Bramlett’s Lewis Seminars: Seven Deflating Responses

1) In Virginia, at the end of a retreat, I was summing up with a little talk I give on “What CSL teaches us today.” In the middle of this serious summation, an old man interrupted with, “Did C S Lewis consummate his marriage?”!

2) Also in Virginia, a lady called up my friend Fred Lane and asked, “Is C S Lewis himself speaking at your church?” When Fred told her Lewis had died over 30 years ago and that I was speaking on him, she said, as she was hanging up in disgust, “Well I’m not coming if C S Lewis isn’t speaking.”

3) A lady at a large Baptist church in Louisville approached me as I was setting up my displays. She asked, “Was C S Lewis a Baptist missionary?” When I told her he wasn’t and was an Irish Anglican Christian apologist, she said (as she walked away), “Well, that settles it. I’m going home.”

4) Another lady at a large Baptist church in Louisville asked me, “Was C S Lewis president of the Southern Baptist Convention?” When I said he was not and explained briefly who he was, she said, “He ought to have been Baptist.”

5) I had spent time at a Presbyterian church explaining the intricacies of Till We Have Faces and that it was difficult to read and understand at first. Immediately after this, a little 12-year-old girl approached and told me “how easy and fun it was to read.”

6) A young lady at a Methodist church approached me and complained that The Four Loves was very difficult to read and that she had spent a whole month on just one chapter. When I explained that Lewis often said that the best books require re-reading and that this book was one of his best, she replied “I wish he had written his best books easier.”

7) At my very first seminar on Lewis (1985), I had sold a copy of The Screwtape Letters to an older lady at a Baptist church. The next week she marched up to me, gave me the book, and demanded her money back. When I asked why, she said, “It didn’t make me feel good.”