It’s About The Journey
What We Do
Share, Learn, & Enjoy
Monthly Online Meetings
We meet on Zoom, which enables us to get speakers from all over the country (really anywhere in the world). Meetings generally last an hour and include open discussion, and Q&A. Can’t attend live? No problem. Meetings are recorded and links sent to our members for later viewing.
In-person Special Events
Our Pacific Inklings Festival is typically held in the summer. It may be a single-day event or extended to a multi-day retreat/workshop. Depending on the format, cost varies from year to year.
Possibility for additional workshops or in-person meetings depending upon interest and funding.
Membership Perks
Access to monthly Zoom meetings with a wide variety of speakers and topics about Lewis’ life and work.
Subscription to our newsletter
Invitations to attend special events (some require admission fees).
Newsletter
The Roar and The Bleet is our aggregate newsletter. Stay abreast of the latest events, movies and new books about Lewis, his life, works and their relevance in today’s culture.
A few things about SCCSLS
Community & Education Since 1974
Formed in 1974 under the direction of Paul F. Ford with the purpose of creating a place to share literary study and encourage continued accessibility of all of C.S. Lewis’s works.
Our Mission
We, the Founding members of The Southern California C. S. Lewis Society, conscious that, as Lewis says, “There are no ordinary people,” together resolve that our society has as its purposes;
1. To bring together those in our local area who share for C. S. Lewis special esteem and deep, active, and abiding interest in his life, writings, and ideas;
2. To meet and discuss all aspects of the life works of C. S. Lewis. and any issues and problems of today on which his thought may shed light;
3. To encourage others to read and study C.S. Lewis, knowing that his writings offer real insight and wisdom which can guide us on our pilgrimage through this life;
4. To encourage scholarship regarding the life and writings of C. S. Lewis and work toward eventual definitive edition of the writings of C. S. Lewis;
5. To encourage publishers and booksellers to keep the works of C. S. Lewis readily available to the public;
6. To found and maintain a repository for the works by and about C. S. Lewis and to encourage libraries of all kinds to maintain a collection of his works;
7. To establish and maintain contact with others throughout the world who share our deep, active, and abiding interest in the life, writings, and ideas of C. S. Lewis.
Our Story
1974
Established
Paul Ford, at the time, was a brilliant, young theology scholar who decided to pursue a vocation as a Benedictine monk at St Andrew’s Priory in Valyermo, California. There, he was “Brother Peter,” and he gave workshops on C.S. Lewis, which were widely attended and inspirational.
Brother Peter was and is a gifted speaker. There was a demand to have such meetings on a monthly basis, so the Southern California CS Lewis Society was born. Our summer week at St Andrew’s Abbey (no longer a priory) became a regular fixture. Monthly meetings moved from site to site; Hollywood Presbyterian was home for a while. Eventually, the Society held meetings at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena and stayed there for many years. The Divinity students at Fuller were the first and most enthusiastic members of the Society.
Brother Peter, meanwhile, decided at the end of his novitiate that he was not to be a monk after all and left St Andrew’s Abbey for lay life. He married and pursued a doctorate in Theology at Fuller. There he served many years as the Society’s founding director, and he still is. Paul Ford is our George Washington, so to speak. After his graduation, he began to teach at St John’s Seminary in Camarillo and teaches there still.
S.C.C.S.L.S
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
C.S. Lewis
