Lewis did not believe in the false theology and caricatures of the devil that have developed over the centuries—whether through art, literature or even today’s sports mascots (think Duke and Arizona State).

While a Gallup poll earlier this summer showed that nine in 10 Americans still believe in God, a survey by the Barna Group released last week found that only 43% of Americans believe the devil to be a “living entity,” as opposed to a symbol of evil.

Among the educated elite today, talking publicly about one’s belief in the devil and his influence on the culture and the world would be social suicide. The same was no less true in 1947, when Oxford don C.S. Lewis addressed this subject in an interview with Time magazine.

“Lewis (like T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, et al.) is one of a growing band of heretics among modern intellectuals: an intellectual who believes in God,” Time reported. “It is not a mild and vague belief, for he accepts ‘all the articles of the Christian faith’—which means that he also believes in sin and in the Devil.”

The Time article went on to note: “Since 1941, when Lewis published a witty collection of infernal correspondence called ‘The Screwtape Letters,’ this middle-aged (49) bachelor professor who lives a mildly humdrum life (‘I like monotony’) has sold something over a million copies of his 15 books. He has made 29 radio broadcasts on religious subjects, each to an average of 600,000 listeners.”

C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters” first appeared in the Guardian from May 2, 1941, to Nov. 28, 1941, before being published as a book in 1942. It became an immediate bestseller and has remained popular; 20th Century Fox hopes to make a movie based on “Screwtape” in the next few years.

Over the years, “The Screwtape Letters” has captured the imagination of a wide spectrum of admirers from Monty Python’s John Cleese (who narrated a famous audio version) to Focus on the Family (which recently published a dramatic audio version of their own).

Mr. Murray is headmaster of Fourth Presbyterian School in Potomac, Md.
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