Who Talked C.S. Lewis Into Believing in God?

For years, C.S. Lewis was a committed atheist — a brilliant Oxford don who had carefully reasoned his way out of faith and felt settled about it.

Then he started meeting with a group of writers at a pub called The Eagle and Child in Oxford. They called themselves the Inklings. They read each other drafts, argued about mythology, and drank beer.

One of them was J.R.R. Tolkien.

Tolkien believed that myths and stories were how God spoke to humanity — that the great stories humans kept telling weren't escapes from reality but glimpses of it. He argued this with Lewis for years.

On September 19, 1931, after a long late-night walk through Addison's Walk at Magdalen College, Lewis wrote to a friend: 'I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ.'

Tolkien had spent twelve years in that conversation.

Lewis went on to write 'Mere Christianity,' 'The Screwtape Letters,' and 'The Chronicles of Narnia' — some of the most widely read works of faith in the twentieth century.

Tolkien later said, with characteristic dryness, that he always felt Lewis hadn't given enough credit to Catholics.

The right conversation, with the right person, over enough time, can change everything. Most great turnings happen in a pub.