Stephen Liggins — editor/journalist with Anglican Media Sydney

This article first appeared in the Spring 1998 Edition of 'Southern Cross Quarterly,' which is put out by Anglican Media Sydney (Australia)

"That's the problem," Douglas Gresham tells me, "People say, 'What's it like growing up the stepson of C. S. Lewis?' I've got nothing to compare it with. It's just the way my life is."

Douglas was the child (or half the child) represented in the popular movie Shadowlands which was released a few years back. Shadowlands told the story of the romance and marriage involving Douglas's mother, Joy, and C. S. Lewis (Jack). The child represented in that movie was actually a composite of Joy's two children - Douglas and David.

These days Douglas is married with five children (three sons and two daughters) who range in age from 14 to 30. He lives with his wife in Ireland, but was out in Australia recently for the wedding of his middle son.

Douglas is a fully salaried consultant with C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd - a company which looks after many aspects of C. S. Lewis's works. He is also a preacher and, with his wife, runs Rathvinden Ministries - a Christian counselling and drop in centre based near Dublin.

Speaking with him, it is not hard to imagine him as someone who spent many of his formative years with one of the greatest Christian writers and apologists of this century. Douglas is an intelligent and articulate Christian man, possessing a certain authority but without being overbearing. He describes himself as 'nondenominational'.

"The only rule of the place," he says, speaking of Rathvinden Ministries, "is that as you come in through the front door, your denomination stays on the doormat along with the rest of the rubbish and your Christianity comes in with you."

Says Douglas, "I preach what Jesus taught. I think that if you stick with the gospels of Jesus Christ you can't really go wrong. The mistake that many churches, if not most of the churches, I think in the world today make is to try and sugar coat the gospels, or dress them up, or add bits to them, or attach rituals and ceremonials to them and so forth. I think you will see the results of that in the fact that most of the churches are empty."

He ads, "We must get away from the trivialities and extra bits and pieces and get back to what Jesus taught and what Jesus wanted us to do and wanted us to believe. If we do that, we'll have a much better world."

Growing up with C. S. Lewis would be the sort of domestic apologetics resource that many Christians would almost die for, yet it is the example of Jack's life rather than his teaching that Douglas says taught him the most. "He didn't ever preach to me or lecture at me in any way. He didn't regard me as a pupil, but more as a son. I grew up in his household and watched him live his Christian life, and live his Christian faith, and he did so in a manner probably more strongly and more accurately than any man I've ever met since."

The aspect of Jack's character that stands out most strongly in Douglas's memory was his determination to stick to his commitments. Douglas refers to Jack's relationship with Mrs Moore with whom he lived and helped look after for a number of years. "He stuck to that commitment for 32 years even though it turned out to be an almost hellish experience towards the end as the old woman went off her brain. Nowadays people find it difficult to commit to one wife for two or three years."

Also memorable was Jack's "enormous compassion and charity". Douglas recalls a story where Jack and a friend were walking to a meeting one day when they were approached by a beggar. The beggar asked them for some spare change whereupon Jack gave him everything he had. Once the beggar had gone, his friend said, "You shouldn't have given that man all that money Jack, he'll only spend it on drink." Jack's reply - "Well, if I'd kept it, I would have only spent it on drink."

"He was a very rational man," Douglas says. "His Christianity was not the result of some strange mystic experience - his Christianity was the result of his searching for truth. I think that's one of the guidelines of his life - he always searched for the truth in every situation. I think that today people wander about looking for what they want to believe in or what they think they ought to believe in rather than searching for the truth."

Jack, according to Douglas, was someone who focused on "what Jesus taught and what Jesus wanted us to do". Douglas also admits to having been very influenced by the views summed up in Jack's book Mere Christianity. "Rathvinden Ministries," he says, "is in a sense an attempt to put the principles of Mere Christianity as explained by Jack and also, of course, what Jesus taught himself, into practice."

Douglas's recollections of his mother are also very positive. "She was an exceptionally able lady in terms of intellectual ability. She was probably the only person whose mind was on a par with Jack's. They were both isolated on a pinnacle of their own intellectual ability. She was a forthright, honest, straightforward and exceptionally courageous woman; extremely brave. She and Jack were very similar in a lot of ways."

Thanks to Shadowlands, the romance between the two of them is fairly well known. So, too, are the difficulties they encountered through Joy's battle with cancer. The couple met in 1952. They entered into a civil marriage in April 1956 so that Joy could gain British citizenship and thus avoid deportation by British migration authorities. (Joy was originally American.) In December that same year a bedside marriage was performed in accordance with the rites of the Church of England. At that time Joy was extremely sick and it was thought that her death was imminent. As it happened she experienced a remarkable recovery the following year before finally succumbing to the disease in 1960.

"In that remission period she and Jack had the happiest four years of either of their lives, despite the fact that the sword of Damocles was hanging over their heads all the time. They knew that this remission was going to be a temporary thing. It wasn't a cure. They knew that eventually the cancer would re-emerge and she would die. So, it was a difficult time in that sense. But at the same time it was shot through with enormous joy and great delight. They delighted in each other's company. They delighted in each other's love."

Speaking of the remission, Douglas says, "I think that Jack and mother were both very conscious that God had quite deliberately given them time together."

Their faith was very important at this time. Says Douglas, "I think it was another common thing that bound them together. I don't think there's any doubt that Jack's faith was enriched in a sense by the challenges of that time and by, of course, the challenges of the grief that followed my mother's death. He wrote A Grief Observed which demonstrates how he fought through the temptations to curse God, the temptations to blame God - which we are all confronted with - and how he fought through them and came out with his faith enormously enriched and strengthened at the end."

So, what does Douglas think of Shadowlands? "I was very pleased with the film," he says. "The important thing to remember is it is not supposed to be a historical documentary. And it is not supposed to be an evangelistic Christian piece." Rather its aim was to tell a very beautiful love story.

This fact, Douglas tells me, has disappointed some Christians who would have liked Lewis's deep Christian commitment to come out more clearly. On the other hand, some atheists have complained about all the 'Christian nonsense' in the film. As it happens, according to Douglas, the movie has helped bringing many people into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

This influence, however, does not seem to have extended as far as the actor who played Lewis in the movie. "I know that Tony Hopkins remarked that playing C. S. Lewis did not make him want to become a Christian any more than playing Hannibal Lector (in The Silence of the Lambs) made him want to be a cannibal."

So, what does Douglas think of the many biographies of his stepfather's life? The best one, he says, is George Sayer's work Jack: A life of C. S. Lewis. Douglas has little time, however, for the highly popular C. S. Lewis: A biography by A N Wilson, which he says is full of inaccuracies. It is the work of a man "who has sacrificed serious scholarship at the alter of sensational journalism". (Both books are reviewed on pp.33-34).

I ask him about Jack's debate with Elizabeth Anscombe, later Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, in 1948. "A lot is made of the Anscombe debate, particularly by A N Wilson, for example. Elizabeth Anscombe didn't remember it that way (ie. the way Wilson describes it) at all. She remembers it as a pleasant, fun debate in which she thought she scored some good points. And I think she did quite honestly score some good points. Jack had written a book called Miracles and she objected to one or two of his postulations in that. Jack agreed that he'd made some mistakes. He went back and revised the book. That's about as far as it goes. This whole bit about a crushing defeat and all that is utter nonsense. Elizabeth Anscombe herself didn't remember it that way, nor did anyone else who was there. A N Wilson says that he (Jack) ceased to write apologetics thereafter. It's absolute nonsense - you've only got to look at the publication record."