America’s professor: the afterlife of C.S. Lewis
In the summer of 1955, an unusual meeting took place. Billy Graham visited the writer and academic C.S. Lewis in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalene College, Cambridge. It was unusual because leading British academics typically avoided Southern Baptist revivalists. But rather than encountering a fussy, prim don, Graham found a kind, intelligent scholar who was very happy to spend the afternoon with him. Later, Graham admitted he was intimidated by Lewis, but the English professor quickly dispelled any anxiety, probably by offering Graham a cup of tea. Graham’s impact on American religious culture, for good or ill, is unquestioned, but it is difficult to imagine what that same culture would look like without the works of C.S. Lewis.
