11/10/2025
September 19, 1931: J.R.R. Tolkien stayed up all night convincing his atheist friend that Christianity was true.
Nine days later, in a motorcycle sidecar, C.S. Lewis converted.
He became the most influential Christian writer of the century.
1929. Oxford University.
C.S. Lewis was 30 years old, a brilliant English professor, and a committed atheist.
He'd been raised Christian in Northern Ireland, but abandoned faith as a teenager. By his twenties, he was intellectually convinced that God didn't exist, that Christianity was mythology, and that intelligent people shouldn't believe in supernatural nonsense.
But something was shifting.
His studies in literature and philosophy kept confronting him with the same questions: Why do humans across all cultures tell stories about sacrifice and redemption? Why do myths about dying-and-rising gods appear everywhere—Norse mythology, Greek legends, ancient Near Eastern religions?
Why did these stories move him so deeply?
In 1929, Lewis had what he later called a conversion to theism—belief in some kind of God, but not the Christian God. He described himself as "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England," dragged kicking and screaming toward belief in something transcendent.
But Christianity? No. That was still a bridge too far.
The Christian story—Jesus dying and rising—felt to Lewis like just another myth. And unlike the pagan myths he studied and loved, the Christian version came with demands: belief, worship, moral transformation.
Lewis could appreciate Norse mythology about Balder dying and returning. He could be moved by Osiris's resurrection in Egyptian legend. These stories felt profound, meaningful, pointing to something deep about human experience.
But the Christian claim that Jesus actually died and rose? That felt like taking beautiful mythology and ruining it with historical claims that couldn't be proven.
For two years, Lewis wrestled with this contradiction.
Then came September 19, 1931.
That evening, Lewis hosted two friends at his rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford: Hugo Dyson, a fellow English professor, and J.R.R. Tolkien, a philologist and close friend who Lewis had known for years.
Tolkien was a devout Catholic. Dyson was a passionate Christian. Lewis was still resisting.
They started talking after dinner. The conversation turned to mythology, to the power of stories, to why humans need narratives about sacrifice and redemption.
And Tolkien made an argument that would change everything.
He told Lewis: You love these pagan myths because they reflect a deep truth about reality. They're echoes of something real. But what if there's one myth that isn't just echo—what if there's one that actually happened?
Lewis pushed back. If the Christian story really happened, he argued, it loses its mythological power. It becomes mere history, stripped of the transcendent meaning that makes myths compelling.
Tolkien disagreed. What if, he suggested, the Christian story has the power of myth precisely because it's true? What if God authored reality the way Tolkien authored stories—embedding meaning into actual events?
The pagan myths, Tolkien argued, were humanity groping toward a truth they sensed but couldn't articulate. The dying-and-rising god motif appears across cultures because it reflects something real about how redemption works, how death and life are intertwined, how sacrifice transforms.
And then, in Palestine 2,000 years ago, that myth entered history.
The dying-and-rising god wasn't just a story anymore. It became flesh. It walked in Galilee, died in Jerusalem, and rose on the third day.
"The story of Christ," Tolkien said, "is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened."
They talked until 3 AM.
Lewis walked Dyson and Tolkien back to their colleges through the dark Oxford streets. The conversation continued. They discussed metaphor and reality, story and history, myth and truth.
By the time Lewis returned to his rooms as dawn approached, something had cracked open.
He wasn't converted yet. But the intellectual barrier had broken.
For nine days, Lewis thought about that conversation. He read. He prayed—tentatively, awkwardly, not sure who he was praying to.
On September 28, 1931, Lewis and his brother Warren were going to visit Whipsnade Zoo. Warren was driving his motorcycle, and Lewis rode in the sidecar—a contraption attached to the side of the bike where a passenger sat.
When they left Oxford that morning, C.S. Lewis did not believe Jesus was the Son of God.
When they arrived at the zoo, he did.
He later wrote: "When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did."
No dramatic vision. No voice from heaven. Just a quiet shift during a motorcycle ride through the English countryside.
Lewis had become a Christian.
And not just any Christian—he became Christianity's most influential modern apologist.
In 1942, during World War II, the BBC asked Lewis to give a series of radio talks about Christian faith. Britain was being bombed. People were terrified. The government wanted someone who could explain Christianity in clear, reasonable terms to a population facing death.
Lewis gave 15-minute talks that were broadcast across Britain. Millions listened—soldiers, families in bomb shelters, factory workers, ordinary people trying to make sense of suffering and evil.
Those radio talks became the book "Mere Christianity," which has sold millions of copies and is considered one of the most influential Christian books of the 20th century.
Lewis also wrote "The Screwtape Letters," "The Great Divorce," "The Problem of Pain"—books that tackled deep theological questions with wit, clarity, and literary brilliance.
And he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia—children's books that embedded Christian themes in fantasy adventure. Aslan the lion as Christ figure. The stone table as crucifixion. Resurrection and redemption woven into stories about talking animals and magical wardrobes.
Over 100 million Narnia books have been sold. Generations of children encountered Christian ideas through Lewis's storytelling—the same power of myth that Tolkien had convinced Lewis was real.
Lewis died in 1963, the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. His death was overshadowed by that tragedy, but his influence has only grown.
His books have been translated into dozens of languages. His ideas have shaped how millions understand Christianity. His apologetics have convinced countless skeptics to reconsider faith.
All because of one conversation on September 19, 1931.
J.R.R. Tolkien, who would later write The Lord of the Rings and become one of the most beloved fantasy authors ever, convinced his friend that myths could be true—that the story of a dying-and-rising god wasn't just a story.
Tolkien gave Lewis permission to believe intellectually while still honoring the mythological power that had always moved him.
And nine days later, in a motorcycle sidecar on the way to see the zoo, Lewis converted.
The irony is beautiful: Tolkien, the master storyteller who created Middle-earth, helped Lewis see that the greatest story ever told was also true history.
And Lewis, the reluctant convert who loved mythology too much to believe in Christianity, became the writer who showed millions that faith and reason, myth and history, imagination and truth could coexist.
That September night in 1931, two brilliant men talked about gods and sacrifice, death and resurrection, story and reality.
By dawn, the intellectual foundations of Lewis's atheism had crumbled.
Nine days later, Christianity gained its most influential modern voice.
And millions of people—reading Narnia as children, encountering "Mere Christianity" as skeptical adults, listening to those wartime BBC broadcasts in bomb shelters—found faith through the words of a man who once called himself "the most reluctant convert in all England."
All because Tolkien stayed up talking.
All because Lewis was willing to let the myths he loved point him toward a truth he'd resisted.
September 19, 1931.
A conversation that changed literature, apologetics, and countless lives.
The night the atheist professor started believing in true myths.
