General conference takes place two times a year (April and October) as a global gathering where members from around the world pause to learn from Church leaders about the gospel of Jesus Christ. The conference is streamed and broadcast live in over 80 languages, allowing people anywhere to access it in gatherings large and small and in homes and family settings. Regular Sunday services in Church meetinghouses are not held on the weekends when general conference takes place.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nSomewhere in the long tradition of that pulpit stands an unlikely figure. He was an Oxford don born in Belfast in 1898, a Church of England communicant, a man who enjoyed his pipe and his pint and recited the Nicene Creed. He died on November 22, 1963, the same afternoon John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, and his passing went largely unnoticed. Yet for half a century Clive Staples Lewis has been quoted from Latter-day Saint pulpits more often than nearly any other writer outside the faith. His presence is so constant that one Latter-day Saint website proposed, only half in jest, that he deserves an honorary ecclesiastical title.<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe paradox is sharp. Lewis knew the Latter-day Saints only from a distance, and what little he said about them was not warm. In a letter to a correspondent in Salt Lake City, he objected, in so many words, to any church that made total abstinence from alcohol a condition of membership, calling such a requirement a \u201ctyrannic and unscriptural insolence.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span> He regarded the Book of Mormon as Joseph Smith\u2019s own composition, modeled on the Bible the way Milton\u2019s epic was modeled on Virgil. And yet, according to Brigham Young University historian Mary Jane Woodger, proxy baptism and the temple endowment have since been performed on his behalf. Few figures illustrate so vividly the gap between being quoted and being agreed with.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThis essay examines that gap from the standpoint of historic, creedal Christianity. Its argument is threefold. First<\/strong><\/span>, the Latter-day Saints’ use of Lewis is overwhelmingly a matter of borrowed illustration rather than shared doctrine. Second<\/strong><\/span>, where Lewis has been pressed into doctrinal service, most conspicuously on the question of human deification, he has been misread in ways his own writings refute. Third<\/strong><\/span>, the sheer frequency of quotation has produced, among many ordinary members, an impression of theological kinship that the evidence cannot sustain. Remarkably, the most careful Latter-day Saint scholars concede much of this. The question is not whether Latter-day Saints may admire Lewis; anyone may, and many evangelicals wish more of their own people read him. The question is whether admiration has been allowed to blur a distinction Lewis himself guarded jealously: the difference between the language of Christian devotion and the content of Christian doctrine.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe discussion proceeds in stages. It first measures the phenomenon, then places it in the historical development of Latter-day Saint thought, then examines what Lewis actually knew and said. It next traces five doctrinal fault lines that run beneath the shared vocabulary, tests two popular claims made by Latter-day Saint writers online, and asks why Lewis, rather than any of a half-dozen other great Christian authors, became the borrowed voice of choice. A final section states the Latter-day Saint case as fairly as possible before drawing conclusions.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u2726 \u2766 \u2726<\/span><\/p>\nI. Measuring the Phenomenon<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\nFrom a Single Reference to a Permanent Fixture<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nThe most careful census of Lewis\u2019s presence in official Latter-day Saint discourse remains Mary Jane Woodger\u2019s study, first presented at a BYU Religious Studies Center symposium and published in 2000. Woodger found no references to Lewis by general authorities until the year of his death,<\/strong> <\/span>when Richard L. Evans mentioned him in a book. Lewis did not appear in a general conference address until October 1977, when Paul H. Dunn of the Seventy quoted a single aphorism. From that modest beginning, his use grew steadily. Woodger counted roughly 130 Lewis citations in the works of general authorities, including some ninety-five in books they authored, and she identified Elder Neal A. Maxwell as the driving force behind the trend, with Elder Jeffrey R. Holland next in line.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWoodger\u2019s study also corrected an inflated popular claim. Contrary to the oft-repeated assertion that Lewis was the most-quoted non-Latter-day Saint in conference history, she found that within her window both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abraham Lincoln outpaced him, and her figures place Lewis on roughly eighteen conference occasions against some 1,347 addresses delivered between 1977 and 1997. Later counts, measured over different periods, reached different results. Writing for the <\/span><\/span>Deseret News<\/i><\/span><\/span> in 2013, attorney James Jardine reported that since 1971 Lewis had been cited thirty-one times in conference talks against twenty for Shakespeare. A 2009 <\/span><\/span>Deseret News<\/i><\/span><\/span> report by Michael De Groote, summarizing the research of Marianna Richardson and Christine Thackeray, put Lewis at roughly one hundred references in church-sponsored publications, about a third of them in conference, and thousands across Latter-day Saint writing generally.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\u201cBut Mormons love C. S. Lewis.