Category: The Christian Spirit

Reflections on living as a disciple of Christ.

Lewis: Writing to Please the Ear & the Eye

  

By now, regular readers of this blog know that I like to fill Saturdays with what I’m gleaning from my study of C. S. Lewis. I just completed writing the fourth chapter in my proposed book on Lewis’s impact on Americans. That chapter looks at the relationship between Lewis and Walter Hooper, an American who visited him in 1963 and became his private secretary for a few months before having to return to America. Hooper’s remembrances of his time with… Read more »

The Lewis Humor

  

Walter Hooper, an American who went to visit C. S. Lewis in 1963 unexpectedly grew so close to him that during the summer months he ended up serving as his private secretary. Lewis invited him to return to England in 1964 to take up the position permanently. Lewis’s death in November 1963 seemed to end Hooper’s dream of renewing that role, but he shortly after became the primary literary agent for all of Lewis’s works, a role he has maintained… Read more »

Whitefield & the Awakening

  

David Garrick, the most popular actor in Britain in the eighteenth century, once remarked, “I would give a hundred guineas if I could say ‘Oh’ like Mr. Whitefield.” He was referring to evangelist George Whitefield, who, at the young age of 25, arrived in the American colonies and became the focal point of the First Great Awakening. Whitefield was educated at Oxford and became a close friend of John Wesley’s. Together they were part of a student organization called “The… Read more »

Obama the Christian?

  

The mainstream media is making a big deal out of forcing Republicans to say President Obama is a Christian. As if they care. Surveys over the years have been consistent: the mainstream journalists that attempt to direct the thinking of the nation are overwhelmingly secularist; 90% or so seldom attend church, and when they do, one might question the choice of that church. What gospel is it preaching? No, they’re not really interested in Obama actually being a Christian. They… Read more »

Did Lewis Like Americans?

  

By the start of this next week, I will have completed three chapters in my proposed book on C. S. Lewis’s impact on Americans. My first chapter deals with the often-repeated charge that Lewis didn’t really like Americans. Some excerpts from this chapter follow. Here’s how it begins: On the very first page of The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, author Alan Jacobs tells the story of a precocious “Jack” Lewis, probably no more than eight… Read more »

The Great Awakening: Jonathan Edwards

  

Last week, I introduced the historic event known as the First Great Awakening and wrote about the influence of William and Gilbert Tennant, who established a Log College for training ministers in extemporaneous preaching. This week, I want to look at someone who was just as influential, but entirely different in manner. Jonathan Edwards was a Massachusetts Congregationalist minister who is widely respected among theologians today for his thoughts on the love of God. He was a central figure in… Read more »

C.S. Lewis: Up to the Gate

  

I’ve now completed my research into the letters of C. S. Lewis to Americans. It was a joy to delve into them. Near the end of his life, Lewis wrote often of his expectation of heaven. He was in bad health for the last couple of years, and held rather loosely to this world. As he explained to Mary Van Deusen, one of his most regular correspondents, who was contemplating a move from one house to another, I think I… Read more »