In Inklings of Reality, poet and theologian Donald T. Williams revisits some of the most interesting and constructive moments in the history of Christian reflection on life's great issues and helps us develop a rich and dynamic Christian philosophy of reading.

Teens live in a complicated world. They are constantly bombarded by messages from their friends, parents, teachers, the internet, and their churches, and not all of these messages agree or line up with each other. How do students figure out who to listen to? How do they figure out what is true? Inklings on Philosophy and Worldview will show teens practical ways to filter out the wrong messages and focus on what is real. Using teachings from highly respected, loved, and well-known writers, teacher Matthew Dominguez will show teens the power of story as he guides them through a study of world religions, philosophies, and worldview, and gives them a firm foundation to stand on as they prepare to face the world.

C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times. In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. The result is an extraordinary account of the ideas, affections and vexations that drove the group's most significant members. C. S. Lewis accepts Jesus Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, maps the medieval and Renaissance mind, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating, for family and friends, the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewis's favorite sparring partner, and, for a time, Saul Bellow's chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of "supernatural shockers," and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years-and did so in dazzling style.

Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries, the author examines the friendship between and the social and literary gatherings of Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams who laughingly called themselves the Inklings

Since 1979 China's leaders have introduced economic and political reforms that have lessened the state's hold over the lives of ordinary citizens. By examining the growth in individual rights, the public sphere, democratic processes, and pluralization, the author seeks to answer questions concerning the relevance of liberal democratic ideas for China and the relationship between a democratic political culture and a democratic political system. The author also looks at the contradictory impulses and negative consequences for democracy generated by economic liberalism. Unresolved issues concerning the relationships among culture, democracy, and socioeconomic development are at the heart of the analysis. Nonideological criteria are used to assess the success of the Chinese approach to building a fair, just, and decent society.

"This book explores their lives, unfolding the extraordinary story of their complex friendship that lasted, with its ups and downs, until Lewis's death in 1963. Despite their differences - of temperament, spiritual emphasis, and storytelling style - what united them was much stronger: A shared vision that continues to inspire their millions of readers throughout the world."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

In this provocative, classic metaphysical thriller, a group of suburban amateur actors plagued by personal demons and terrors explore the pathways to heaven and hell Certain inhabitants of Battle Hill, a small community on the outskirts of London, are preparing to mount a new play by the neighborhood’s most illustrious resident, the writer Peter Stanhope. Each actor struggles with self-absorption, doubt, fear, and sin. But “the Hill” is not like other places. Here the past and present intermingle, ghosts walk among the living, and reality is often clouded by dreams and the dark fantastic. For young Pauline Anstruther, who is caring for an aging grandmother and frightened by the specter of a doppelgänger who gets closer with each visitation, the prospect of heaven exists in the renowned playwright’s willingness to bear the burden of her terror. For eminent historian Lawrence Wentworth, the rejection of his desire pulls him deeper inside himself, leaving him vulnerable to the lure of the succubus and opening wide the entrance to hell. A brilliant theological thriller, Descent into Hell is an extraordinary fictional meditation on sin and personal salvation by one of the twentieth century’s most original and provocative literary artists. Charles Williams, a member of the Inklings alongside fellow Oxfordians C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Owen Barfield, has written a powerful work at once profoundly disturbing and gloriously uplifting, an ingenious amalgam of metaphysics, religious thought, and darkest fantasy.

Clyde S. Kilby is rare among the best expositors of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and their circle of friends in that he became personally acquainted not only with Lewis and Tolkien, but also Lewis’s brother Major Warren Lewis, Owen Barfield, Lord David Cecil, and others of the Inklings. He particularly captured the soul of C.S. Lewis in his lectures, articles and books, which guided his vision in creating and curating the prestigious Wade Collection at Wheaton College, Illinois. This delightful book makes available Dr. Kilby’s wide-ranging and inspiring take on Lewis, Tolkien and the affinities they shared with their circle, the Inklings, in their enchantment with profound thought vibrant with imaginative wonder which took them beyond “the walls of the world”. (Colin Duriez Inklings scholar, author of The Oxford Inklings)

Together with his brother Warnie, and his friends J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and others, C.S. Lewis made up an intellectual group which called themselves the Inklings. The joke, of course, was a literary one, for Lewis, above all, the heaven-directed was never lacking. (Christian)

As well as the name of a virus, a corona is a crown, the pearly glow around the sun in certain astronomical conditions and a poetic form where interlinking lines connect a sequence. It is the perfect name therefore for this new collection of 150 poems by the bestselling poet Malcolm Guite, each one written in response to the Bible’s 150 psalms as they appear in William Coverdale’s timeless translation. The Psalms express every human emotion with disarming honesty, as anger and thankfulness alike are directed at God. All of life is here with its moments of beauty and its times of despair and shame. Like the Psalms themselves, the poems do not avoid the cursing and glorying over the downfall of your enemies, but wrestle honestly with them as we do when we come to say them.