Tag: history

The Christian Lens

  

C. S. Lewis’s path to Christian faith was helped along mightily by certain authors. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he tells of his discovery of G. K. Chesterton’s writings and says specifically, “I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. You will remember that I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive ‘apart from his Christianity.’ Now,… Read more »

Researching Lewis at the Wade

  

I returned from the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College about a week ago. I was there for two reasons: to hear a lecture from historian Mark Noll regarding C. S. Lewis’s connections with Americans (many of you know I wrote a book on that topic); to delve into more research for a hoped-for future book that will examine Lewis’s understanding of history–its significance, its limitations, and how Christians should incorporate it into their comprehension of God’s redemption plan…. Read more »

The Historical Motive

  

Study C. S. Lewis long enough and you will come to the realization that there are gems to be found in some of his works that most have overlooked. We tend to concentrate on the well-known writings, which is understandable, but we also need to look deeper into the lesser-known pieces. One such gem can be found in a collection of Lewis’s essays in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Originally written as an introduction to a proposed book, “De… Read more »

Religion & the Presidents

  

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 »

The Historian vs. the Historicist

  

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 »

Lewis the Historian

  

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 »

Is History Really Bunk?

  

Recently, I was reminded of one of C. S. Lewis’s essays that I hadn’t thought about in quite a while; in fact, I couldn’t recall if I had read it. Yet, as a professor of history, I must have perused his “Is History Bunk?” at some time or other. So I checked into it as if it were a new piece of Lewis’s corpus that I hadn’t seen before. The essay is found in the collection called Present Concerns, the… Read more »