Sunday Sermon: More Than Orcs

The 20th Century was hard on religion. The philosophy of despair and the inhumanity of the Second World War sent every thinker scrambling. One astonishing development was the religious conversion of C. S. Lewis. A renowned skeptic, he graduated from Oxford with three first--first in his class in three major subjects--in English, philosophy and classics. He was a close friend of Tolkien (when he first met him Lewis wrote in his diary "No harm in him. Only needs a smack or two."). He delivered a famous speech/sermon in Oxford's University Church of St. Mary in 1941, during the raging and desperate war, where he concentrated his religious philosophy, emphasizing personal humility and Christian fellowship over longing for immortality as the driving force in Christianity. He said, "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is the immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit..."

He died the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. One wonders whose shadow will be longer.