Broadcast Talks introduced the radio talks later published as C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.
Lewis delivered the talks for the BBC during the Second World War. The first series was broadcast in 1941 under the title Broadcast Talks. Later series were called Christian Behaviour and Beyond Personality. The talks were eventually revised and collected in book form as Mere Christianity, first published in 1952.
The book presents a case for what Lewis called “mere Christianity,” meaning the core beliefs shared across many Christian traditions rather than the distinctive doctrines of one denomination. Its famous opening discussion uses the idea of a moral law, and its later sections address Christian conduct and doctrine.
Readers sometimes assume Mere Christianity was originally the broadcast title. It was instead the later book title, chosen after the separate radio series had been edited and combined. The broadcasts made Lewis widely known beyond academic and literary circles, establishing him as a prominent public Christian communicator.