I've been teaching English at Wheaton College since 1984. I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and spent my childhood (mostly unaware of what was going on) in the dark shadows of the Civil Rights Movement. I'm going to write a book about this someday. I graduated from the University of Alabama in 1980 — the same year that I married my wife Teri — and then got my doctorate from the University of Virginia a few years later. My son Wesley was born here in Wheaton in 1992: this makes him a native Midwesterner, something that sets him apart from his very Southern parents. Teri and I love him madly all the same. We all attend All Souls' Anglican Church.
My work primarily addresses the intersection of literature and Christian theology. Below I have linked to the Amazon.com pages for my books, and to some of my relatively recent essays.
Also:
- Here's my tumblelog
- Sometimes I post a thought or two at The American Scene
- My contact information may be found at my Wheaton web page. Not that I'm suggesting that anyone should contact me.
Books
- Original Sin: a Cultural History (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2008).
- Looking Before and After: Testimony and the Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).
- The Narnian: the Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis (San Francisco: Harper, and London: SPCK, 2005). Winner, Christianity Today 2006 Book Award, History/Biography Category. Winner, 2006 John Pollock Award for Christian Biography. German translation (Der Mann aus Narnia) published in 2007 by Johannis Verlag.
- Shaming the Devil: Essays in Truthtelling (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). October main selection, the Anglican Book Club.
- A Theology of Reading: the Hermeneutics of Love (Boulder and New York: Westview Press, 2001), hardcover and paperback.
- A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2001). Co-Winner, Christianity Today 2002 Book Award, Christianity and Culture category. Audio version (read by the author) produced by Mars Hill Audio in 2002; this is now available in a downloadable MP3 form.
- What Became of Wystan: Change and Continuity in Auden’s Poetry (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998).
- Must Christianity be Violent? Reflections on History, Practice, and Theology, ed. with Kenneth R. Chase (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2003).
Some Recent Essays
- On The Life of Trees, from Books & Culture
- Why religion is weak, in the WSJ
- My critique of the "Evangelical Manifesto" in the WSJ
- In 2007 I wrote for Books & Culture a series of more-or-less monthly columns called “Rumors of Glory”.
- My review — sort of — of the Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran.
- “The Youngest Brother’s Tale” is my review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
- Earlier I reflected on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
- Here are my thoughts on the Garden of Eden.
- And on the varieties of American Christian signage.
- Here’s an article for the Boston Globe on C. S. Lewis.
- And one on James Agee.
- Should a historically Protestant institution like Wheaton College hire Catholics? Here are some thoughts about that, and some of the correspondence that ensued.