At the C.S. Lewis Lecture on Tuesday evening at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, the scholar Holly Ordway discussed the legendary friendship between Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, which shaped some of the most widely-celebrated English literature of the 20th century.
Ordway, an atheist-to Episcopalian-to-Catholic convert, is the faith and culture fellow at the Word on Fire Institute and a visiting professor of apologetics at Houston Christian University. She has written extensively about both men and plans this summer to publish “Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography.”
In an interview prior to her lecture, edited for concision and clarity, Ordway discussed the enduring power of “Mere Christianity” and “The Lord of the Rings,” the experience of religious conversion and the role imagination plays in the Christian faith.
Q: Talk about your conversion.
A: The massive conversion was realizing that Christianity is true. I had become a pretty firm atheist by the time I was in my 20s and thought that all of Christianity was just a bunch of superstitious nonsense. But my favorite authors were all serious Christians: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Donne.