Reflections on God … Man … Life
This is a very interesting and productive time in my life. Normally, that isn’t the case for someone who has passed the 70 mark, but I don’t know when I’ve felt more in tune with what the Lord has me doing. And a lot of that centers around C. S. Lewis. At the university where I taught full-time for thirteen years and now serve as an adjunct professor, I’m teaching my Lewis course to twenty-one students. Most of these students,… Read more »
What does the title of this blog post mean? It sounds kind of contradictory, doesn’t it? Yet it expresses what is happening in my thinking and reflections on God, man, the church, our society, and the political ramifications that flow from our beliefs about all of those. If you have been a regular reader of my blog over the years, you probably already know some of the thought processes I’ve been experiencing, especially in the last six or seven years…. Read more »
Regular readers of my blog know that I am in the process of developing a course at my church on C. S. Lewis’s “Ransom Trilogy.” Although I’ve taught the third in the series a number of times, I’ve never attempted to cover all three, but I’m looking forward to helping tell Lewis’s tale to those who are unaware of it and who don’t know the underlying themes that Lewis explores. The background that led to Lewis writing the trilogy began… Read more »
My upper-level history adjunct offering this semester at Southeastern University is a course I’ve taught only once before but am eager to do so again. It’s the final one I developed when I was full-time at the university: Religion and the Presidents. The aim is to examine and analyze each president’s religious beliefs (or sometimes the lack thereof) and personal character to see how those beliefs showed up in their personal lives and in their public policies when they became… Read more »
In a previous post, I laid out what I hope is a God-inspired plan to examine what C. S. Lewis had to say about history: its significance, its limitations, how Christians should view it. I’m on this path of research because I am a historian and have taught history at the university level for more than thirty years. If this research leads to presentations at conferences, articles in journals, or even a book, to be it. If it leads to… Read more »
I’ve been praying about a new C. S. Lewis project. As a historian whose specialized field of study has always been American history, the Lord opened up a niche for me back in 2014-2015 when I had an academic sabbatical. Research at the Wade Center at Wheaton College convinced me that no one had adequately covered Lewis’s connections to Americans. With help from the Wade and from Walter Hooper, the research grew into a published book in 2016. America Discovers… Read more »
Cliches can be true. Nearly everyone is familiar with “when one door closes, God will open another one” (yes, there are slight variations to it, but the point is made, I trust). I’ve found that to be the case in my life. Academic doors closed for me a number of times, but there was always a new door that opened almost immediately afterward. The latest closed door led to my church hiring me as a teacher with the specific task… Read more »