(in alphabetical order)
Morning Session Plenary Speakers
Malcolm Guite
on the subject of the transformation of C.S. Lewis
Malcolm Guite is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and academic. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, and the examination of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, and associate chaplain of St Edward King and Martyr, Cambridge.
Guite is the author of several books of poetry, including Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (2012), The Singing Bowl (2013), and his most recent book David’s Crown (2021), among others. He has also written several books on Christian faith and theology, such as Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2017) and Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination (2012). He has a decisively simple, formalist style in his poems, many of which are sonnets, and he stated that his aim is to “be profound without ceasing to be beautiful.” You can learn more about Malcolm Guite at his website. (Image courtesy of Lancia E. Smith)
Myk Habets
on the subject of Theosis/how we become more and more like Christ
Myk is Senior Lecturer in Theology and Head of the School of Theology at Laidlaw College and has Senior Researcher status with AUT and ACT. He is also a Baptist pastor. Myk lectures in Systematic Theology and Ethics and has lectured at a number of universities and colleges in New Zealand and abroad.
He is President of the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship, Associate Editor of Participatio: The Journal of the Thomas Torrance Theological Fellowship, and Co-editor of Re-envisioning Reformed Theology Series (Cascade Books). His work is widely published in international journals, and he has published over twenty-four books, including The Anointed Son and The Progressive Mystery.
Myk’s teaching and research centre around constructive contemporary dogmatics and moral theology (ethics). He has a special interest in pneumatology and is a world-leading scholar of Third Article Theology, theosis, Spirit Christology, the theology of Thomas F. Torrance, C.S. Lewis, Evangelical Calvinism, and the theological interpretation of Scripture.
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson
on the subject of what is the Christian version of the mythic hero’s quest?
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson is a George MacDonald Scholar based in the Ottawa Valley, Canada. She lectures internationally and publishes widely in books, journals, and online, on topics related to MacDonald; 19th century literature and faith; the Inklings; Faith, Arts, & Imagination; Ecology and Community; etc. She features in the documentary “Fantasy Makers: Tolkien, Lewis, and MacDonald,” and is guest on numerous podcasts and YouTube videos.
An alum of Regent College and St Andrew’s ‘Institute of Theology, Imagination, and the Arts,’ Kirstin directs Windstone Farm Linlathen, a non-profit that seeks to facilitate and cultivate community, through ‘Theology, Ecology, & the Arts.’ Links to her academic work can be found at kirstinjeffreyjohnson.com..
Amy Baik Lee
on the subject of the longing for Heaven
Amy is a founding member The Cultivating Project, contributing writer and columnist for Cultivating magazine, a literary member and former co-director of the Anselm Society Arts Guild, and the author of This Homeward Ache. A lifelong appreciator of stories, she holds an MA in English literature from the University of Virginia. You can learn more about Amy at her website.
John Lennox
on the subject of the opportunities and hope for the gospel in our culture and the role of apologetics
John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University (emeritus), is an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy and religion. He regularly teaches at many academic institutions, is Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum and has written a series of books exploring the relationship between science and Christianity.
He studied at the Royal School Armagh, Northern Ireland and was Exhibitioner and Senior Scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University from which he took his MA, MMath and PhD. He worked for many years in the Mathematics Institute at the University of Wales in Cardiff which awarded him a DSc for his research. He also holds an MA and DPhil from Oxford University (by incorporation) and an MA in Bioethics from the University of Surrey. He was a Senior Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow at the Universities of Würzburg and Freiburg in Germany.
