The Surprising Laughter of C. S. Lewis: From Flippancy to Joy

Dr. Terry Lindvall, the C. S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan University, will join us on November 6, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. to give a talk entitled, “The Surprising Laughter of Lewis: From Flippancy to Joy.”

The talk will take place after our 5:30 p.m. Choral Evensong in the Church and 6:00 p.m. Dinner in the Parish Hall. The event is free, but we ask you to register so that we have an accurate count.

At the close of his book on Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton celebrates that “Joy… is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” At the creation of Narnia, one discovers the glorious gift of laughter bursting forth with hilarity (as well as the invention of the first jokes); yet at the end of Narnia, the cynical laughter of the dwarfs keeps them from entering the Stable and a New Narnia. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis’s diabolical scribe writes to his underling Wormwood and defines four kinds of laughter. I hope to guide you through all four types that Lewis outlined and even give you an intoxicating taste of the experience of mirth as well.