Encouraging Good Things in This Our Time

Our Activities:

  • Teaching courses in the basic disciplines of theology, philosophy, and literature, especially to working adults who wish to learn.
  • Text and Talk, a weekly salon organized around a challenge relevant to contemporary thought, politics, morals, and manners.
  • The ROFTERS Seminar, a monthly consideration of ideas published in First Things
  • The First Saturday Theology Study Group.
  • The Third Saturday Poetry Group.
  • The Weekly e-publication of Thoughts on the Gospel, a cooperative effort with the Walsingham Society.
  • Occasional publication of Tradition on intellectual topics.
  • The Society supports research and publication by Fellows of the Society.
  • The Society sponsors the November Lewis-Tolkien Dinner.
 

Our History and Purpose

The Lewis Tolkien Society has a complicated genealogy. It’s origins lie in the St. Thomas More institute, which became the College of St. Thomas More in 1993 and persisted until 2012 when it was closed. The College was established as a means of encouraging students to become members of the great tradition through the study of great books, with the expectation that each would, through their studies, discover the courage and imagination to build good lives for themselves and in a way that reflected their God-given vocation. This was realized through the building of a body of like-minded teachers, the development of a curriculum based in the disciplines of literature, philosophy, theology, and the classical languages, and the promotion of a life that reflected a certain formality and that nurtured within itself friendship and mutual personal regard for each of its members.

The Lewis Tolkien Society exists to perpetuate and develop the tradition of The College of St. Thomas More. Its broad purpose is to keep alive through conversation and teaching the consideration of those ideas and themes that, under the teachings of Christ, and relying upon the great authorities, have made a civilization fruitful—nurturing those goods of the soul that lead beyond this world and which form a society gentled by the justice and charity of the cross of Christ. From 2012 to 2015 this mission was carried out under the sponsorship of the Walsingham Society, with whom the Lewis-Tolkien Society continues to cooperate and to whom gratitude us due.