisticated, legitimately modest or loving, but a cop-out at best and willful blindness and disobedience at worst. Beware indiscriminate lovers of mystery wading into C.S. Lewis with your guard down. A conservative, dogmatic, evangelicalish Christian lurks within.