As late afternoon sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows of Armstrong Browning Library, a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 students and faculty gathered to hear Dr. Joseph Loconte recount how C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien used imaginative literature to resist the moral disillusionment of their age.
Loconte, bestselling author of The War for Middle-Earth, delivered the Annual Ethics & Culture Lecture on Wednesday, across the street from the controversial Turning Point USA rally.
Freshman Lucy Pritchett, a Great Texts major from Waco, Texas, found in the lecture lessons for our current cultural tensions. She noted that widespread division has made it harder for students to envision a common good: “We aren’t trying to imagine…what can redeem us from this brokenness. And we aren’t talking about it together.”
In his address titled “War, Friendship, and Imagination: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Fight for Civilization,” Loconte situated both writers in the aftermath of World War I, when faith in ideals like beauty, virtue, and heroism had eroded. As another global conflict loomed, they united in a deliberate rebellion against this prevailing cynicism: “The long shadows cast by the second world war invaded their minds…it is the tragedy of war that brings these two amazing authors together in friendship, and it is their friendship that makes possible the creation of their epic works.”
This resistance appears vividly in The Lord of the Rings, where rising political threats find a literary expression: “The Ring of Power is the mode of force behind Sauron’s intent to enslave or destroy anything that stands in its way. . . it sounds like a political ideology: totalitarianism.”
However, the war also provided models for the forces of good. The London air raids brought four girls to Lewis’ home in Oxford for refuge, and those children served as inspiration for the Pevensies in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Through unassuming figures like hobbits and children, both authors portray heroism as rooted in everyday sacrifice and moral choice rather than strength alone.
Beyond their fiction, Lewis and Tolkien embodied this vision through their literary circle, the Inklings. Loconte called them a bulwark against cultural fragmentation: “At a moment in history when the moral foundations of Western civilization seemed to be disintegrating, here are two trying to reverse the rot.”
“At a moment in history when the moral foundations of Western civilization seemed to be disintegrating, here are two trying to reverse the rot.”
Dr. Joseph Loconte
In an interview with The Standard, Loconte argued that their work remains especially relevant today. In a climate marked by political polarization and institutional distrust that mirrors the era of the Inklings, he suggested that their stories continue to resonate because they speak to enduring human longings for beauty and purpose. “If people are exposed to great literature or art,” he said, “there’s going to be an instinctive response, no matter how cynical you are.”
For sophomore Jack Malone, a Science Research Fellow from St. Louis, Missouri, the lecture prompted a personal response. “It inspired me to read more Tolkien…[and] it made me think about my vocation. What can you do in your vocation to forward the love of God?”
For students interested in exploring these ideas further, Baylor English professor Dr. Richard Russell will offer an “Oxford Christians” course this fall, guiding students through the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Dorothy Sayers. In the course, Russell invites students “to enter into various and strange worlds of whimsy and fancy that ultimately lead to an appreciation of the eucatastrophe that is the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.”
That vision of courage, rooted not in power but in what is worth defending, continues to resonate with students facing their own moment of cultural and political uncertainty. As Faramir says in The Return of the King, “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”