Upcoming

July 6-11, 2025

"Of Other Worlds: 75 Years of Narnia"
 St. Giles Church
Oxford, England
In 1950, C. S. Lewis published a book his friends and his publisher advised him not to write. The great apologist and major literary critic wrote a children's book called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It actually did well. In fact, it is still in print. Before he finished writing it, he had an idea for a second book, and before the second one was finished, he had an idea for third. Each time, he that the one he was writing was the last, but the ideas kept coming until he had written the seven books that comprise The Chronicles of Narnia. As we gather in Oxford in July 2025, we will consider the wonder and the implications for these stories.


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Montreat college, NC, building

Past

2024

April 5–7, 2024
Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina
"Planets in Peril: Revisiting the Ransom Trilogy"
C. S. Lewis published Out of the Silent Planet in 1938 on a bet with J. R. R. Tolkien as a "one off." Then, the war came. During the war, Lewis published two more science fiction stories with Elwin Ransom, a Cambridge philologist, at their center. Lewis used these stories to explore some dangerous trends in his culture that he thought threatened the moral order. As we gather in the beauty of the Misty Mountains, we will consider that continuing significance of these stories for our time.

2023

March 31 - April 2, 2023
Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina
"The Legacy of J. R. R. Tolkien Fifty Years after His Death"
When J. R. R. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973, his magisterial tales of hobbits, elves, and Middle-earth had become legendary in themselves on college campuses around the world. Somehow Tolkien, who always belonged to an earlier century than the twentieth, managed to touch a smoldering ember of the imaginations of young people who would never have listened to him lecture about all that he saw wrong with the modern world. His stories managed to spark a longing for something missing, they knew not what. Dismissed by the avant garde literary establishment of his day as mere escapist writing, but nominated by Lewis for the Nobel Prize in literature, The Lord of the Rings is now indisputably recognized as a great literary classic. When we gather in Montreat, we will discuss why.
February 4, 2023
"Technology and AI in Higher Education: The Problems and Possibilities"
 Union University in Jackson
In the 1970s, cassette tapes of lectures were the wave of the future in higher education, only to be eclipsed by VHS recordings in the 1980s and 1990s. Non-traditional, adult education programs collapsed full semesters into five-week terms meeting one-day a week for four hours a night. With the coming of the worldwide web in the late 1990s, innovators realized that courses could be delivered at distance without the need for the students to ever gather in person. This capability proved highly useful during the Covid pandemic when schools and universities shut down and all traditional classes were conducted over Zoom and similar technological solutions. How successful have these technological solutions been for learning and to what extent are teachers still necessary in a technological environment moving ever closer to AI instruction? How concerned should we be?

2022

July 3-8, 2022

"The Origin of Stories: The Inklings and the Christian Scriptures"
 St. Giles Church
Oxford, England
The Inklings were a diverse group composed of both Protestants and Catholics, but they shared a common biblical faith which informed their scholarship, their creative writing, and most of all their daily lives. As we gather together in Oxford, we will explore what the Bible meant for the Inklings, but more so, what it means for us today.

Christianity in the Academy — Oxford Sessions, July 5-7, 2022
April 1-3, 2022
Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina
"The Formidable Dorothy L. Sayers: Apologist in a Contrarian World"
To call Dorothy L. Sayers "formidable" dangerously understates the case. Consider her career. As a young woman, she was a smashing success in the advertising industry of the 1920s when she took up writing mystery stories for a lark and found that she was making lots of money at it. Yet, her heart always turned back to her Oxford studies with such undertakings as new translations of the medieval works Tristan, The Song of Roland, and her magisterial translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in its difficult triple rhyme scheme. Along the way, she became a successful playwright for stage and the BBC while writing apologetic works that equaled C. S. Lewis in force. This friend of C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams will be the focus of our attention as we gather in Montreat.
February 5, 2022
"Mere Christianity in the Post-Christian West: Where We Stand 80 Years after the Radio Talks"
 Union University in Jackson
In August 1941, C. S. Lewis went to London each week to deliver four radio broadcasts to the nation over the BBC. In January and February of 1942, he gave a second set of broadcasts. By July 1942, the Centenary Press of Geoffrey Bles published the two series of talks in a little volume entitled Broadcast Talks. Ten years later, Lewis published an expanded volume that included a third and fourth series of BBC talks which he named Mere Christianity. Eighty years after those first broadcasts, we will consider the state of mere Christianity in the Post-Christian West from the perspective of a variety of disciplines.
Please address questions to Hal Poe at hpoe@uu.edu or 731-661-5404.

