When C.S. Lewis's British biographer, A.N. Wilson, visited Wheaton College in Illinois in the 1980s to view a collection of Lewis's papers enshrined there, what he found amused him. The college, best known for graduating Billy Graham, was and is stoutly evangelical; you can't drink or smoke on campus, and even dancing was forbidden until 2003.

Lewis, on the other hand, while not much of a dancer, smoked like a chimney (the foundation that maintains his former home in Oxford has painted its parlor ceiling a dingy yellow to...