“The Arts and the Christian Imagination” by Clyde Kilby

It’s become more common today to see churches, denominations, and religious organizations begin to embrace and grapple with the role of the Christian (and the church) in the arts. But it’s been a long time coming.

The reason for that long time coming has been what can only be called antagonism, likely born in the Protestant Reformation. Protestants not only looked to reform theology; they also were done with icons, church paintings, and statues, seeing these as idolatrous. In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, fundamentalists and others turned their backs on culture, both popular and “high.” Art, movies, magazines, novels, and other aspects of culture were often considered a danger.

By the 1970s, a Christian imitation of popular culture had begun to appear, especially in music, self-help books, and fiction. “CCM” or “Christian Contemporary Music” became widely known, and secular music producers began buying up Christian labels. The same thing has happened over time with Christian books, with many Christian publishers now subsidiaries or imprints of larger secular concerns. But much of what is called Christian is still clearly separated from the general culture.

Also in the 1970s, Francis Schaeffer was one of the first spokesmen for Christians to re-engage with the culture at large. He, and many others, could clearly see the decay of secular culture – essentially what was happening without the redeeming “salt” of Christianity. The decline seemed to be happening quickly, but it had actually been happening for more than a century.

But before there was Francis Schaeffer, there was Clyde Kilby.

Kilby (1902-1986) was a long-time professor of English and department head at Wheaton College in Illinois. He also happened to be a passionate advocate for the arts. He taught literature and poetry and fought the good fight to defend both, and especially poetry. He was heavily influenced by British Christian writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and other members of the Inklings. He was also instrumental in the founding of the Marion Wade Center at Wheaton, what became a major research center and document depository for the works of Lewis, Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Dorothy Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, George Macdonald, and Charles Williams.

Various manuscripts and essays by Kilby have been collected and published under the title of The Arts and the Christian Imagination: Essays on Art, Literature, and Aesthetics. It’s almost uncanny how Kilby advocated for and anticipated the renewed Christian involvement in the arts, which is only now beginning to gain velocity.

Clyde Kilby

The collection is divided into four sections. The first, “Christianity, the Arts, and Aesthetics,” includes a lengthy unpublished manuscript by Kilby drawn partially from his published essays as well as original material. He was especially interested in form in the arts, but parted company with academics, critics, and artists who saw form as everything. Kilby, says collection editor Willian Dyrness in his introduction, understood form in a radically different way: “True form, for the Christian, is exemplified by the Spirit-filled life. It is more closely connected to being than doing.”

The second section, “The Vocation of the Artist,” discusses the Christian and culture, a defense of beauty, individuality, and evangelicalism and human freedom. “Faith and the Role of the Imagination” is the third section, followed by  a section specifically addressing poetry and fiction, two art forms too long neglected or ignored by the Christian community. Kilby, in fact, saw Jesus as more of a poet than an expositor, and said that “we have forsaken the poetry of Christianity for it prose, and especially its dull expository prose.”

Kilby was the author of several works about Lewis and Tolkien, including The Christian World of C.S. Lewis (1964); Tolkien and the Silmarillion (1971); Images of Salvation in the Fiction of C.S. Lewis (1978); and Brothers & Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis (1983). He served as editor for C.S. Lewis: Letters to an American Lady (1967). And a companion volume to The Arts and the Christian Imagination, A Well of Wonder: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings, was also published in 2016. Kilby also published Minority of One: A Biography of Jonathan Blanchard (1982).

The Arts and the Christian Imagination has insights and thought-provoking observations on almost every page. Kilby was a shrewd observer of both the contemporary arts and how Christians did, and didn’t respond to and participate in them. It’s an important collection that is pertinent for Christians and for anyone who cares about the arts today.

Related:

My review of A Well of Wonder: C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings.

Photograph: Whitby Abbey in the United Kingdom by George Hodan, via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

“A Well of Wonder” – Essays by Clyde S. Kilby

Clyde Kilby (1902-1986) joined the faculty of Wheaton College in 1935. He eventually earned a PhD degree from New York University (academia was a bit different in those days). He became the chairman of Wheaton’s English Department in 1951, a post he held until he retired in 1986. A few months after he retired, he died in Mississippi.

Kilby may had far more to do with our understanding of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their circle called the Inklings that we realize. It was Kilby who found a way to meet Lewis in the 1950s and Tolkien slightly later. It was Kilby who helped Tolkien with The Silmarillion, and played a role in its publication after Tolkien’s death. It was Kilby who started what became the Marion Wade Center at Wheaton, which was only a few manuscripts at its inception but is now a major center of documents and research for seven British authors: Lewis, Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, George Macdonald, and Charles Williams.

And now a considerable number of Kilby’s essays have been edited and collected by Loren Wilkinson and Keith Call and published under the title A Well of Wonder by Paraclete Press. An added bonus is an introductory poem by Luci Shaw, who was a student of Kilby’s at Wheation.

The essays are divided into three parts – those about Lewis, those about Tolkien, and those relating to the Inklings, especially Owen Barfield and Charles Williams, and one non-Inkling, Dorothy Sayers. The essays were published in a variety of different publications.

In 12 essays on the author of such varied works as The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia, Kilby describes his one and only visit with Lewis; his world of fantasy; Lewis’s theology (and his theological critics); the critical roles of imagination and joy; and other subjects related to the “witness of literature.” (The role of fiction and literature is a major theme in all of the essays here.)

The seven essays on Tolkien focus on story and myth. Kilby describes how he met Tolkien and how the two came to work together on The Silmarillion. The essays cover a number of literary subjects – the idea of “lost myth;” how The Lord of the Rings includes both mystic and Christian elements; and several others.

Clyde Kilby

The final section on Sayers and the Inklings provides a wonderful introduction to Charles Williams and his writings, especially his novels (some of the strangest written in fiction generally); understanding who the Inklings were and more importantly what they were not; and how the Marion Wade Collection came to be.

Kilby was the author of several works about Lewis and Tolkien, including The Christian World of C.S. Lewis (1964); Tolkien and the Silmarillion (1971); Images of Salvation in the Fiction of C.S. Lewis (1978); and Brothers & Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis (1983). He served as editor for C.S. Lewis: Letters to an American Lady (1967). And a companion volume to A Well of Wonder, The Arts and the Christian Imagination: Essays on Art, Literature, and Aesthetics, was also published in 2016. Kilby also published Minority of One: A Biography of Jonathan Blanchard (1982).

For even general readers of Lewis and Tolkien, A Well of Wonder is filled with insights from a scholar who knew and studied both men up close.

Top photograph: From left, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams.