TMR 100 : David Theroux : C. S. Lewis on Liberty and the Evils of Statism

In place of our scheduled interview with David Conn, who has unfortunately had to postpone due to illness, we take the opportunity to share a fascinating address by David Theroux, Founder and President of the C. S. Lewis Society of California, entitled: "C. S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism". Delivered as the keynote talk at the first annual conference of Christians for Liberty, at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, on the 2nd of August 2014, this address explores the extent to which Lewis was critical of the modern State, with its tendency towards scientism and technocratic control, and identifies a nexus of beliefs and values - of which Lewis's Christian theism was the foundation - as the motivation for that critique. As David Theroux puts it: "Throughout his work, Lewis infused an interconnected worldview that championed objective truth, moral ethics, natural law, literary excellence, reason, science, individual liberty, personal responsibility and virtue, and Christian theism. In so doing, he critiqued naturalism, reductionism, nihilism, positivism, scientism, historicism, collectivism, atheism, statism, coercive egalitarianism, militarism, welfarism, and dehumanization and tyranny of all forms." In a world in which Christianity and the State are too often seen as natural allies, we offer this address as arguing that we might call libertarian values are fundamentally consistent with Christian thought. (The address by David Theroux included in this episode is Copyright © the C. S. Lewis Society of California, all rights reserved, and used here with kind permission.) (For show notes please visit http://themindrenewed.com)