"The Discarded Image: Living as Christians through the Global Collapse of Culture"
St. Giles Church, Oxford, England
Sunday evening, July 17 - Friday evening, July 22, 2016
In his inaugural address as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge in 1954, C. S. Lewis said that sometime between the period of Jane Austen and the 1950s, the world had changed in a way that it had never changed before. The Inklings were born into a world in which the sun never set on the vast British Empire, but they died in a vastly different world. Since the time the Inklings were born, the world has experienced a global collapse of cultures unlike anything that has ever occurred before. In 1900, most of the world was ruled by a few royal families, but by 1920 the only form of government known to most people for five thousand years of civilization had suddenly disappeared without anything to replace it. Join us during the centennial of the Great War in which the Inklings fought as we consider the implications of the cultural chaos of the twentieth century and how Christians are called to lead in the creation of the future.
Workshop Overview
Morning Sessions
Morning sessions will be held at St. Giles Church, across the street from the Eagle and Child where the Inklings met every week for about thirty years, and around the corner from Keble College where Lewis lived during his Officer Training Corps days. Our speakers will include Philip Jenkins, Colin Duriez, Michael Ward, Nigel Goodwin, Don King, Harry Lee Poe, Rebecca Poe Hays, Walter Hooper, Craig Stewart, Ben Mitchell, Holly Ordway, Ashley Zauderer, and Cindy Zudys.
Afternoons in Oxford
The afternoons will be given over to relishing all that Oxford offers. Discover the town that fueled the imaginations behind Narnia and Middle Earth. Visit the colleges where the Inklings taught and thought. Walk the gardens and stroll the river paths. Visit the museums and the book stores. Then go punting on the same river where Jack Lewis spent time in his undergraduate days, and where Rattie and Mole went boating near Toad Hall.
Evenings in Oxford
The evenings we will provide the opportunity experience the cultural feast available in Oxford as Lewis, Tolkien, and the Inklings did with a variety of concerts and plays. Orchestral concerts, Shakespearean plays, and more fill the summer evenings.
Eating in Oxford
The most important of all social occasions is the meal, and the Inklings certainly did their best to make the most of it, as might be expected of Hobbits. Eat at the favorite haunts of the Inklings, and at some new additions to the Oxford far since their time. And don't miss the sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream!