1 A MERE CHRISTIAN AND A BAPTIST TOO ∗ Douglas K. Blount Asked about his religious commitments, a fellow graduate student—who subsequently became, and remains, a dear friend—answered, “I am what C. S. Lewis called a ‘mere Christian.’” Motivated both by a desire to lay aside any encumbrance to unity among God’s children and by an awareness of his own fallibility in doctrinal matters, my friend had decided not to affiliate himself with any particular Christian denomination, group, or sect. He attempted to hold only those beliefs found in the earliest Christian creeds, beliefs “common to nearly all Christians at all times.” 1 While I appreciated both his concern for unity and his theological humility, I nonetheless thought my friend’s reluctance to identify with a particular community ill-advised. After all, in the preface to Mere Christianity, Lewis himself writes, I hope no reader will suppose that “mere” Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions—as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable. 2 Of course, it seems obviously important that one not confuse one’s own denominational context with the church, as if no one outside it belongs to Christ. But it also seems important—though perhaps less obviously so—that those who remain in the merely Christian hall cut themselves off from the very fellowship which my friend desired to promote. For fellowship comes within community, and Christian communities are located within Lewis’ rooms, not his hall. Nowhere ∗ This article is published in Why I Am A Baptist, ed. Tom J. Nettles and Russell D. Moore (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001), 173-79. 1 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 6. 2 Lewis, 11-12.