Ever since my research and writing focus changed to C. S. Lewis during my university sabbatical in 2014-2015, I was hoping for opportunities to teach about this man who has impacted my thinking and life goals so directly. Beginning in 2018, that desire found an outlet at the church where I now worship–All Saints’ Episcopal in Lakeland, Florida.
The church has a robust educational ministry [known as Parish Academy], and I have found my place in that ministry. While my teaching at the church also has incorporated my lifelong study of history—after all, I was eventually awarded a doctorate in that field, albeit a little later in life than most—I have been granted the liberty to share the treasures that Lewis offers.
The first class I taught about Lewis was his Screwtape Letters.
Since this was my introduction to teaching at the church, and I knew that many were unfamiliar with details of Lewis’s life and writings, I interspersed the highlights of his life with an examination of the wit and wisdom contained in Screwtape.
In the fall of 2018, I followed that up with another Lewis classic: Mere Christianity.
As you can see, I combined that classic with a book that will probably never become a classic in the same sense, but one rather dear to my heart—my first book on Lewis titled America Discovers C. S. Lewis: His Profound Impact. While teaching this class, I accepted an invitation to come to the Wade Center at Wheaton College to speak about my recent book, so this was truly a Lewis-centered semester.
As I was wondering what to offer next from Lewis, the rector of the church suggested a two-semester presentation on The Chronicles of Narnia.
Inundation in the Narnian tales was more fruitful than I expected. Drawing upon many good resources from those who have gone before me, and using video clips from the Narnian films (as well as the BBC version of The Silver Chair), each session was a delight to offer. Then COVID hit just as I was trying to finish The Magician’s Nephew. At first, I thought I would not be able to complete the series, but the Zoom that we’ve all come to know and love [?] came to the rescue.
As COVID lingered into the next year, I began offering classes both in person (for those willing to brave personal contact) and on Zoom simultaneously, and have continued to do so ever since. My first hybrid class was one I thought of as a way to use a theme for a number of Lewis’s writings. I called it “C. S. Lewis on Life, Death, and Eternity.”
As you can see from my choice of Lewis’s writings, I began with his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, which begins with him having to deal with the death of his mother, then how he ultimately found true life in Christ. A few select chapters in The Problem of Pain highlighted the issue of eternity, The Great Divorce gave an imaginative glimpse into death and eternity and A Grief Observed, the most poignant and personal of all of Lewis’s writings, dealt with how he responded to the death of his wife and what he learned. “The Weight of Glory” sermon/essay was a fitting and inspirational way to end the class.
I really wanted to help people grasp the significance of Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy, so I worked diligently to expand on the themes within those three books and taught it to a rather wide audience, as I advertised it on all the Lewis Facebook pages. A good number of Lewis readers from other countries—Poland, Romania, Australia, to name just a few—watched the recordings of these sessions.
It was so satisfying to know that what I was teaching was going, literally, around the world.
Wanting to do something a little different, yet not shoving Lewis aside, led me to develop a class on some of the writers that Lewis appreciated. I called it “Writers C. S. Lewis Admired.”
You can see the ones I chose. Lewis readers know how appreciative he was of George MacDonald, who first initiated him into holiness without even knowing it at the time. G. K. Chesterton was one of Lewis’s favorite writers even before he converted to Christianity. J.R.R. Tolkien, of course, was his firm friend and colleague, and Lewis was his foremost encourager and promoter for The Lord of the Rings. And he loved the power of Dorothy L. Sayers’s works, especially her radio plays The Man Born to Be King and her new translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I looked upon this class as significant in introducing all of these writers to an audience that only knew of them tangentially.
Lewis wrote so many formidable essays, so I hoped to expand my audience’s appreciation of those as well as his many books.
As formidable as the essays themselves was the task I had given myself to choose which of the many essays were the most important. I divided them into the categories noted above, which helped me cull through and find the best of the best.
Last year, when my second book about Lewis was published, I taught a class specifically on the book, with the students reading along with me.
There was a book launch for it when I spoke at the Lewis conference in Romania in November 2023. While I was teaching this class at the church in April-June of this year, I also went back to the Wade Center to speak about it there, along with my co-author. It was a good “Lewis year.”
What’s next? Well, I’ve already developed a class on The Four Loves that will be offered in the spring of 2025.
Beginning with the last four books of Narnia, all the rest of these classes are now available to watch at the church’s website at this link: https://www.allsaintsweb.org/programming/parish-academy-classes
I don’t think I’m done teaching Lewis at the church, but I’ll go forward one step at a time as the Lord leads. It is a joyful journey, one for which I am profoundly grateful.