Plans are coming together for a conference this fall celebrating the life, work and legacy of renowned author J.R.R. Tolkien. The conference, to be hosted on Redeemer University’s campus by the Albert M. Wolters Centre for Christian Scholarship and the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, will take place September 27 and 28 and will feature a lecture by Dr. Louis Markos that is open to the public on Saturday evening. Dr. Michael Haykin, visiting professor of history and director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, and Dr. Jonathan Juilfs, associate professor of English and arts and humanities fellow at the Wolters Centre, are partnering under the Wolters Centre goal of bringing experts in the Reformed tradition to Redeemer for robust Christian engagement and reflection.
“The Kuyperian assertion that Christ is Lord over ‘every square inch’ of creation has broad application, especially for the arts world,” says Juilfs. “The Neo-Calvinist project is well situated to celebrate and promote the excellence of Christian contributions to the arts, and among Christian writers in the creative vein over the last century, no one has made a deeper or broader impact in mainstream culture than J.R.R. Tolkien.”
Juilfs, a fellow English medievalist, shares Tolkien’s interest in Anglo-Saxon literature. As a historian, Haykin’s love for Tolkien comes from his representation as a remarkable Christian witness in an unlikely place in the 20th century. He finds it amazing that in a society that is increasingly secular, Tolkien continues to captivate readers and consistently ranks at the top of readers’ polls.
… among Christian writers in the creative vein over the last century, no one has made a deeper or broader impact in mainstream culture than J.R.R. Tolkien.
“For a long time I was very intrigued with fantasy literature, so I’ve read a lot of it over the years,” says Haykin. “Tolkien was the inspiration for a lot of that literature. And his literary creations are deeply imbued with his Christian faith. So I’m coming at it from the angle of Christian apologetics—Christian witness, looking at the way in which he was part of a circle of men, the Inklings—C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams—who in very different ways were able to bear witness to the Christian faith in the mid- to early-late 20th century.”
Haykin says that studying important figures is one way we realize that who we are and what we have has been passed onto us, and that we have a legacy that we’ve inherited that we must pass on to others. “The hero, or heroine, becomes the person who has preceded us who has passed on that faith, that bequest. As a historian, for me the past is about people. It is ideas, of course it’s ideas. But it’s ideas that gripped people and it’s people that passed them on to us. So if we want to talk about a specific idea, like an element of the Christian faith … we identify with a person. It’s very helpful for our culture to look at the way in which a person wrestled with an idea and has handed it on.”
The conference will feature plenary sessions by Dr. Louis Markos, professor of English and the Robert H. Ray chair in humanities, and Dr. Austin Freeman, assistant professor and chair of apologetics, both from Houston Christian University. Freeman recently published Tolkien Dogmatics: Theology through Mythology with the Maker of Middle-earth and his research focuses on cultural apologetics and the intersection between theology and literature. Markos, author of Tolkien for Beginners and an authority on C.S. Lewis and apologetics, will give the Saturday evening keynote address titled “J.R.R. Tolkien: The Man Who Made Middle-Earth,” which will be open to the public.
It’s rare that you can have a conference like this about something that has become a major cultural icon in the larger culture of North America.
The conference is designed to speak to a wide range of public audiences, including Redeemer parents and alumni, local pastors and other Tolkien fans, not just Tolkien experts and scholars. Plenary sessions will appeal to this broader audience with topics like Tolkien and the Divine Author and Tolkien as Apologist to the Imagination.
“It’s rare that you can have a conference like this about something that has become a major cultural icon in the larger culture of North America,” says Haykin. He hopes many Redeemer students across a range of majors will also take the opportunity to attend the on-campus conference. In fact, students are being encouraged to submit papers for consideration and those selected will be invited to give short presentations at a series of afternoon parallel sessions.
Juilfs is excited to honour and highlight Tolkien’s important and ongoing contribution to an ecumenically Christian approach to the making of literary art. “Through the activities of this conference, we look forward to hearing more about Tolkien’s legacy of Christian artistic excellence for our 21st-century contexts.”