The Screwtape Emails

Introduction

  If I'd been able to cook up a narrative structure better than the brilliantly inside-out one C.S. Lewis came up with for The Screwtape Letters to use in telling the story I wanted to tell here, I certainly would have.  The fact is that my habitually negative, devil's advocate, trouble-shooting point of view on these things is best served by precisely what he came up with.

 

  The human events in this story are true, with slight changes made to some of the specifics to protect the anonymity of some.  I don't write this to damn individuals, but rather to expose how these sorts of calamities are achieved, in the interests of avoiding repeating them any more times.  Much of what takes place in this story occurred while I was a child, so my recollection of those events is, naturally, from a child's point of view. 

 

  It is not easy to strive for complete logical consistency and have fun at the same time, but I have done what I could.  Apart from in the "What We Are" email, I have not obsessed overmuch as to theological (or diabological) accuracy in depicting exactly what evil spirits are and what they do, particularly if making them more human than they should be added humour or colour to a work that desperately needed those.

 

  I have co-opted Lewis' story structure in order to tell the tragic story of a group of Christians led astray by their own flawed humanity, rather than, as he did, the story of a single individual.  The events I depict happened in a group of Closed or "Exclusive" Plymouth Brethren Gospel Halls in the 1980s and 90s.  I suppose this has made my story narrower in scope and perhaps in appeal, but this is the story I have to tell.

 

Mike Moore

July 2009