The Naked Gospel

Lewis and Tolkien: Imagination and Sexuality w/ Michael Ward and Holly Ordway

March 02, 2022 Proven Ministries Episode 73
The Naked Gospel
Lewis and Tolkien: Imagination and Sexuality w/ Michael Ward and Holly Ordway
Show Notes

Support this show by leaving us a rating and review!

C. S. Lewis scholar Michael Ward and J. R. R. Tolkien scholar Holly Ordway join us today to discuss the place of fantasy and imagination in the Christian life. Is fantasy always a bad thing?  What is imagination? Can reason and imagination have a healthy relationship? What does imagination even have to do with sex? Join us as we discuss these questions and several more!

Support this show for $5 dollars here!

Check out Dr. Ward's latest book, After Humanity.

And check out Dr. Ordway's latest book, Tolkien's Modern Reading.

MICHAEL WARD, a Catholic priest, is Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, and Professor of Apologetics at Houston Baptist University. He is the author of the best-selling and award-winning Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, and presenter of the BBC television documentary The Narnia Code. On the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis’s death, Michael Ward unveiled a permanent national memorial to him in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, London.

Click here to view Dr. Ward's website and resources!


Holly Ordway is Fellow of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Apologetics and the Christian Imagination: An Integrated Approach to Defending the Faith (Emmaus Road, 2017), and Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms (Ignatius, 2014). She is also a Subject Editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies, Visiting Professor at Houston Baptist University, and a published poet. Her academic work focuses on imaginative apologetics, and on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Her forthcoming book is Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages (Word on Fire Academic, 2021).

Her website is <hollyordway.com>

Support the show