The Most Reluctant Convert

 

Ever since I began following the work of David Icke I've become fascinated by people who experience a "kundalini" or spiritual emergence crisis, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2020/08/david-icke-portal.html. For these people, the experience is often not as it is depicted by the New Age. It can be unpleasant, chaotic and disturbing; but after it has happened I've never heard anybody say they wish it hadn't. One of the most interesting people to have undergone this process is CS Lewis, mostly because he is also a prolific and articulate writer and described his feelings in great detail. He wrote about it in a book called Surprised by Joy. This has been adapted into a stage play by Max McLean called The Most Reluctant Convert, and he has now made it into a film. It stars Max in the eponymous role, something he does very well. For an American actor his accent is perfect and he really gets inside the personality of his subject. I was familiar with CS Lewis as a child because his Chronicles of Narnia series were some of my favourite books; but when I grew up I took more of an interest in the man himself. In this movie Max McLean's portrayal of Clive Staples Lewis carries out a fourth wall monologue combined with drama; and often a blend of the two. He sometimes appears as an unseen character in the flashbacks to his childhood in Northern Ireland, or at school or as a student and fellow at Oxford. Living in Oxford myself I recognized the locations; The White Hart Pub on Broad Street, Queens Lane, the University Parks and Lewis' home in Risinghurst. Lewis' background was devout Ulster Protestant, yet he lost his faith as a child when his mother died and he fought in the Great War. He was a complete atheist and didn't start to question his disbelief until he was given private tuition by a very wise teacher whom he loved, William Thompson Kirkpatrick, nicknamed "The Great Knock". I expect the character Prof. Kirk in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is inspired by him. This is one of many intrusions of his fiction into his life story that I spotted. Despite having a very detailed and comprehensive conviction that atheo-materialism was true, he started to entertain alternative ideas. He had always described the world as full of misery and cruelty, but wondered why he thought that when there was nothing to compare it to. "I can't think of a line as crooked unless I know somewhere deep down there must be a straight line somewhere." as he puts it. At Oxford he had long discussions with his friend Owen Barfield and another he called "Tollers" who was actually JRR Tolkien, a fellow author, mystic and Catholic gnostic. This raised more questions in his mind.

It was obviously a strange experience, but CS Lewis describes this upheaval almost as a chase, with God trying to catch him and him trying to run away; this explains the title of the play and film. At the same time, paradoxically, he called this new revelation "Joy", hence the title of the book. This word distinguishes it from happiness or contentment, something that emerges from inside us instead as from outside; in this way it reminds me of my thoughts about melancholy, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2026/03/being-sad.html. At the same time as feeling joyful he was also sad. He felt that something else he valued about the universe as he saw it was being worn away. The film does not cover it and I have not read the book, but like most people in his position, at that time, he was probably not easy to get on with. He may well have fallen out with friends and found his relationship with family become very rocky. Some of his mental breakthroughs came in strangely prosaic situations. One burst of revelation came when he was riding on a bus up Headington Hill. I've done the same many times and I've never had any sudden insights. It's a very pleasant part of Oxford, an avenue of great oaks and chestnuts with parks on either side; but I don't consider it transcendental. The final change came when he was travelling with his brother Warren to visit Whipsnade Zoo in 1931. He was sitting in a motorcycle sidecar and realized he was a Christian believer. (Lewis' biographer Alister McGrath claims this journey happened the previous year, 1930, but that the author got it mixed up. This comes from the chronology of Lewis' letters and chapel records from Magdalen College Oxford. Lewis was writing in 1955, many years later.) After that he was a regular in the congregation of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry for the rest of his life, a short walk from where he lived. He was buried there when he died in November 1963. Oddly enough this happened on the 22nd, the same day as the Kennedy assassination, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2023/11/jfk-portal.html; and amazingly another esoteric writer, Aldous Huxley, also passed away that day, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2008/07/everyone-knows-what-happened-on.html. What an intriguing coincidence! The Most Reluctant Convert- The Untold Story of CS Lewis is short for a feature film, just an hour and a quarter, but it is very entertaining, well acted and has great production design. It can be rented or bought on the usual platforms (but of course I recommend getting the DVD if you enjoyed it, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2026/06/memory-holed-movies_0503601583.html) See: https://cslewismovie.com.
See here for background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/skeptics-portal.html.