When my university gave me a sabbatical year for research and writing in 2014-2015, I had some of the best plans laid out that a man could devise. In tandem with a religion professor, we were going to write a book on spiritual advisors to presidents. Eagerly, I lined up trips to presidential libraries, starting with Reagan and Nixon in California, then in an order I don’t recall exactly, ultimately visiting libraries for Eisenhower, Johnson, Clinton, and the first George Bush. No book ever resulted from all that activity and research. Not that it wasn’t beneficial. The information I culled from those trips has been valuable for my teaching. But that initial plan, best laid as it was, didn’t come to fruition.
Yet I can now say I’m thankful that it didn’t work out the way I planned. Instead, the Lord guided me in an entirely new direction that has reinvigorated my academic and spiritual life. Here’s what happened.
My first trip for the sabbatical was not to one of the presidential libraries. Rather, it was to Wheaton College to research at the Billy Graham Center. Since Graham was the premier spiritual advisor to several presidents, I thought that would be a great place to start. And it was, but not just for information on Graham.
Prior to the sabbatical, I had read Oxford scholar Alister McGrath’s recently published biography of C.S. Lewis. In his final chapter, McGrath made statements that sparked something in me. He wrote, “Lewis has always been appreciated more in the United States than in England, despite never once setting foot stateside. … Lewis is trusted and respected by many American Christians, who treat him as their theological and spiritual mentor.” He concluded, “There is no doubt that Lewis has been instrumental in changing the cultural outlook of American evangelicalism.”
McGrath’s analysis served as the inspiration for something that had been present within me for some time but that I didn’t know how to process. As a historian of America, how could I conceivably link Lewis to America when he, as McGrath noted, had never once set foot in this country? Why did American Christians relate so well to him? What was it that attracted them? What contacts did he have with Americans? I already knew that Walter Hooper, who was his literary executor, was an American, and I also knew that he married an American. But was there a potential book about that? Was it worth investigating?
Those questions were present in me even as I set out for Wheaton to do Billy Graham research. Right down the street from the Billy Graham Center was the Marion E. Wade Center, which is a repository for all things Lewis. So, with that in the back of my mind as a secondary research possibility, I scheduled some time at the Wade Center as well. I needed to figure out if anyone had already plumbed the depths of those questions. Was there anything left for me to do, or had all the questions been answered and had all of Lewis’s contacts in America been fully fleshed out in the research of others?
The hours I spent in the Wade changed my life. I saw that there existed a niche about Lewis and his connections with Americans that no one else had answered in a comprehensive way. Yes, there were comments here and there, names mentioned in passing, and even one seminar that Wheaton had held that broached the subject. Yet, a book could still be written, and I felt a surge of desire to be the one to write that book.
So, tentatively, I took the steps necessary to decide if a book could be the result. The Wade Center was an immense help. When, in my research, I came across surveys from earlier decades of how Lewis impacted Americans, I realized that a new survey was needed. It also needed to be more precise. The previous surveys were merely open-ended; no specific questions were asked of the respondents. I came up with a list of questions that would provide a more targeted response from those who appreciated Lewis’s writings:
- When and how were you introduced to C.S. Lewis?
- Which of his writings have had the greatest impact on your thinking and/or spiritual development?
- Are you now, or have you ever been, involved with a C.S. Lewis society/organization or with some other activity connected with Lewis? Please explain.
- Have you viewed any of the Shadowlands productions? If so, what is your opinion of them?
- Have you viewed any of the Narnia productions, whether the ones created for television or the three Narnia films? If so, what is your opinion of them?
At the end of the survey, I also gave an opportunity to add anything else about Lewis and his influence that the respondents would like to share. This survey would have gone nowhere without the Center’s positive reception of the idea. They put out those questions to a wider audience and then sent the responses directly to me. That survey formed one of the cornerstones of my proposed study.
I was a bit skittish about contacting Walter Hooper, one of the few remaining people who knew Lewis personally and who, ever since Lewis’s death in 1963, had served as his literary executor. Hooper was responsible for rescuing all of Lewis’s scattered essays and printing them in a series of essay collections that are available today. Would he be interested in helping me, someone he had never heard of and certainly didn’t know? The Wade staff shared his e-mail with me, Hooper got back to me in short order, and we began a correspondence that was vital to the project.
Besides some key secondary sources, I spent the next year immersing myself in Lewis’s own writings, rereading most of what I had read previously and adding others that I had not yet tackled. Beyond that, since this proposed book was geared toward his interactions with Americans, I read and took notes on every letter he wrote to an American in the three massive volumes of his letters that Hooper had collected. Now, for some people, all of that might seem oppressive, but not for me. It was pure delight to delve so deeply into his thinking.
Unlike the proposed book on spiritual advisors to presidents, this book on Lewis came to fruition ten years ago. America Discovers C.S. Lewis: His Profound Impact was published in September 2016. One month later, I was speaking about it to a meeting of the New York C.S. Lewis Society—the first public presentation about the book. This was the genesis of an altered focus in my scholarly life. Since then, I’ve co-written another Lewis book, Many Times & Many Places: C.S. Lewis & the Value of History, which had its debut at a Lewis conference in Romania in 2023. It’s also been a joy to be invited back to the Wade—where it all began—to speak about both books.
In addition to Lewis research and writing, I’ve been drawn into the life and writings of Dorothy L. Sayers. An article I’ve drafted on Lewis and Sayers is slated to be in the next Wade Center journal and I’ve written a chapter on Sayers for an upcoming book edited by Sayers scholar Crystal Downing.
I love this new path. The Lord surprises us sometimes with what He calls us to do. This past decade has been an unexpected blessing, and I offer Him a grateful heart for His leading.