This Day in History: Kennedy, Lewis, and Huxley
Friday, November 22, 1963 witnessed the deaths of three men—first C. S. Lewis (5:30 p.m., GMT), then John F. Kennedy (1:21 p.m., CST), and finally Aldous Huxley (5:21 p.m., PST). Today marks the 50th anniversary. Though these men’s deaths are a great piece of historical irony; the fact is that they dominated their respective fields and, as such, they warrant our attention. In this article, I will consider, first, what contributions they made and, second, what we can learn from them.
Contributions
a. JFK
Born in 1917, John Fitzgerald “Jack” Kennedy was the youngest of the three. Nevertheless, he was (and is) perhaps the most famous, serving as the United States thirty-fifth President. He was born in Massachusetts to an Irish family. After graduating from Harvard College in 1940, he joined the Navy, where he served America during World War II. After concluding his military career in 1945, Kennedy entered politics.
From 1947-53, Kennedy served in the House, and from 1953-60, the Senate. His years as a senator were busy. He wed Jacqueline Lee Bouvier in September 1953. Then in 1956, his book Profiles of Courage was released, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957. In 1960, Kennedy campaigned for and was elected to the U. S. Presidency.
The election proved an historic one, as he, at the age of forty-three, became the youngest person ever elected (and he still is), as well as the first (and only) Roman Catholic elected as President. In fact, his Catholicism created some controversy during his campaign, prompting him to state, “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic” [1]. Despite his religious profession, his personal life did not reflect a life of faith.
Upon being elected as President, Kennedy famously stated, “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” [2]. During his presidency, Kennedy witnessed the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights marches, student revolution movements, and much more. Then, on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald gunned Kennedy down in Dallas. Kennedy’s assassination dominated the headlines: “Assassin Kills Kennedy” (Chicago Tribune), “President Dead” (The Dallas Times Herald), “Kennedy Slain” (Los Angeles Herald-Examiner), and many more. Significantly though, two other persons of famed repute died on that fateful day as well.
b. Aldous Huxley
Whereas Kennedy was the youngest of these men, Aldous Huxley was the oldest. He is remembered most for his dystopian novel Brave New World (1932), in which he explored themes of consumerism, government, modernity, science, sexuality, technology, and totalitarianism. “Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted,” he would write.
Born in England in 1894, Huxley was a great-nephew of poet Matthew Arnold, author of “Dover Beach,” and a grandson of T. H. Huxley, famed Darwinian scientist who coined the term agnostic. Unlike Kennedy, Huxley showed great interest in the topic of spirituality, though not religion per se. His interest tended toward parapsychology and eastern mysticism (see The Perennial Philosophy, 1945). Still, like his grandfather, Huxley considered himself an agnostic.
In 1937, Huxley moved to Hollywood, where he did some screenwriting, though not very successfully. He even submitted a synopsis for Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, though it was rejected. In the 1950s, Huxley pioneered the use of psychedelic drugs in search of discovery and enlightenment, hence inspiring the hippie movements of the 1960s. Some years later, while on his deathbed, Huxley famously requested LSD. He would die some six hours after Kennedy’s assassination. About two years later, longtime friend Igor Stravinsky, most famous for The Rite of Spring (1913), dedicated his last orchestral piece to him, entitled Variations (1965).
c. “Jack” Lewis
Whereas Kennedy was a leading politician of the period, and Huxley a leading intellectual, Clive Staples “Jack” Lewis was a leading Christian apologist. However, he was not always known for championing Christianity. Born in Belfast, Ireland in 1898, Lewis’ journey of faith began with a childhood skepticism that would progress to an ardent atheism, leading him at the age of nineteen to state unequivocally, “I believe in no God” [3].
Eventually, however, his atheism abated, progressing to an agnosticism, then to theism, and finally to Christianity itself. He often cited George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858) and G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man (1925) as instrumental books in his conversion. He exchanged the same confidence with which he had professed his atheism for a confidence in Christianity. He wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else” [4].
After his conversion to Christianity in the early 1930s, Lewis wrote prolifically. He is most remembered for books such as The Pilgrim’s Regress and Out of the Silent Planet (1930s); The Problem of Pain and The Abolition of Man (1940s); The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity (1950s); and The Four Loves and A Grief Observed (1960s); and many more. In fact, he would write, “My job has always been to defend ‘mere Christianity’”—by which he meant historic, orthodox Christianity [5].
During the ‘60s, Lewis began increasingly struggling with his health. As would Kennedy and Huxley, Lewis died on November 22, 1963. Lewis’ brother later described that day, saying, “Jack faced the prospect bravely and calmly. ‘I have done all I wanted to do, and I’m ready to go,’ he said to me one evening” [6].