2021

July 9-11, 2021
Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina

"The Radio Broadcasts at Eighty: A Celebration of Mere Christianity"
C. S. Lewis was minding his own business when Dr. James Welch, director of religious broadcasting for the BBC, asked Lewis to deliver of series of radio talks. Welch had read Lewis's The Problem of Pain and thought that Lewis had the gift of speaking to a broad audience about maters of faith in the midst of the German bombing of Britain. Lewis accepted with the understanding that he could speak about the objective reality of right and wrong. During the war, Lewis would deliver four separate series of talks which he published separately before editing them into one volume as Mere Christianity in 1952. The talks and the ensuing books became the means by which many people came to faith and by which the faith of many believers was strengthened.

2019

July 21-26, 2019
"Of Fellowships and Rings: The Role of Friendship and Community in the Christian Life"
 St. Giles Church
Oxford, England
Join us for a week in Oxford as we consider the gift of friendship and the part it plays in the lives of believers. The Inklings were bound together by friendship, and it appears as a crucial theme in the writings of Lewis and Tolkien. We will think and meditate on friendship, but also form new friendships as we get to know each other.
April 5-7, 2019
"Jack and Warnie: Brothers and Friends"
 C. S. Lewis and his brother W. H. Lewis were best friends throughout their lives. This year at the Inklings Weekend in Montreat, we will spend time getting to know the brothers better. At times their relationship was strained during teenage years and then for the long separation after World War I before Warnie returned from China to make his home at the Kilns. For most of their lives, however, they were the best of company to one another. In the context of their relationship, Jack wrote the books that made him famous, and Warnie wrote seven books of French history that brought him honor. Joins us as we enjoy the brothers Lewis, led by Don King who is finishing work on his biography of Warnie, and Hal Poe who has just finished his biography of Jack.
Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina
March 1, 2019
"The Medieval Legacy in Higher Education: Blessing or Curse?"
 Union University Germantown
The university and the Western model of higher education grew up in the church during the Middle Ages. Born in the religious communities that dotted the landscape of medieval Europe, colleges developed in the monasteries where monks studied the Scriptures and preserved the learning of the ancient world. Modern universities maintain the monastic dress of the Middle Ages, complete with hoods. The highest academic degree continues to be a theological idea - the Doctor, or one who teaches correct doctrine. Almost a thousand years after the emergence of the European university as a distinct institution, we will consider the significance of the Christian origins of the university and to what extent the medieval model still has relevance for higher education today now that the model has been adopted around the globe.

2018

March 2, 2018
"Christianity in the Academy 20 Years On: Exploring Methods and Strategies for the 21st Century"

The Christianity in the Academy Conference began during the last decade of the last century in the midst of a growing concern among Christians in higher education that we had somehow yielded the field to a materialist understanding of the world and all its operations. Recognizing that the Christian faith has a perspective on reality that often goes unheard in the clamor of competing philosophies and ideologies than animate the academy, this conference seeks to encourage Christians to recognize the issues in the many disciplines to which Christ speaks and to challenge assumptions and presuppositions that have slipped into disciplines unawares. We solicit papers that examine models for Christian engagement with the academy, as well as papers that demonstrate faith engagement with issues in particular disciplines.

Our keynote speaker will be Darin Davis who serves as vice president for university mission, director of the Institute for Faith and Learning (IFL), and clinical associate professor of moral philosophy in the Honors Program at Baylor University. Davis holds the PhD in Philosophy from Saint Louis University. He will speak on "Faith Animating Teaching."

Union University Germantown
2745 Hacks Cross Road
Germantown, TN 38138

April 6-8, 2018
"King Arthur and the Inklings"
 The story of King Arthur in its many forms captivated the Inklings as it has continued to captivate audiences for over a thousand years. The tales of Arthur were told around fires long before the poets of the Middle Ages made Arthur the central figure of a great literary tradition. It is not surprising that C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams all incorporated the Arthur tradition into their own stories, with Williams and Tolkien trying their hand at their own version. Join the conversation as we consider what Arthur has to do with the Christian faith.
Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina

