Tag: CS Lewis
The Abolition of Troy Chatham
Plough has recently published one of the better versions of a critique of Wendell Berry that is fairly common and fairly tiresome. The author, Tamara Hill Murphy, has a great many kind things to say about Berry but then says...
CS Lewis Archives of Mere O
We don’t often post on the Lord’s Day here, but we’re making an exception: Today marks 52 years since the death of CS Lewis, one of the two men whose work inspired the naming of this site. It’s no surprise,...
Evangelicals are not modern gnostics. We’re materialists.
There’s a scene in HBO’s John Adams miniseries that remains one of the most succinct summaries of today’s defining cultural battle. The scene features the two guiding stars of the American founding, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The two friends are attending...
A distant, glorious echo: Tolkien and typology
In his foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien boldy declares his dislike of allegory and notes that, whatever critics and readers have suggested, the novel is most certainly not an allegory. Nonetheless, Christian readers...
Why C.S. Lewis is Wrong on Marriage
You won’t find a more apt example of an excerpt that is contradictory to an author’s broader writings than this bit from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which...
Day One from Oxford: A View from The Kilns
When I first named “Mere Orthodoxy,” I started from a very simple question: which writers had lived and written in such a way that I wanted to emulate? The answer was as immediate as the question was simple: Chesterton and...
C.S. Lewis and the Church: A Review (Part 2)
Editor’s note: We pleased to publish this review (in two parts–read the first part here) by friend of Mere-O Dr. Thomas Ward. In the profoundest essay of the collection, “C.S. Lewis and the Eschatalogical Church,” Judith Wolfe amplifies the...
C.S. Lewis and the Church: A Review (Part 1)
Editor’s note: We pleased to publish this review (in two parts–look for the second tomorrow!) by friend of Mere-O Dr. Thomas Ward. C.S. Lewis and the Church: Essays in Honor of Walter Hooper Edited by Judith Wolfe and Brendan N....
Education, the Individual, and the Affections: Richard Weaver vs. C.S. Lewis
If ideas have consequences, so do the affections. I’ve been reading through Richard Weaver’s classic essay “Education and the Individual” today. And to be honest, I was surprisingly disappointed. Weaver argues against a “progressive” view of education that thinks “adjustment to...
The (Mis)Use of C.S. Lewis by Christian Libertarians
As the idea of gay marriage has become increasingly acceptable in American culture and as the legal institutions have begun to accommodate it, it has become increasingly popular among evangelical Christians to argue for a complete separation of Church and...