The Wartime BBC Broadcasts Of C.S. Lewis

by Rick Nau

London, 6 August, 1941. The Germans have just finished dropping over 700 tons of bombs on London in a horrific, 56 day aerial attack known as The Blitz. Even so, C. S. Lewis sits in a broadcast booth of the BBC and delivers his first radio broadcast to a nation fighting for its life. The subject: Right and Wrong, A Clue To The Meaning Of The Universe.

Over the next two years, Lewis follows with 24 more broadcasts, at one point reaching almost 1.5 million people in a single broadcast. Eventually, he molds these broadcasts into Mere Christianity, one of the most popular books on Christianity ever written. In his preface to the book, Lewis explains why he wrote it (and why the BBC broadcasts): “Ever since I became a Christian I have thought that the best, perhaps the only, service I could do for my unbelieving neighbors was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times.”

Now, almost 80 years later, brilliant re-enactments of 13 of these broadcasts can be seen and heard around the world. What you’ll find here is a compilation of these re-enactments and a few words describing what each is about. This will allow you to navigate your way through the videos (and easily return to them later by coming back to this post) without having to wade through YouTube, where the videos are somewhat difficult to locate. Unfortunately, only one of the original recordings remains, Beyond Personality: The New Man, which is the 14th broadcast given below.

And so we begin.

1) Right And Wrong, A Clue To The Meaning Of The Universe—Common Decency—How we find evidence of The Moral Law, that which tells us how we ought to behave, by simply listening to how people quarrel.

2) The Reality Of The Moral Law—We do not always obey The Moral Law.

3) What Lies Behind The Moral Law—From where came The Moral Law?

4) We Have Cause To Be Uneasy—The connection between The Moral Law, God & Christianity.

5) Some Objections to The Moral Law—Answers to objections we might have about the nature of The Moral Law.

6) The Rival Conceptions of God—How Christianity differs from other religions (and atheism).

7) The Invasion—Why viewing Christianity as simple is the wrong view.

8) The Shocking Alternative—How God’s will can allow for evil; and who is Christ?

9) The Three Parts Of Morality—As the title suggests, Lewis discusses the three parts of morality.

10) The Cardinal Virtues—Past ways that morality has been been divided into parts.

11) Sexual Morality—How Christian morality applies to sex.

12) Christian Marriage—An in-depth look into the Christian view of marriage.

13) Making and Begetting—Why Theology is important and what it tells us about ourselves and God.

14) Beyond Personality: The New Man (only surviving radio broadcast by C.S. Lewis)—Lewis begins by answering questions people may have about prayer, then moves on to explain how, through Christ, we are transformed from “The Old Man” to “The New Man.”

And so we end, not abruptly, but with links to Mere Christianity, a book that will help lead us farther in the most important spiritual odyssey of our lives.