I recognize G.K. Chesterton as a guide who led me from the doldrums of disbelief into the glorious light of the Gospel. Unbeknownst to me, the gloom in my prison cell was the gloaming of a new day in which the Son would rise, Easter-like, in my soul. The debt I owe to him is [...]
In his book “The Year of Our Lord 1943,” writing on Christian humanism, Alan Jacobs considers the fears and desires of five major but seemingly disparate figures in 1943 as they envision a post-war world after an allied victory: W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, Jacques Maritain, and Simone Weil. The Year of Our Lord [...]
In “The Lord of the Rings,” the One Ring and the One Sin are symbolic similitudes. As the One Ring is “unmade” on Mount Doom, so the One Sin is “unmade” on the hill of Golgotha, the place of the skull. Therefore, if the Ring is synonymous with sin in general and Original Sin in [...]
The anti-religious spirit of modernity is so antagonistic to the idea of a unifying truth that it prefers a meaningless education to an education informed by the underlying meaning inherent in the truth-claims of religion or philosophy. And this, according to G.K. Chesterton, is not really education at all. “It is typical of our time,” [...]
We live in a world that desperately needs Thomas More’s wisdom. We need his understanding of God, his understanding of virtue, and his understanding of the complexities of the human person. “The Essential Works of Thomas More” is the best book of 2020 and is the book most needed in 2021. The Essential Works of [...]
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas two of my great loves sent to me a couple of great meditations on the mystery of the Nativity. The first and better-known meditation is by T.S. Eliot, whose “Journey of the Magi” places the poet in the entourage of the Three Wise Men as they journey to Bethlehem. [...]
With a seemingly (and thankfully) endless supply of books about J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis flowing out from every conceivable press, it is easy to overlook some hidden gems. To assist Imaginative Conservative readers with their Christmas book shopping, I have highlighted below some books about Lewis and/or Tolkien that have been published over the [...]
Having passed away recently, Lewis scholar Walter Hooper will be missed, but we can well believe that he is now once more with C.S. Lewis, whom he had served most faithfully for so many years, in a place in which it is never winter but always Christmas. With the passing of Walter Hooper on December [...]
C.S. Lewis’ writings are endlessly fascinating because the man himself was endlessly fascinating—to himself as well as to others. He saw life as a sort of drama and art, one in which the will shapes what Providence has so generously provided. One can readily and happily delve into C.S. Lewis’s autobiography of 1955, Surprised by [...]
The aim and ambition of Jeremy Bentham was that everyone would be happy. But how is it possible for everyone to be happy? The Grand Inquisitor gives the answer: by yielding their freedom and submitting to their overlords. This is the dysfunctional and distorted psychology behind the entitlement culture and the welfare state. When on [...]
All nations need reminders that even their best ideals, though worth defending, do not earn them chosen nation status. Reading C.S. Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength” and Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again” in light of each other could rouse those in need of both a restoration of confidence in the goodness of the American [...]
C.S. Lewis possessed an immense personality, the kind of personality that affected not only those around him, but also all those who came after him. Full of charisma and brilliance, he both attracted loyal friends and made bitter enemies wherever he went. Strangely enough, I didn’t come to C.S. Lewis as a person or as [...]
For J.R.R. Tolkien, mythology touches the deepest part of our souls, and invites us to explore the beauty of creation and to discover and participate in the sacramental nature of life. The mythology and purpose guiding his works was nothing less than the return to Christendom. J.R.R. Tolkien, I believe, was one of the most [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien proclaimed that fairy—like all mythology—is an expression of our deepest longings and fears. Fairy itself, far from being supernatural, is the most natural of worlds, and reminds us of the deepest truths of existence. For J.R.R. Tolkien, Fairy was a world parallel to ours, embodying many of the rules and norms and ideas [...]