2017

March 31 - April 1, 2017
Join us in the Misty Mountains (locally known by the elves as the Smokey Mountains) at Rivendell (known locally as Montreat College) near Black Mountain, NC as we consider
"G. K. Chesterton and other Voices that Shaped C. S. Lewis"
Looking back on his conversion experience some years later, C. S. Lewis observed that a young atheist cannot be too careful about the things he reads. Lewis had made the mistake of reading The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton, and it made entirely too much sense. Joseph Pearce, who has written on Chesterton, will lead two sessions on the great man who Lewis looked to for a model and upon whom he depended for many of the ideas in Mere Christianity.
 Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina
Friday, March 24, 2017
"Is It Such an Ugly World?: Beauty across the Disciplines"
 Beauty has had an uncertain career in the modern world. Though many segments of the academy regarded beauty as the province of the fine arts, the fine arts dethroned Beauty after World War I along with many other reigning monarchs. As time passed, however, the sciences grew entranced with Beauty's charms and she grew to become a primary judge of the legitimacy of scientific and mathematical theories and formulae. With the twentieth century put to bed, Beauty may once again be recognized as of great value to all the academic disciplines. As the Christianity in the Academy Conference gathers again in March, we will explore the place of Beauty in the academy and the wider world.
Union University Germantown
2745 Hacks Cross Road
Germantown, TN 38138

2016

July 17-22, 2016
"The Discarded Image: Living as Christians through the Global Collapse of Culture"
 St. Aldates Church
Oxford, England
Join us for a week in Oxford as we commemorate the centennial of the Great War and reflect on how it changed the world forever. The Inklings fought in that dreadful war, and forms the backdrop of much of their work.
April 1-3, 2016
"The Devil and C. S. Lewis"
 When Charles Williams moved up to Oxford with the Oxford University Press at the beginning of World War II, he delivered a lecture on Milton's Paradise Lost which enthralled C. S. Lewis so much that he decided to pursue the subject. The result of his study was a series of lecture on Paradise Lost that were later published as A Preface to Paradise Lost. But the story does not end there. In the overflow, Lewis wrote three important books that dealt with the experience of temptation: The Screwtape Letters, Perelandra, and The Great Divorce. We turn to this theme on the occasion of the publication of William O'Flaherty's new book C.S. Lewis Goes to Hell: A Companion and Study Guide to The Screwtape Letters.
 Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Christianity in the Academy Conference
"Christian Responsibility in a Polarized Democracy"
The Apostle Paul instructs Christians to pray for the emperor, but what is our responsibility in a republican in which we are the emperor? Even in its third century, American style democracy continues to be an experiment in government that has a poor track record in other parts of the world. Christians have vacillated over the decades about their proper role in such a society. Christians have reflected the same diversity of opinion that we find in the rest of American society, and by no means have they always spoken with one voice. Having exerted a great influence since the Second Great Awakening, Christians have seen their voice in American culture decline since the Counter Culture of the 1960s. In the presidential election year of 2016, we will turn our attention to an exploration of how Christians might face the future when they disagree amongst themselves.
Our keynote speaker will be Dr. Bill Marty, for many years professor of political science at the University of Memphis and co-founder of the Christianity in the Academy Conference.
Union University Germantown
2745 Hacks Cross Road
Germantown, TN 38138

2015

April 17-19, 2015
"The Inklings and the Ladies"
Though the Inklings were a group of men, the centennial anniversary of the birth of Joy Davidman reminds us that several important female literary figures interacted with them in an influential way. We will explore several of those relationships; including Joy Davidman, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ruth Pitter, Stella Aldwinckle, and Sister Penelope.
 Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina
Friday, March 13, 2015
Christianity in the Academy Conference
"Living in the Shadow of the First World War"
The War to End All Wars began in August 1914. One hundred years later we still live in the shadow of that war and its results. The entire world changed forever as a result of the war. In 1900, a few royal families controlled most of the planet, but by 1920 the form of government that most cultures had known for 5,000 years had disappeared. The twentieth century was a period of convulsion and change with enormous strides in technological and scientific development, yet the twenty-first century began with war in a region left unsettled by the Versailles Treaty. Every area of life has been affected in some way by World War I and during the centenary of that war, we will explore a few of those ways.
 Stephen Olford Center of Union University
4000 Riverdale Road
Memphis, Tennessee 38115

2014

April 11-13, 2014
"The Hope of His Calling" (Eph.1:18)
We often speak of someone in fulltime church related ministry as having been called by God, but what is the calling that all Christians share and how do we distinguish it from an individual calling?
 Montreat College
Montreat, North Carolina
March 7, 2014
Christianity in the Academy Conference
"The Catholic-Evangelical Dialog after Neuhaus and Colson"
Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, and Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, played a major role in bringing Catholics and Evangelicals together on faith issues of common concern. They both died within a short while of one another. Now that they are gone, how stands their legacy and the future of Catholic and Evangelical relationship?
 Keynote Speaker - Dr. Holly Ordway, Houston Baptist University
Stephen Olford Center of Union University
Memphis, Tennessee