Lessons
a. “Between Heaven & Hell”
Especially because these men were significant in their respective contexts, their deaths have attracted some intrigue. In fact, one author based his book around this irony. In Between Heaven & Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley (1982), Peter Kreeft dramatizes a fictional conversation among them according to their prevailing worldviews. In the spirit of a Socratic dialogue, Kreeft presents Kennedy as a humanist, Huxley an Eastern pantheist, and Lewis a Christian theist. As you can imagine, their dialogue covers a wide breadth of topics [7].
Though fictional, many of the words and phrases that Kreeft places on the lips of our subjects are similar to those that they themselves made. To give a brief example, he issues forth these words from Lewis: “[M]ost of my thinking and writing isn’t [original with me]; I’m a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants, as the medievals put it. That’s the key to far-sighted vision: good teachers. My teachers here are some of the early Christians” [8]. For those interested, I recommend Kreeft’s book for what it’s worth.
b. Synthesis
It is difficult to know to what extent these men’s paths actually crossed, if at all. It is at least likely that they would have heard of one another. After all, Kennedy was the United States President, and both Huxley and Lewis were world-famous authors. Huxley had published the famous (or infamous) Brave New World, and Lewis The Screwtape Letters, even appearing on the cover of Time magazine (Sept. 8, 1947). In fact, Lewis had unmistakably read Huxley, as he refers to him as an “agnostic” and his writings as “nonsense” [19].
In these three men, we have three countries represented, three distinct career paths, and three legacies. What are we to make of the ironic timing of their deaths? For one, history is no mere happenstance. It is God’s, Whose guiding hand leads it along. To the Christian, it illustrates how God does not weigh success by the same measure as the world. In His eyes, true success does not stem from worldly status, but from spiritual service.
By all accounts, Lewis is the most deserving of honor. However, by the world’s standards, it is Kennedy who likely wears this crown, and it is Huxley who is more often studied in high school and college courses. Should this bother us? It would not have bothered Lewis, according to Walter Hooper: “It was inevitable that news of Lewis’s death would be somewhat overshadowed by the death the same day of President John F. Kennedy. He would not have minded at all: it was his hidden friendship with God he treasured most” [10].
With approximately 150,000 deaths a day, are we willing that our lives and deaths be overshadowed by those the world deems more important [11]? What legacy do we wish to leave, in our families, towns, nations? In the end, no amount of fame, money, or popularity much matters—only fidelity to God and to His Word. As Lewis writes, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done’” [12]. In the end, this matters and this alone.
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[1] John F. Kennedy, “Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association” (12 September 1960), American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches, accessed November 4, 2013, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkhoustonministers.html.
[2] John F. Kennedy, “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You: Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961,” Historic Documents, accessed November 4, 2013, http://www.ushistory.org/documents/ask-not.htm.
[3] C. S. Lewis, “Letter to Arthur Greeves” (June 3, 1918), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Volume I): Family Letters 1905-1931, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 379.
[4] C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” (1945), The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1976), 116-140.
[5] C. S. Lewis, “Letter to Mary Van Deusen” (June 11, 1951), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Volume 3): Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 125-126.
[6] Warren Hamilton Lewis, “Memior,” The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Volume 3), 1484.
[7] Some of these topics include the reality of a literal heaven and hell; the meaning of purgatory; the place of the authority of God, Scripture, the Church, and man; the belief in absolute truth; the natural and moral attributes of God; the incarnation; the divinity of Christ; the belief in miracles; the role of reason in faith; Lewis’ trilemma; questions of form, grammatical, historical, and textual criticism; chronological snobbery; Christian heresies such as Arianism, Gnosticism, Manicheeism; Christian mysticism; and more.
[8] Peter Kreeft, Between Heaven & Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1982), 34.
[9] Lewis, “Letter to Dorothy L. Sayers” (April 4, 1955), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Volume 3, 594-95; Lewis, “Letter to Arthur Greeves” (December 6, 1931), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Volume 2): Books, Broadcasts, and the War 1931-1949, Walter Hooper (ed.) (2004), 24.
See also Lewis, “Letter to Dom Bede Griffiths” (April 15, 1947), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Volume 2), 770; Lewis, “Letter to Stella Aldwinckle” (June 6, 1950), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Volume 3, 34; Lewis, “Letter to Wayland Hilton Young” (July 1, 1952), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Volume 3, 212.
[10] Hooper, The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Volume 3, 1485.
[11] “World Population Clock,” Worldometers: Real Time World Statistics, Accessed November 4, 2013, http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/.
[12] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 75 (italics in original).
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