In summary, the Law of Non-contradiction still stands.  Like my dear friend, i pray that those of you who can still think, at all, will accept that Jesus Christ is The Living Lord.  And, that Joseph Smith was both a lunatic and a liar.  The Sovereign Lord of All Creation has left to each of us to choose Him; or, not.  I think that Joseph Smith is eternally regretting his wicked folly. Please, dear ones, turn your hearts toward The Saviour.  : )

Although, he does take a veiled swipe at us in “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” (Narnia Book 5) in which he refers to weird neighbors who were teetotalers who wore a peculiar sort of undergarment.

Tatiana B.: “Even Richard Dutcher and Orson Scott Card, who are said to be among the best LDS artists of the day, both have a strong strain of didacticism that, to my mind, greatly detracts from their work.”

Amen to that, sister! I think they are referred to as among the best LDS artists of the day because there’s not a lot of competition. Orson Scott Card is hit and miss. Also, Dutcher left the church last April, citing it was irreconcilable with his artistic expression (I’m paraphrasing). Interesting, since I doubt he has a lot of crossover appeal, and he just alienated his target audience with that pronouncement. But artists are not always the best business people.

In fact, I sometimes wonder if Mormon art and literature as a whole aren’t stuck mostly in mediocrity because they’re so killingly didactic? We Latter-day Saints do constantly immerse ourselves in moral lessons, since our approach to life is based around eternal progression. Even Richard Dutcher and Orson Scott Card, who are said to be among the best LDS artists of the day, both have a strong strain of didacticism that, to my mind, greatly detracts from their work. Does anyone else get this feeling? If so, will this ever improve?

In short, the best way I think Lewis’ fiction could be updated for the current day is for it to be written with a lot less allegory and a lot more story.

And I noticed John N.’s last sentence. Isn’t it Millet who has one wall of LDS books and then another wall of evangelical books? But the book section between carries Lewis’ books?

Of course, I think John’s third to the last sentence is quite a stretch. I would suggest more reading.

Nice post. I look forward to the Bookends to come.

It’s hard to imagine a 21st-century British author writing on these topics and finding an audience. Our world has changed so much since WWII that Lewis would have a harder time finding a publisher, I think. The war temporarily revitalized English Christianity, which had been flagging for some time, especially after the ravages of the Great War. We’ve had over sixty years of secularization since then…

Lewis succeeds for Mormons because he predates the evangelical obsession with trashing us. Evangelicals love him today because he expresses their convictions more eloquently than anyone they’ve produced since. That’s why when the Narnia movies come out, they are a love-feast between evangelicals and Mormons. There were even some formal attempts in this regard to use Lewis as a bridge-builder between the two groups in the Mountain West.

The Bish