His works have sold millions upon millions of copies and have been translated into more than thirty languages. Lewis' influence on popular Christianity cannot be overstated. At the age of 32, through a variety of influences discussed at length in Surprised by Joy, he became a Christian once more - this time in the Anglican Church.

Though born into the Church of Ireland, Lewis lost his faith in Christianity and became a staunch atheist as an adolescent and young man. As an academic, he held posts at both Oxford and Cambridge. This is not joy in the standard, connotative sense, but something much deeper - as Lewis puts it, Joy with a capital J.Ĭlive Staples Lewis, born in Belfast in 1898, was a highly influential author and lay theologian. Throughout, Lewis encounters horrid and brutal schoolmasters, the death of his mother, suffocating intra-scholastic social hierarchies, strains and bonds with his brother and father, friendships, losses, and a myriad of other formative evnts.ĭefining that journey, always lingering at the fringes of Lewis' life, was a certain inexplicable feeling - one that would be the first key to his religious awakening: Joy. Lewis carries us through his early childhood, a hapless, happy existence, into his rowdy adolescence, his priggish high-school years, and his early adulthood's burgeoning rationalism. Surprised by Joy details that long, varied journey from faith to atheism and back again. Looking at Lewis' literary output and his profound influence on popular and academic Christianity in the 20th century, one might be hard-pressed to believe that, as a young man, Lewis was an avowed unbeliever. Lewis is among a select few who were, at some point in their lives, strongly atheist. Free – Buy Book Brief Download Book BriefĪmong all the influential Christian thinkers throughout history, C.S.

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