He has lectured extensively in North America, Eastern and Western Europe and Australasia on mathematics, the philosophy of science and the intellectual defence of Christianity. He has written a number of books on the interface between science, philosophy and theology. These include God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (2009), God and Stephen Hawking, a response to The Grand Design (2011), Gunning for God, on the new atheism (2011), and Seven Days that Divide the World, on the first chapters of Genesis (2011). He has also written a number of books exploring biblical themes, including Against the Flow (2015), on the topic of Daniel, Determined to Believe? (2017), on the the subject of free will and God’s sovereignty, Joseph (2019), on the story in Genesis, and the ‘Key Bible Concepts’ series, co–written with David Gooding (in the 1990s). His most recent titles are Have no Fear (2018), on evangelism today, Can Science Explain Everything? (2019), on the relationship between science and Christianity, and the six–part ‘Quest for Reality and Significance’ series co–written by David Gooding (2018–9). Furthermore, in addition to over seventy published mathematical papers, he is the co–author of two research level texts in algebra in the Oxford Mathematical Monographs series.
Alister McGrath
Will be our keynote speaker on the theme of our conference
Alister McGrath was born in Belfast in 1953, and educated at Down High School, Downpatrick, and the Methodist College Belfast. Although McGrath was an atheist as a teenager, he discovered Christianity while an undergraduate at Oxford University, and has spent the rest of his life exploring its rich themes and their wider impact. After gaining first class honours in Chemistry at Oxford, McGrath earned his doctorate in molecular biophysics in the laboratories of Professor Sir George Radda, and went on to gain first class honours in theology, and two further earned Oxford doctorates in theology, and intellectual history.
He began his teaching career at Oxford in 1983, when he was appointed lecturer in Christian doctrine at Wycliffe Hall. He was appointed University Research Lecturer in Theology in 1993, Principal of Wycliffe Hall in 1995, and Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University in 1998. After two years as Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford from 2006, McGrath was appointed Professor of Theology, Ministry and Education at King’s College London, and returned to Oxford as Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion in 2014. He retired from this endowed chair in 2022, and now serves as Senior Research Fellow at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford.
McGrath also held several other appointments alongside these positions, including President of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics from 2006–14, and Professor of Divinity at Gresham College London (a chair in public theology founded in the City of London in 1597) from 2015–18. He holds both British and Irish citizenship, and lives with his family near Oxford. Learn more at his website.
Amy Orr-Ewing
on the subject of ‘Public theology’ and how we can share the gospel and influence our culture
Dr. Amy Orr-Ewing is an international author, speaker and theologian who addresses the deep questions of our day with meaningful answers found in the Christian Faith. She is the author of multiple books including ‘Where is God in All the Suffering?’ (runner up Michael Ramsay Prize, 2023), bestselling ‘Why Trust the Bible?’ and ‘Mary’s Voice: Advent Reflections to Contemplate the Coming of Christ.’
Over the last twenty five years, Amy has spoken in 40 countries as a public advocate for the Christian faith including public lectures and open forums on university campuses, as a broadcaster on TV and radio, and addressing Politicians and Parliamentarians in the Speakers Rooms and Chapel at the UK Parliament and staffers on Capitol Hill and the West Wing of The White House. Amy speaks about how theology connects with the deepest questions of life.
In 2023, Amy was awarded the Alphege Medal for Evangelism and Witness by the Archbishop of Canterbury. She previously served as President of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and is now Honorary Lecturer at the School of Divinity, University of Aberdeen.
Curt Thompson
on the subject of the role of suffering in our journeys and how we heal and grow
Curt Thompson, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice in Falls Church, Virginia. With a considerable dose of warmth (and surprising measure of humor), Curt weaves together an understanding of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) and a Christian view of what it means to be human — to educate and encourage others as they seek to fulfill their intrinsic desire to feel known, valued and connected.
Through his workshops, speaking engagements, books, organizational consulting, private clinical practice and other platforms, he helps people process their longings, grief, identity, purpose, perspective of God and perspective of humanity, inviting them to engage more authentically with their own stories and their relationships. Only then can they can feel truly known and connected and live into the meaningful reality they desire to create. Learn more about Curt at his website.
Sheridan Voysey
on the subject of the model and metaphor of pilgrimage
Sheridan Voysey is a writer, speaker, broadcaster, and founder of FriendshipLab.org. He is the author of eight books, including The Making of Us: Who We Can Become When life Doesn’t Go as Planned, and Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams into New Beginnings, and is a featured writer for Our Daily Bread, a devotional read by 60 million people daily.
