Which 1931 event marked C.S. Lewis’s return to Christianity?

C.S. Lewis’s conversion to Christianity in 1931 marked his return to Christian belief.

Lewis had been raised in the Church of Ireland but became an atheist during his adolescence. Over time, conversations with writers and scholars—including J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson—helped him reconsider Christianity. Lewis later described a decisive movement toward belief in 1931, after years of intellectual and personal change.

His conversion did not immediately make him a writer of popular Christian apologetics. He first continued his academic career and gradually developed the lectures, broadcasts, essays, and books that made him widely known.

Lewis’s account can be easy to oversimplify. He described an initial return to belief in God and then a further movement toward Christianity, rather than a single dramatic public event. His experience became part of the background to Surprised by Joy, the autobiographical book he published in 1955.