The Chancellor's Lectures

CS Lewis

'God's Storytellers' - from Milton to C.S.Lewis and Philip Pullman

A series of lectures given by the Cathedral Chancellor, Canon Dr Anthony Cane.  The lectures took place in the Cathedral at 6.30pm on four Tuesday evenings:

Tuesday 28 April
Tuesday 5 April
Tuesday 12 April
Tuesday 19 May
Followed by questions and discussion in Vicars' Hall at 6.30pm on Tuesday 2 June.

The lecture series explored the impact of the Christian imagination on Western culture, in part as a response to atheists such as Richard Dawkins who see Christianity as primarily a set of propositions.  A key text was John Milton's Paradise Lost, which has strongly influenced both the God-affirming C.S.Lewis (author of the Narnia books) and the God-denying contemporary writer Philip Pullman (author of His Dark Materials).  Themes explored included:

• The role of storytelling in Christian mission
• The authority of the Bible and its narratives
• The human imagination as echoing the creativity of God
• Where God's storytellers are to be found today

You can click here to go to our Sermons and Lectures page - the full text of each lecture is available on this page.