Sheridan is a regular presenter of Pause for Thought on BBC Radio 2, Europe’s largest broadcaster, and has conducted over 2000 radio interviews in his 25-year broadcast career. He speaks at conferences and events around the world, and has been featured on numerous TV and radio programs including BBC Breakfast, BBC News, Day of Discovery, 100 Huntley Street, CBC’s Tapestry, and in publications like The Times, Telegraph, and Christianity Today. You can learn more about him at his website.
Clergy
Malcolm Guite
Malcolm Guite is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and academic. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, and the examination of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge, and associate chaplain of St Edward King and Martyr, Cambridge.
Guite is the author of several books of poetry, including Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (2012), The Singing Bowl (2013), and his most recent book David’s Crown (2021), among others. He has also written several books on Christian faith and theology, such as Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2017) and Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination (2012). He has a decisively simple, formalist style in his poems, many of which are sonnets, and he stated that his aim is to “be profound without ceasing to be beautiful.” You can learn more about Malcolm Guite at his website. (Image courtesy of Lancia E. Smith)
Evening Session Artists
Ad Deum Dance Company
Ad Deum is a professional modern/contemporary dance company based in Houston, Texas, directed by its founder Randall Flinn, who established the company in January 2000. Dancers have come to Ad Deum from around the world seeking to be connected with a community of artists that share a common vision and desire. The mission of Ad Deum is to create and perform excellent and vital works of dance that serve to wash over the heart and soul of humanity with relevant meaning and redemptive hope.
Ad Deum has toured across the USA, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Asia. Their work has been featured in Dance Spirit and Dance Magazine and they have received outstanding reviews of their performances worldwide. Ad Deum has performed the works of many amazing choreographers including Steve Rooks (former principal dancer with Martha Graham Dance Company), Durell Comedy (José Limón Dance Company), Ryan Corriston (former dancer with Doug Varone), Caleb Mitchell (former Houston Ballet dancer), Hope Boykin, Matthew Rushing, and Freddie Moore (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater), Stephen Wynne (TALK Dance Company), Bill Wade (Inlet Dance Theatre), as well as the works of Mr. Flinn and Ad Deum Company members.
Eastgate Creative
Eastgate Creative is a non-profit film production company founded in 2017 by filmmakers Ralph Linhardt and Jock Petersen. Eastgate Creative targets a broad audience with historical and educational films. Currently under production is a The Forge of Friendship, a documentary film series about the friendship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis forged over decades and leading their fantastic works. Eastgate Creative is deeply grateful for our many friends who are helping to support our documentary film, The Forge of Friendship.
Diana Pavlac Glyer
Diana Pavlac Glyer is an internationally recognized speaker and teacher whose work always circles back to collaboration, creativity, and community. She is a professor in the Honors College at Azusa Pacific University in Southern California where she teaches literature, history, theology, and philosophy in an integrated Great Books curriculum.
Dr. Glyer is also an award-winning writer whose research focuses on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings. Her book The Company They Keep (2008) offers an in-depth account of Lewis and Tolkien and their writing process. It shows how encouragement, praise, criticism, and conflict shaped their fellowship and their books. In Bandersnatch (2015), she explains what we can learn about creativity, productivity, and collaboration from their example.
She has also authored a series of Christian devotional books called Clay in the Potter’s Hands: Recognizing the Extraordinary Work of God in Your Ordinary, Everyday Life. A new edition of this book revised specifically for artists and students in ceramics classes is forthcoming from Square Halo Press.
At present, she is collaborating with Abigail Dengler on a series of books designed to inspire writers step-by-step as they make their way from blank pages to finished manuscripts. You can learn more about Diana on her website. (Image courtesy of Lancia E. Smith)
High Drive
The ‘High Drive’ are a high energy, toe tapping, 5 piece Scots-Irish Trad band from County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The group has twenty years performing together, including performances in USA, China and Europe. Incorporating fiddle, flute, accordion and harp, the group has an extensive lively repertoire of songs and tunes combined with stomping Ceilidh dance sets that will see your guests fill the floor well into the wee hours.
