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Clara Sarrocco on a Rabbi's Love for Mere Christianity
"I have met with little of the fabled odium theologicum from convinced members of communions different from my own. Hostility has come more from borderline people. . . . It is at her centre, where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests that at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice."
These words were written by C. S. Lewis in his Preface to Mere Christianity. One usually thinks that by "members of communions different from my own," Lewis meant Christian communities, but he doesn't tell us this. His invitation is to members of all communions who are seeking that Someone by different routes.
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Clara Sarrocco is the longtime secretary of The New York C. S. Lewis Society. She has taught classes on C. S. Lewis at the Institute for Religious Studies at St. Joseph's Seminary and is the president of the Long Island Chapter of University Faculty for Life. Her articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including Touchstone, New Oxford Review, Gilbert, The Chesterton Review, St. Austin's Review, and The International Philosophical Quarterly.
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