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u2014 Michael De Groote, <\/span><\/span>Deseret News<\/i><\/span><\/span>, June 5, 2009<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.deseret.com\/2009\/6\/5\/20321778\/what-c-s-lewis-thought-about-mormons\/<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe precise ranking matters less than the pattern. Lewis has become an ambient presence in Latter-day Saint religious culture, heard from stake pulpits and Relief Society lessons as readily as from the Conference Center. Deseret Book, the church-owned retailer, sold more than two thousand Lewis volumes in a single year in the late 1990s, according to Woodger, and it continues to stock his major works.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWho Quotes Him, and How<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nThe roster of Lewis\u2019s Latter-day Saint quoters is distinguished. Elder Maxwell, who once referred to Lewis as \u201cour friend,\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span> wove him into dozens of books. Elders James E. Faust and Dallin H. Oaks, now President of the Church, praised his insight. The late President Jeffrey R. Holland, who died in December 2025, drew on him repeatedly. The single most influential instance came in April 1989, when President Ezra Taft Benson delivered \u201cBeware of Pride,\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span> perhaps the most widely remembered Latter-day Saint sermon of the late twentieth century. Benson credited Lewis once, but Evan Stephenson, writing in <\/span><\/span>Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought<\/i><\/span><\/span>, set Benson\u2019s key sentences beside the chapter on pride in <\/span><\/span>Mere Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/span> and demonstrated that the sermon\u2019s architecture tracked Lewis closely, point by point. Woodger reached the same conclusion: much of the talk, she judged, was couched in Lewis\u2019s own examples.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nA Latter-day Saint website\u2019s catalogue of conference uses illustrates the range. Barbara B. Smith quoted Lewis on the dignity of homemaking in 1979; Marvin J. Ashton used his parable of the house God rebuilds into a palace; Rex D. Pinegar borrowed his insight that life\u2019s interruptions are life itself; Robert L. Backman cited his summons to surrender the whole natural self; Holland invoked his claim that no square inch of the universe is neutral ground; Susan W. Tanner quoted his meditation on a society of \u201cpossible gods and goddesses\u201d;<\/strong><\/span> and Tad R. Callister deployed his famous trilemma concerning Jesus\u2019 identity.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\u201cHe May as Well Be \u201cElder\u201d C. S. Lewis\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u2014 Jasmine Turner, headline, +Faith (AddFaith.org), August 1, 2018<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/addfaith.org\/blog\/faith\/lds-conference\/he-may-as-well-be-elder-c-s-lewis\/<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nMost of these citations are ethical or devotional: they concern pride, suffering, discipline, and love, subjects on which nearly all Christians agree. Two of them, however, are doctrinally freighted, and they reveal the deeper dynamic this essay will explore. Tanner\u2019s \u201cgods and goddesses\u201d<\/strong> <\/em><\/span>passage has been read by Latter-day Saint writers as an endorsement of exaltation. Callister\u2019s trilemma, originally Lewis\u2019s argument that Jesus\u2019 self-claims leave no room for treating him as a mere moral teacher, was redeployed in a talk titled \u201cThe Book of Mormon\u2014a Book from God,\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span> lending Lewis\u2019s logic to a book Lewis himself regarded as a human composition. In these two moves, illustration quietly becomes confirmation.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u2726 \u2766 \u2726<\/span><\/p>\nII. The Historical Setting: From Restoration Exclusivism to Christian Kinship<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\nA Faith Founded on the Apostasy of Others<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nTo understand why Latter-day Saint leaders reach for Lewis, one must recall how differently the movement began. The Restoration rested on the premise of a Great Apostasy: the claim that, after the death of the apostles, authority and essential truth were lost from the earth until restored through Joseph Smith. In the canonized 1838 account of his First Vision, Smith reports being told that the creeds of the existing churches were an abomination and their professors corrupt. As Blair Dee Hodges observes in <\/span><\/span>Dialogue<\/i><\/span><\/span>, condemnation of apostate Christendom appears in each of Smith\u2019s known accounts of the vision. Early Latter-day Saints did not seek allies among the Protestant clergy; they defined themselves against them. Stephenson notes in passing that nineteenth-century apostles such as Orson Pratt and Charles W. Penrose had nothing kind to say about the Church of England, Lewis\u2019s own communion.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe social and political climate deepened the separation. Driven from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, the Saints gathered in the Great Basin, practiced plural marriage openly from 1852, and endured decades of federal prosecution. In that isolation, Latter-day Saint theology developed along lines sharply distinct from creedal Christianity. Joseph Smith\u2019s 1844 King Follett discourse taught that God himself was once a man; Lorenzo Snow\u2019s famous couplet summarized the trajectory: \u201cAs man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span> Revelations taught that the Father has a body of flesh and bones (D&C 130:22) and that intelligence was not created or made (D&C 93:29). None of this sought or required the approval of Oxford.