Dr. Christopher Mitchell
Dr. Christopher Mitchell is director of the Wade Center and Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Wheaton College, Illinois. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Northern Michigan C. S. Lewis Festival and is a regular guest speaker at festival events. His first lecture in 2003, delivered to a packed house at North Central Michigan College, focused on the friendship of Lewis and Tolkien. In 2004 he joined British scholar and Lewis expert, Rev. Dr. Michael Ward, for a daylong seminar at the college. In 2005 he led another daylong seminar, this time with Dr. Andrew Cuneo of Hillsdale College, addressing "The Mind Behind Narnia." In 2006 he joined the panel discussion about the forthcoming PBS documentary "Myth, Imagination, & Faith," for which he was interviewed.
Dr. Mitchell received a M.A. from Wheaton College and a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, where his concentration was Historical Theology. He serves as Book Review Editor for Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review, a journal published annually by the Wade Center on its authors. He lectures widely on J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis as well as on the other authors of the Wade Center, which include Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Charles Williams. He has given lectures on Lewis/Tolkien/The Inklings at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; at the Annual Tolkien Symposium; and at various colleges and universities nationwide, including Ohio State, Baylor, Brigham Young, Wayne State, Calvin College, and Wheaton College.
Dr. Mitchell has also authored several published works on Lewis, including “Bearing the Weight of Glory: The Cost of C. S. Lewis’s Witness,” in The Pilgrim’s Guide: C. S. Lewis and the Art of Witness (Eerdmans, 1998); and “University Battles: C. S. Lewis and the Oxford University Socratic Club,” in C. S. Lewis: Lightbearer in the Shadowlands (Crossway Books, 1997).
Mitchell and his wife, Julie, live in Wheaton with the two youngest of their four children.
