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Every year at Easter, C. S. Lewis read The Man Born to Be King (1943), written by his friend and writer of religious works Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957). Her “dramatized . . . life of Christ” was initially a 12-part radio play (1941-42). Sayers’s play was groundbreaking in two ways: she presented a Person of the Trinity on stage, when doing so “had been illegal,” and she “put the dialogue in the language and dialects of mid-20th-century England” — instead of in the King James Version.
Lewis did the same thing in his religious works and in his fantasies — especially The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1949). According to Michael J. Christensen in C. S. Lewis on Scripture (2002), Lewis “saw his chief role in Christianity as ‘that of a translator — one turning Christian doctrine . . . into the vernacular.’ As an apologist this meant writing in a lucid style simple enough for the common man to attend to and understand. ‘If the real theologians had tackled this laborious work of translation about a hundred years ago . . . there would have been no place for me’” (22-23).
What’s the purpose of all this “translation”? So we can present the love of Christ
in a language and manner that will resonate with the common man, woman and child. Presenting the drama of Christ’s life – whether in a simple Easter pageant at a local church, or an elaborate screen play – is one way the Church can resonate the message of Christ.
Click here to read Mark Sommer’s review of The Man Born to Be King.