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe Turn Toward Respectability<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nThe twentieth century reversed the polarity. After the 1890 Manifesto and Utah statehood, the church steadily assimilated into American life, and by mid-century it sought recognition as a respectable, patriotic, and recognizably Christian body. Lewis\u2019s American popularity surged in exactly these decades. Woodger notes that he was firmly established in American literary and religious circles by the 1950s and reached mass popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, the same years Elder Maxwell, a former university administrator, rose through church leadership carrying a well-thumbed library of Lewis. Maxwell credited President Harold B. Lee with teaching him that the church need not fear truth from outside sources. The doctrinal warrant came from Joseph Smith\u2019s own maxim, frequently cited in this context, that Mormonism receives truth \u201clet it come from whence it may.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBy the 1990s, the question \u201cAre Mormons Christian?\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span> had become a public controversy, pressed by evangelical critics and answered by Latter-day Saint scholars such as Robert L. Millet, who led formal academic dialogues with evangelicals. Millet himself suggests that the Saints\u2019 attraction to Lewis may be connected to these attacks: Lewis\u2019s famous refusal, in the preface to <\/span><\/span>Mere Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/span>, to adjudicate who is or is not a Christian in the deepest sense offered welcome shelter. Millet adds a second, sociological observation: a lay church whose Sunday sermons are delivered by ordinary members may be especially inclined to adopt writers who reduce difficult ideas to memorable images.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\u201cI have no intention of contorting him into one.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u2014 Robert L. Millet, \u201cThe Theology of C. S. Lewis: A Latter-day Saint Perspective,\u201d <\/span><\/span>Interpreter<\/i><\/span><\/span> 40 (2020)<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/scholarsarchive.byu.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1309&context=interpreter<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe trajectory, then, is clear. A movement that began by declaring the creeds an abomination came, a century and a half later, to quote with deep affection the twentieth century\u2019s most effective defender of those creeds. Lewis served a purpose that no Latter-day Saint author could serve: he was an unimpeachably orthodox Christian voice whose ecumenical reticence allowed him to be quoted without endorsing any rival church\u2019s claim to authority. That usefulness, however, is precisely what makes his doctrinal use so precarious.<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u2726 \u2766 \u2726<\/span><\/p>\nIII. What Lewis Himself Knew and Said<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\nSome Latter-day Saints imagine Lewis as a man who simply never encountered the Restoration and would have embraced it had he done so. The record does not support the picture.<\/strong> <\/span>Stephenson documents that Lewis had heard of the Book of Mormon and, in his lecture on the literary impact of the Authorized Version, classed it as a work based on the Bible in the way Milton\u2019s epic was based on Virgil. The implication is unmistakable: as Milton was the author of <\/span><\/span>Paradise Lost<\/i><\/span><\/span>, Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe letter to the Salt Lake City correspondent, preserved in Lewis\u2019s collected letters and discussed by De Groote, Hodges, and Millet alike, is more direct. Lewis disclaimed expertise in interdenominational disputes, which he called regrettable, and then registered his strong objection to any church that made teetotalism a condition of membership. In the fuller text, quoted by the evangelical ministry MormonInfo, he adds that Christ turned water into wine and made wine the medium of the one rite he imposed on all his followers, and he dismisses the requirement as provincial. W. Clayton Kimball, a Latter-day Saint admirer who surveyed Lewis\u2019s entire corpus for BYU Studies in 1972, concluded, by Stephenson\u2019s report, that none of the plausible references to the church could be called sympathetic.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nFairness requires restraint here. Some critics have speculated that the vegetarian, teetotaling Scrubb family in <\/span><\/span>The Voyage of the Dawn Treader<\/i><\/span><\/span> was a jab at Latter-day Saints, but De Groote rightly notes that Lewis\u2019s stepson Douglas Gresham described the Scrubbs as simple faddists. Anti-Mormon readers can over-read Lewis as easily as Latter-day Saint readers can. The point is not that Lewis was hostile; it is that he was uninterested, and where he did engage, he dissented.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nLewis also left explicit instructions about how to read his silences. In the preface to <\/span><\/span>Mere Christianity,<\/i><\/span><\/span> he asked readers not to draw fanciful inferences from what he declined to discuss and said that his own views on disputed matters were no secret: they could be found in the Book of Common Prayer. He was, in other words, an Anglican who expected to be read as one. He also knew how readers behave.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\u201cAlmost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u2014 C. S. Lewis, <\/span><\/span>Reflections on the Psalms<\/i><\/span><\/span> (1958), as cited by Evan Stephenson<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
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