2013

July 17-22, 2013
St. Aldates Church
Oxford, England
Join us for a week in Oxford as we commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis and the fortieth anniversary of the death of J. R. R. Tolkien.
April 5-7, 2013
"Middle Earth: Living between Creation and the New Creation"
Featuring Ben Mitchell, Nigel Goodwin, Don King, Hal Poe, Alyssa Kraus, Corrie Greene, Philip Wright, and Zach McCain
March 1, 2013
Christianity in the Academy Conference
"C. S. Lewis Fifty Years On: What Endures?"
During the fiftieth anniversary year of the death of C. S. Lewis, we turn to examine his lasting influence on Christians in the academy.
 The Stephen Olford Center of Union University
Memphis, Tennessee

2012

November 9, 2012 - January 9, 2013
J. R. R. Tolkien Forty Years On
An exhibit to commemorate the fortieth anniversary year of the death of J. R. R. Tolkien in the Chapel Lobby of Union University in Jackson, Tennessee featuring selections from the Harry Lee Poe Collection - university news release
November 9, 2012 - January 2, 2013
J. R. R. Tolkien Forty Years On
An exhibit to commemorate the fortieth anniversary year of the death of J. R. R. Tolkien in the Library of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama featuring selections from the Rebecca Whitten Poe Hays Collection - university news release
March 30 - April 1, 2012
"Science Fiction and the Inklings"
featuring Hal Poe, Jennifer Gruenke, Dennis Beets, Joshua Hays, and Don King

2011

April 1-3, 2011
"Fools for Christ"
Featuring Don King, Nigel Goodwin, and Hal Poe

2010

November 21, 2010 - January 9, 2011
The Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien and Their Circle - An Exhibition
Hughes Main Library, Greenville, SC
This exhibit includes original artifacts and letters of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others of the period. The exhibit is open to the public with no admission fee. The exhibit includes selections from the collection of Harry Lee Poe, author of The Inklings of Oxford and co-editor of C. S. Lewis Remembered.
December 15, 2010
The Devil and C. S. Lewis: Chatting about Screwtape
7:00pm
Christ Church (Episcopal), Greenville, SC
Dr. Hal Poe will discuss The Screwtape Letters in relation to the larger body of Lewis's work; including his Preface to Paradise Lost, Perelandra, and The Great Divorce.
December 16, 2010
The Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien and Their Circle
6:30pm-8:00pm
Hughes Main Library, Meeting Rooms B-C
Greenville, SC
Join Dr. Hal Poe for an in-depth look into the life and literary progression of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Inklings. Dr. Poe will share highlights from his two books, The Inklings of Oxford and C. S. Lewis Remembered. The lecture will be followed by a tour of the exhibit, including a question and answer session. Call 864-527-9293 to register.

2009 Theme - The Power of Imagination

We take the occasion of the bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe in 2009 to explore the difficult phenomenon of imagination. It affects every area of life. For Poe, it formed the bridge between science and faith and the path from atheism to belief in God. Poe's spiritual journey tracked almost identically that of C. S. Lewis for whom imagination also played a key to his conversion. Poe insisted that imagination is not simply a flight from reality but a higher level of understanding than empiricism or rationalism. He insisted that every major breakthrough in science came through imagination, and to demonstrate this remarkable phenomenon, he contradicted the best science of his day (which taught that the universe has an infinite number of stars that have always existed) to propose what we now call "The Big Bang Theory." For Poe, the unavoidable implication of a universe that has a beginning is a God who causes it to begin.

January 5-30
"Edgar Allan Poe and the Power of Imagination" An Edgar Allan Poe Bicentennial Exhibition
Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, Memphis Public Library, Memphis, TN
January 9-10
C. S. Lewis Seminar on Higher Education
Stephen Olford Center, Memphis, TN
February 13 - March 13
"Eureka: Poe's Journey of Discovery" An Edgar Allan Poe Bicentennial Exhibition
The University of the South, Sewanee, TN
March 23 - April 19
"Eureka - What Poe Found" An Edgar Allan Poe Bicentennial Exhibition
Charleston Library Society, Charleston, SC
April 17-19
Inklings Weekend at Montreat
Montreat College, Montreat, NC
July 31 - August 3
"Science, Imagination, and Faith" - Symposium
American Scientific Affiliation annual meeting
Baylor University, Waco, TX
September 10 - November 27
"Eureka - What Poe Found" An Edgar Allan Poe Bicentennial Exhibition
National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg, Russia
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