Category: Education

A Two-Year Publishing Anniversary

  

Two years ago this month, this book took its place alongside the multitude of books about C.S. Lewis. Each author hopes to find a niche for his topic; my co-author, Jamin Metcalf, and I believed we had settled on an aspect of Lewis’s life and writings that few others had emphasized: the fact that Lewis not only was a masterful apologist for the Christian faith, a wonderfully imaginative writer of fiction, and a superb analyst in his primary field of… Read more »

A Time of Preparation

  

July and August are my months “off” from teaching, but they aren’t months off for preparation. Although I’m constantly preparing year-round, the absence of teaching during this time allows a greater concentration on what I’ll be doing over the next year. Much of it has to do with C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers. Last month, I received a pleasant surprise when I was contacted by the Wade Center about an article that I had sent in a couple… Read more »

Teaching Lewis & Sayers

  

I’m currently teaching my university course on C. S. Lewis. We have traversed the Lewis universe by reading Surprised by Joy, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and his superb sermon/essay, “Learning in War-time.” We are now deeply embroiled in the third installment of his Ransom Trilogy, That Hideous Strength. Coming attractions: The Last Battle, A Grief Observed, and Lewis’s greatest—in my estimation—sermon/essay of all, “The Weight of Glory.” I wish I could have given them even more;… Read more »

Lewis’s “Learning in War-time”

  

Rev. T. R. Milford, rector of Oxford’s University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, wanted an authority to speak on the importance of continued education in a national crisis. That crisis was the Second World War, which Britain entered in September 1939 after the Nazi invasion of Poland. Why was this topic on the rector’s mind? Some would undoubtedly question—and perhaps some already were questioning—why a university such as Oxford should continue to prioritize academics at a time when all… Read more »

My Lewisian 2025

  

I continue to teach as an adjunct professor at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. This recent adjunct status after fourteen years as a full-time professor at SEU, while distressing at first (a slew of us lost our full-time positions in the wake of COVID), has offered me the grand opportunity of teaching upper-level history courses of my choice. One of those, which I have taught now ever since my academic sabbatical in 2014-2015, is my course on C. S. Lewis…. Read more »

Teaching Lewis

  

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… Read more »

Lewis in Romania: Remembered

  

I look back to where I was one year ago this week and fondly recall some truly precious days in Romania attending a C. S. Lewis conference. It was a blessing to spend time with kindred spirits who love the Lord and who appreciate writers like Lewis, Tolkien, MacDonald, and others who point readers to the ancient truths that are actually timeless. I was asked to speak at the very first panel of the conference, a distinct pleasure and a… Read more »