Public Lecture: Walking with Dinosaurs with Prof Michael J. Christensen

Lewis’s Annual Walking Tours in “A Cretaceous Perambulator” booklet includes detailed references to seven Spring walking tours with Owen Barfield and Cecil Harwood, sometimes joined by Hugo Dyson and JRR Tolkien (from 1920-1937): 1. from Malvern into Wales in 1920; 2. to ‘Barberry Castle’, an old Roman Camp in Berkshire Downs, in 1927; 3. through the Cotswolds and Bathurst Estate in 1928; 4. in Exmoor National Park from Summerset to Exeter in 1930; 5. in Eastbourne and Sussex Downs with Alan (Bede) Griffiths in 1932; 6. in Hampshire in 1936; and 7. from Lyme Regis to Minehead (Somerset) with Tolkien in 1937. Reconstructed with details from correspondence and diaries, the walking tours reveal the forge of friendship and philosophy among the Oxford Inklings. The lecture will include the presenter’s own re- created walk through the Cotswolds following the steps of the Inklings

Dr Michael J. Christensen (M.A., Yale, Ph.D., Drew) is an author, speaker and practical theologian affiliated with Drew University, Nazarene Theological Seminary, Point Loma Nazarene University, and Northwind Seminary where he is Academic Dean and Professor of Theology. A noted Lewis scholar, Christensen is author of C.S. Lewis on Scripture, contributor to the C.S. Lewis Study Bible, and has taught courses on Lewis and the Inklings at Drew University and Northwind Seminary over many years. The C. S. Lewis Foundation appointed him a Senior Fellow in the Resident Scholars Program at the The Kilns in Oxford in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Dr. Christensen is the author or editor of eleven books on spirituality and theology, including the Henri Nouwen Trilogy: Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Formation and Discernment. Currently, he is working on a new edition of his first book—C.S. Lewis on Scripture 1979), which will include a recently found mss. by Lewis now referred to “The Lost Letter to Malcolm Chiefly on Scripture.”