Joanne Hogg
Joanne Hogg is a Northern Irish musician, best known for her work as the lead singer and songwriter with the Celtic Christian progressive rock band Iona.
Hogg was born in Ballymena to a family of medical missionaries. Her father is a Presbyterian minister, her mother a nurse; her family also includes three sisters and two brothers. With medicine strong in the family, it was natural for Hogg to become a doctor and she studied medicine at Queen’s University Belfast. In her third year, Hogg was singing at the Christian Artists talent event and was convinced to sing in a school ministry at Youth for Christ in Denmark. After a year, Hogg got married and returned to university to complete her two remaining years of schooling.
After graduating, Hogg interned as a junior doctor at Belfast City Hospital to complete her registration. Six months into working at the hospital, she was taken ill and stopped working for seven months to recover; after recovering, she completed her registration as a doctor, but was advised on medical grounds not to continue in full-time medical work for a year.
During her convalescence, she had been contacted by Dave Bainbridge and Dave Fitzgerald, who had considered forming a band. In 1989, Hogg ceased practicing medicine, and Iona was born. Since then, Hogg has sung all over Europe and America. Iona’s recordings have become successful worldwide, making them Europe’s best-selling contemporary Christian band.
Special Afternoon Session Presenters
Crystal Hurd
on the subject of C.S. Lewis’s family background in Belfast
Crystal Hurd is an educator and researcher from Virginia. She lives with her husband and three dogs. A self-proclaimed “book nerd”, her interests include reading, writing, photography, and listening incessantly to MUTEMATH. Over the past decade, she has read and researched both biographical and rhetorical aspects of C.S Lewis, fully endorsing his integration of faith and intellect.
Dr. Hurd loves discussing Lewis as well as various aspects of spirituality, apologetics, and leadership theory. Her dissertation applied Transformational Leadership theory to the life and works of Lewis. She is currently researching the role of artists as leaders. You can learn more about her on her website.
Alexander “Sandy” Smith
on the subject of C.S. Lewis related sites in Belfast
Alexander “Sandy” Smith is the author of C.S. Lewis and the Island of His Birth and a Director of Heritage Experience. His book is available through www.authenticulster.com. Three short film pieces on aspects of the life of C.S. Lewis can also be viewed on the website. In addition he has produced several YouTube videos of Ireland.
Afternoon Seminar Leaders
Nicole Howe
on the subject of counseling and psychology
Nicole Marie Howe is a writer, speaker, wife, and mother to three teenage mavericks, a nine-year old bohemian, and a rescue pup named Samwise Gamgee.
Samwise Gamgee. She holds a master’s degree in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Baptist University, where she discovered the power of the imagination to restore awe and wonder to her floundering faith.
Nicole is Director of Formational Community for The Cultivating Project and a columnist for Cultivating Magazine. She is also founder and co-director of OneStory, a creative collaborative that provides Bible learning resources for kids and families. She serves locally as lay teaching pastor for The Practice Church, an experimental community dedicated to practicing the way of Jesus together for the sake of the world.
Drawing deep insights from her ordinary experiences, Nicole is passionate about helping others discover the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of Christ in broken and unlikely places. When she’s not devouring books, Nicole enjoys road trips, eating good salsa, and engaging in long soul conversations with friends.
Samwise Gamgee. She holds a master’s degree in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Baptist University, where she discovered the power of the imagination to restore awe and wonder to her floundering faith.
Nicole is Director of Formational Community for The Cultivating Project and a columnist for Cultivating Magazine. She is also founder and co-director of OneStory, a creative collaborative that provides Bible learning resources for kids and families. She serves locally as lay teaching pastor for The Practice Church, an experimental community dedicated to practicing the way of Jesus together for the sake of the world.
