Where to start with Lewis and Tolkien

We begin 2026 with a question: What if the most decisive battles in our time aren’t fought with ballots or bombs—but with the imagination?Watch the full conversation on YouTube

Russell Moore talks with historian and author Joseph Loconte about The War for Middle-earth, his book on how World War I and World War II forged the friendship, faith, and fiction of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Together they explore why The Lord of the Rings and Narnia weren’t escapist detours from reality, but a deliberate counter-assault on cynicism, propaganda, and the will to power—written by men who had seen the trenches up close and knew exactly what modern darkness looks like.

Loconte and Moore talk about why World War I has slipped from our cultural memory, what protected Tolkien from the disillusionment that swallowed so many of his peers, and why both writers keep insisting that deeds done in the dark are “not wholly in vain.” They also discuss Lewis’s warning about the “cataract of nonsense” in modern media, and why genuine friendship is almost never built by chasing “community”—but by pursuing a shared mission so compelling you find yourself fighting alongside someone.

Loconte shares the origin story of the Lewis–Tolkien friendship, why grace—not grit—is the hinge point in both Middle-earth and Narnia, and where to start if you’ve never read either author: The Screwtape Letters for Lewis, and Tolkien’s short, haunting “Leaf by Niggle.”

Resources mentioned in this episode:

By J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Lord of the Rings

• The Hobbit

• Leaf by Niggle

• The Fall of Gondolin

• “Beren and Lúthien” (legendarium story)
  

By C.S. Lewis

• The Screwtape Letters

• The Chronicles of NarniaOut of the Silent Planet

• That Hideous Strength

• The Space Trilogy

• The Four Loves

• Spirits in Bondage (early poetry collection)

• “Learning in Wartime” (sermon/essay)
  

By Joseph Loconte

• The War for Middle-earth

• A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War
  

Other Literary & Historical Works Referenced

• All Quiet on the Western Front — Erich Maria Remarque

• Paradise Lost — John Milton

• The Odyssey — Homer

• The Aeneid — Virgil

• The Divine Comedy — Dante

Plato’s Cave (from The Republic) — Plato

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