35 years ago this month, the president of the United States was assassinated. The global attention given to that event overshadowed the death on the same day of one of the most famous Christian writers of the 20th century. In the third of a century since these two deaths, the influence and esteem of the first has steadily eroded; the 1000 days of Camelot have been demythologized. The president has reappeared as all too human, and none too righteous. His reputation seems to have caught up with his character.

Not so for the other man. In fact, quite the opposite. For two and one half decades, the wit and wisdom of this Oxford scholar has enjoyed a sustained climb to the pinnacle of popularity. His homestead is being restored, his essays and stories enjoy international fame, and his simple grave stone is the destination of a constant stream of, yes, pilgrims. For the past year, people around the world have celebrated the birth of Clive Staples Lewis, born on November 28, 1898 and better known to you and me as C. S. Lewis.

Wormwood was his first claim to fame, although he had achieved considerable academic success years earlier. He attended Oxford University and graduated with what is called a triple first, what we might call summa cum laude in three different fields of study. It was and remains an extremely rare feat of intellect and discipline. He took a teaching post at Magdalen College in Oxford where he remained a tutor in Medieval and Renaissance English Literature until 1954. He published books of poetry and literary essays and was, as they say, getting along nicely in his profession, until something happened; he was converted to faith in Christ.

He tells the story in a wonderfully simple but spellbinding way in his spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy, the Shape of My Early Life. Conversion stories I collect and read and recommend, this one especially. C. S. Lewis grew up with gifted but agnostic parents. He knew nothing of Christ and the Christian faith. He knew only that he suffered from a spiritual condition of emptiness, yearning, and sensing vaguely a transcendence that is real, true, beautiful, and satisfying to the mind, soul, and imagination.

It was this element of imagination that was to be his avenue to a sure and certain faith. Once settled in the illustrious setting of Oxford (surely the epicenter of learning in all the world) he met with others interested in fantasy, others such as J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. They wrote stories, spun tales, created peoples and lands and languages. They gathered biweekly as "The Inklings".

You can go today to the English pub named The Eagle and Child, just around the corner from the Baptist College, Regent's Park. There they drank beer, read their stuff chapter at a time, and discussed the topics and trends of literature. And C. S. Lewis discovered, to his amazement, that all of his friends were what he later called "thorough supernaturalists." This, of course, challenged his atheistic presuppositions and his naturalistic inclinations. All these men, each one a brilliant Oxford scholar, were Christians ... professing and acting Christians, confessing Jesus as Lord, worshipping the triune God as Maker of Heaven and Earth, and seeking to live faithful in the fullness of the divine spirit. He was later to say, "An unbeliever can never be too careful what they read and with whom they associate; God has agents everywhere."