The echoes of applause from competing political rallies on Baylor’s campus Wednesday evening will likely reach into Armstrong Browning Library, where a renowned Lewis and Tolkien scholar will speak about how the trenches of WWI and Hitler’s civilizational threat shaped the imagination and wisdom of generations. That is where I will be on Wednesday, and you should join me.
Dr. Douglas Henry, the Dean of the Baylor Honors College and one of the key planners of the Lewis and Tolkien event, argued that it “expresses what universities at their best ought to be about: questions, critical reflection, intellectual and moral formation… entertaining the prospect that one might be wrong… none of those things are typically on offer at partisan rallies.”
On the evening of Wednesday the 22nd, two contentious political events will be hosted on Baylor’s campus: Baylor’s chapter of Turning Point USA will host right-wing speakers Donald Trump Jr., Benny Johnson, and Tom Homan. In response to the Turning Point event, several Baylor student organizations, including College Democrats and the NAACP, will host a competing event titled “All Are Neighbors.” The event will feature two high-profile Christian LGBTQ advocates.
At 7 pm, across the street from the Turning Point event, Dr. Joseph Loconte will deliver the Annual Ethics & Culture Lecture, titled “War, Friendship, and Imagination: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Fight for Civilization.” It will be based on Loconte’s recent NYT bestselling book, “The War for Middle Earth.”
Dr. Richard Jordan, a Baylor political science professor, taught a class last semester on War, Politics, and Literature in which he recommended Loconte’s book. He called Loconte a “dazzling” speaker. “Like CS Lewis, he possesses a talent for making deep ideas accessible and compelling to just about anyone. Like Tolkien, his imagination is rich with centuries of tradition.”
Dr. David Corey, a Baylor professor who teaches classes on political philosophy, also recommended the Loconte event over the political events. “Politics is good and liberal learning is good. But we have too much of the one and hardly any of the other, so it’s not a hard decision.”
I agree with Dr. Corey that politics is worth pursuing. In a few months, I will be moving to Washington, DC to advocate for a political cause I believe in. I am not attending the Loconte lecture because I believe political problems are unimportant. Rather, I am attending it because I believe it will help form me into the kind of person who can solve political problems well.
According to Dean Henry, the increase of political conflict makes learning about lasting truths even more important. “We’re going to make mistakes with the conflicts that confront us unless we are shaped by the wisdom of the ages.”
The writings of Tolkien and Lewis contain vast resources of wisdom for those facing political contention. Their stories speak to a generation that faced the very real possibility of Hitler taking over the world.
As Dr. Jordan put it, “There’s a reason these two authors still fortify our souls and defend us against the cynicism creeping into our politics and culture. They were tried by fires none of us have ever experienced.”
In October of 1939, one month after the start of WWII, C.S. Lewis spoke to students at Oxford about why learning matters in wartime. His arguments included an appeal to the importance of learning about the past to understand the present. We need the past to remind us that “the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”
I am looking forward to hearing about the political events on Wednesday, especially from our Standard writers who will be covering both. But I would rather sit in the quiet foyer of the most beautiful building on campus, being fortified by the hard-won and time-tested wisdom of two of the people I trust most. I hope you join me.
