David J. Theroux, the Founder and President of the C. S. Lewis Society of California has e-mailed us with the latest updates on many upcoming events that you’re all invited to attend! I hope that some of you have the chance to visit these events and join Lewis Societies, or even have the opportunity to start one in your own area if one does not exist. Here’s the update:
Please note the following in this issue of the C.S. Lewis Society Update (8/3/07):
1. Harry Potter and Christianity
2. The Hubris of Christopher Hitchens
3. Next meeting of C.S. Lewis Society’s Bay Area Book Club: That Hideous Strength
4. Other Events
1. Harry Potter and Christianity:
In a recent Wall Street Journal review of the new book, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, Mechan Cox Gurdon discusses how author J.K. Rowling “began tipping her hand” regarding the Christian imagery she has been using.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!
In her review, Ms. Gurdon states that:
“It has been widely observed that J.K. Rowling owes a creative debt to Christian fantasists J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (apart from their fondness for initials). It’s odd now to remember that, at the same time, some parents have objected to the magic depicted in the Harry Potter books as a glorification of satanic practices. For ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ confirms something else apart from the well-thought-out-ness of Ms. Rowling’s moral universe: It is subtly but unmistakably Christian.
“The principal Hogwarts holidays have always been Christmas and Easter, but it took five books before Ms. Rowling really began tipping her hand. In Book Six, ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,’ she addressed concepts of free will, the power of love, and the sanctity of the soul. But in the final volume she gently lays it all out. The preciousness of each human life; bodily resurrection after death; mercy, forgiveness and redemption; sacrificial love overcoming the powers of evil–strip away the elves, goblins, broomsticks and magic wands and these are the concepts that underpin the marvelously intricate world of Harry Potter.
“There are clues throughout. At one point, Harry is led to a weapon that will enable him to destroy the Horcruxes when he finds them: ‘The ice reflected his distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but deep below the thick, misty gray carapace, something else glinted. A great silver cross . . .’
“Two unattributed New Testament quotations recur in the story after Harry sees each on a tombstone in the village where he was born and his mother and father died. He discovers on the Dumbledore family tomb ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,’ from Matthew. And on the grave of his own parents, he finds this, from I Corinthians: ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.’ On seeing it, Harry feels momentary horror: Does it imply a link between his parents and Voldemort’s followers? Hermione gently sets him straight: ‘It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry. It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death.’
“And it goes on. Near the end, Harry visits the hereafter, where he sees joy coming to those who in life were merciful and agony meted out to those who were cruel and remorseless. ‘Tell me one last thing,’ Harry says to Dumbledore, whom he has met in the white mistiness. ‘Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?’ Dumbledore beams at him. ‘Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it’s not real?’
“Many readers may not even notice these intimations of Christian spirituality. There’s nothing finger-pointingly didactic here; the story is too well-made to insist on anything so obvious as a proselytizing message. (The same is famously true of Lewis and Tolkien.) We have in ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ skillfully plotted drama, entertaining characters in a fantastically imagined world, and a moral contest that would not be out of place in Aeschylus . . .”
END OF POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!
2. The Hubris of Christopher Hitchens:
In a new, in-depth examination of anti-theist, fundamentalist, crusader Christopher Hitchens, Tom Piatak reveals the evasions, hypocrisy, errors, intolerance, and falsehoods in Hitchens’s best-selling book “God Is Not Great,” including his support for Lenin’s “great achievement” in creating a “secular Russia” (despite the mass murder and terror); contempt for Mother Theresa, dismissal of the faith of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr. and Maksymilian Kolbe; great admiration for both Leon Trotsky and Paul Wolfowitz; denial of the Christian basis in the abolitionist and civil rights movements and in communist Poland; unapologetic support for unrestrained global war against Muslims (and presumably other theists?); and much more. To the unreconstructed Bolshevik Hitchens, believers are nothing but “yokels,” “credulous idiots” and “stupefied peasants,” and “It has become necessary to know the enemy, and to prepare to fight it.” Onward atheist soldier!
“The Hubris of Christopher Hitchens,” by Tom Piatak
As with Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and other anti-Christian, materialist fanatics, Hitchens’s atheist case reveals a profound poverty of evidence, logic, moral clarity, honesty, and common sense.
