C.S. Lewis delivered the talks later collected as Mere Christianity on the BBC.
The broadcasts were made during the Second World War, beginning in 1941. Lewis spoke on BBC radio about basic Christian beliefs in language intended for a broad audience rather than only for theologians. The talks were later revised and published in book form.
Mere Christianity is not a verbatim transcript of a single broadcast series. Lewis’s radio talks were issued in stages, and the material was subsequently collected and edited into the familiar book. The title refers to the shared core of Christian belief rather than to a separate denomination.
The BBC broadcasts made Lewis nationally known in Britain and helped establish his public reputation as a Christian writer and speaker. A common mistake is to describe Mere Christianity as a novel or as a church-produced publication. It began as wartime radio talks, then became one of Lewis’s most influential nonfiction works.