Drawing deep insights from her ordinary experiences, Nicole is passionate about helping others discover the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of Christ in broken and unlikely places. When she’s not devouring books, Nicole enjoys road trips, eating good salsa, and engaging in long soul conversations with friends. (Image courtesy of Lancia E. Smith)
Chris Howell
Academic Roundtable
Chris teaches on religion and has taught a course on C.S. Lewis at Duke University for the Religion Department. As a teacher, he has also taught undergraduate classes at Duke as well as English foreign language courses in Prague, Czech Republic.
He has also worked side jobs in video game development and sports radio. He has worked with the CS Lewis Foundation since 2010, filling various roles as Communications Associate, conference staffer, registrar, and event planner, and has worked conferences in England, Massachusetts, and California.
He has a Ph.D. American Religion (dissertation on the history of religion and science) from Duke University, a Master’s in Theological Studies from Duke Divinity School and a Bachelor’s in American history from the University of California, Riverside.
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson
on the subject of George McDonald – see bio and headshot above
Andrew Lazo
a C.S. Lewis overview focusing on Till We Have Faces
Andrew Lazo is Special Advisor for the C.S. Lewis Foundation. Rev. Andrew Lazo is an internationally-known speaker and writer specializing in C.S. Lewis and the Inklings. Andrew earned his Masters in Modern British Literature from Rice University where he was a Jacob K. Javits fellow in the Humanities. He is a frequent speaker around the U.S. and U.K. and has written several articles on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. In 2009, Andrew published Mere Christians: Inspiring Encounters with C.S. Lewis. In 2014 he also was honored to transcribe, edit, and publish a previously unknown book by C.S. Lewis, “Early Prose Joy,” which was Lewis’s very first spiritual autobiography. For ten years he taught English and C. S. Lewis at St. Thomas and Houston Christian High Schools in Houston. After finishing studies for an M. Div. (with Honors) at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, VA in May 2022, Andrew was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in January 2023 and serves as the Apprentice Rector at Church of the Messiah in Winter Garden, FL. He is also pursuing his doctorate in Romantic Theology at Northwind Seminary, where he serves as a Distinguished Lecturer. Andrew is married to author and speaker Dr. Christin Ditchfield Lazo. You can find out more at his website.
Christin Ditchfield Lazo
on the metaphor of the journey in Narnia
Christin Ditchfield Lazo is the author of more than 80 books, including the best-selling A Family Guide to Narnia: Biblical Truths in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, and a number of devotionals, Bible studies, and books on Christian living. For thirty years, she has been speaking at conferences and retreats all over the country, calling believers to a deeper life of faith, a life of passion and purpose. Christin recently earned her doctorate in Spiritual Formation, based on the teachings of Henri Nouwen. She is also a Certified Labyrinth Facilitator, trained to teach and lead others in the contemplative Christian practice of praying the labyrinth. You can find out more at her website.
Amy Baik Lee
“Honoring the Givenness of Our Lives as Sub-creators” – see bio and headshot above
Andrew Roycroft
Lancia Smith
on the subject of longing as leading
Lancia is a member and advisor on the Leadership Council of the C.S. Lewis Foundation, serving in a variety of capacities including our Program Planning Committee (various events) and organizational development consulting.
A grateful lover of the Triune God, Lancia is the Founder & Publisher of Cultivating Oaks Press, Cultivating, and the Executive Director of The Cultivating Project. She has gratefully served in executive management, church leadership, school boards, and Art & Faith organizations for more than 35 years. She has done extensive support counseling for the bereaved, trauma and abuse survivors, and recovering addicts and alcoholics. Lancia’s core calling is discipleship, especially for those wrestling with difficult pasts and gifted with creative inclinations.
Now empty nesters, Lancia & her husband Peter make their home in the Black Forest of Colorado. Lancia loves land reclamation, website and print design, beautiful typography, road trips, being read aloud to by Peter, & cherishes every book she ever read by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
Sheridan Voysey
on the subject of Friendship as a holy calling – see bio and headshot above