Other notable reviews include the following:
London Times
National Post
First Things
Books and Culture
Flak Magazine
Commonweal
Huffington Post
3. Next meetings of the C.S. Lewis Society’s Bay Area Book Club:
Book for Discussion:
THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH, by C.S. Lewis:
Wednesday, August 15th, 7:30 p.m.; Meeting moderator/leader: Andrew Dosa
Wednesday, August 22nd, 7:30 p.m.; Meeting moderator/leader: Eric Rauscher
Extremely witty, beautifully written, thought-provoking and a real page-turner, THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH is the third volume in C.S. Lewis’s marvelous, Christian-themed “Space Trilogy,” but readers unfamiliar with the earlier two books should not hesitate to read this one independently. Set at a fictional university in England, the book is Lewis’s dystopian examination of how without firing a short, the alliance of government, business, academia, and mass media can produce a pure evil of wholesale fascism, all in the name of “mankind.”
An influence-intoxicated college professor, his unhappy and neglected wife, a university-government complex bent on world domination, a living wizard who’s been buried for more than a millennium, and a space-traveling invalid who may be the only hope for the salvation of the world are just a few of the ingredients in one of the greatest works of popular fiction.
The book explores how pure materialism produces a nihilism that is incompatible with moral ethics, individual liberty, spiritual truth, and the foundations of civil society. Drawing upon the analysis in his brilliant book, THE ABOLITION OF MAN, Lewis satirizes government power, moral relativism, academic politics, bio-engineering, mass media, narcissism and blind ambition, atheism, materialistic culture, egalitarianism, scientism, non-traditional education which “experiments” on children, and much more. THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH includes allusions to the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, H.G. Wells, John Donne, Charles Williams, John Bunyan, Sir Thomas Malory, and others, and the book has been compared to Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD and George Orwell’s 1984.
“In his usual polished prose, he creates an elaborate satiric picture of a war between morality and devilry.”
— The New Yorker
“Well-written, fast-paced satirical fantasy.”
— Time Magazine
“His description of the N.I.C.E. (National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments), with its world-wide ramifications, its private army, its secret torture chambers, and its inner ring of adepts ruled over by a mysterious personage known as The Head, is as exciting as any detective story. . . . [T]his is a book worth reading.”
— George Orwell
The meeting will be held at:
11990 Skyline Boulevard, Oakland, CA 94619 (atop the Oakland hills)
510-482-2906 phone
wine, soft drinks and other refreshments served
Here also are articles that discuss THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH and related issues:
“That Hideous Strength,” by Wikipedia
“C. S. Lewis: Science and Scientism,” by Henry F. Schaefer III
“C.S. Lewis: That Hideous Strength,” reviewed by Phillip Johnson (First Things)
“The Inner Ring,” by C. S. Lewis
“That Hideous Strength: Quotations and Allusions,” by Arend Smilde
THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH in paperback
Here also is the schedule of future Lewis Society book club meetings:
http://www.lewissociety.org/bookclub.php
Here also is information on C.S. Lewis:
http://www.lewissociety.org/aboutlewis.php
We hope that you and/or others you know will be joining with us! (Please feel free to forward this update to others.)
4. Other Events:
http://www.lewissociety.org/events.php
The 38th Annual Mythopoeic Conference (Mythcon XXXVIII), “Becoming Adept: The Journey to Mastery”
Sponsored by the Mythopoeic Society
University of California, Berkeley, CA
August 3-6, 2007
http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon38.html
“The Crisis of the University: Freedom, Tolerance and the Pursuit of Truth”
Sponsored by the C.S. Lewis Foundation
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
October 5-6, 2007
http://www.cslewis.org/programs/ff/2007/index.html
“C.S. Lewis: Man and His Work: A 21st Century Legacy”
Sponsored by L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC
October 26-27, 2007
http://www.sebts.edu/CSLewis/
“C.S. Lewis Conference”
Sponsored by Hope Lutheran Church
Atascadero, CA
January 25-27, 2008
(More details to follow)
“Sixth Frances Ewbank Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends”
Sponsored by Taylor University, Upland, IN
May 29-June 1, 2008
http://www.taylor.edu/academics/supportservices/cslewis/colloquium/