The Marion E. Wade Center

09/22/2026

REMINDER: The Marion E. Wade Center presents "Good Words for Good Work," an evening with Andrew Peterson, singer-songwriter, author, and founder of the Rabbit Room, on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 7:00 PM CT. Words have great power to shape the way we think. In this talk, Andrew will discuss three words from J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Wendell Berry that have recalibrated his heart’s compass over the years. The in-person lecture is sold out, and the livestream link below will be available for viewing during the night of the lecture only.

Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter, author, and founder of the Rabbit Room. Andrew has released more than ten records over the past twenty years, earning him a reputation for songs that connect with his listeners in ways equally powerful, poetic, and intimate. As an author, Andrew’s books include the four volumes of the award-winning Wingfeather Saga, which have sold more than a million copies, along with his creative memoirs, Adorning the Dark, and The God of the Garden. He’s also an executive producer of the Wingfeather Saga Animated Series, which is currently in production on its third season with Angel Studios. In 2008 Andrew founded the Rabbit Room, a nonprofit organization based in Nashville, Tennessee that nourishes Christ-centered communities by cultivating and curating stories, art, and music.

Free livestream of the event available the night of the event only:
https://youtube.com/live/_o4sGeWOM-Y

For more information, contact the Wade Center at 630.752.5908 or [email protected].

09/22/2026

The Wade Center wishes you a very Happy Hobbit Day! Today celebrates the joint birthdays of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. Join Tolkien fans in the celebration and do something extra "hobbity" today.

09/20/2026

HAPPY TOLKIEN WEEK!

Tolkien fans around the world celebrate the week containing September 22 – “Hobbit Day” (the birthdays of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins) as "Tolkien Week." Second breakfast, reading from Tolkien's works, and good fellowship are all great ways to observe the event. How will you be celebrating this week?

09/16/2026

The Marion E. Wade Center presents "Homecoming at the Wade | How to Read like C.S. Lewis: Lessons from the Lewis Library," a lecture by Jim Beitler, Director of the Wade Center on Friday, October 2, 2026, at 1:00 PM in Bakke Auditorium.

The Wade Center is home to over 2,500 books from C.S. Lewis’s personal library. This talk explores what Lewis’s library reveals about how to read well and—in the spirit of Alan Jacobs’s "Breaking Bread with the Dead," Wheaton College’s 2026-27 Core Book—how to cultivate “a more tranquil mind.”

James E. Beitler (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is the Director of the Wade Center, the Marion E. Wade Chair of Christian Thought, and a Professor of English. His scholarship focuses on the rhetoric of Christian witness and writing as a spiritual activity, looking to C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, Desmond Tutu, and other exemplary communicators as guides for faithful practice. He is the author of Seasoned Speech: Rhetoric in the Life of the Church; Charitable Writing: Cultivating Virtue Through Our Words (with co-author Richard Hughes Gibson); and Remaking Transitional Justice in the United States. He is currently working on the collection Sites of Writing: Essays in Honor of Anne Ruggles Gere (with co-editor Sarah Ruffing Robbins) as well as a book project based on archival research conducted at the Wade Center. Beitler has taught a variety of courses at Wheaton, including Christianity and Fantasy, Lewis and Tolkien, Tolkien and Environmental Stewardship (co-taught with Kristen Page), Teaching Writing, Writing Chicago, Persuasive Writing, and First-Year Writing. He also teaches a course in the Wheaton College Summer Institute—the Makings of Middle-earth. He lives in Wheaton with his wife, Brita, and their boys, James and Arne.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Wade Center at 630.752.5908 or [email protected].

09/09/2026

The Marion E. Wade Center presents "Good Words for Good Work," an evening with Andrew Peterson, singer-songwriter, author, and founder of the Rabbit Room, on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at 7:00 PM CT. Words have great power to shape the way we think. In this talk, Andrew will discuss three words from J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Wendell Berry that have recalibrated his heart’s compass over the years. The in-person lecture is sold out, and the livestream link below will be available for viewing during the night of the lecture only.

Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter, author, and founder of the Rabbit Room. Andrew has released more than ten records over the past twenty years, earning him a reputation for songs that connect with his listeners in ways equally powerful, poetic, and intimate. As an author, Andrew’s books include the four volumes of the award-winning Wingfeather Saga, which have sold more than a million copies, along with his creative memoirs, Adorning the Dark, and The God of the Garden. He’s also an executive producer of the Wingfeather Saga Animated Series, which is currently in production on its third season with Angel Studios. In 2008 Andrew founded the Rabbit Room, a nonprofit organization based in Nashville, Tennessee that nourishes Christ-centered communities by cultivating and curating stories, art, and music.

Free livestream of the event available the night of the event only:
https://youtube.com/live/_o4sGeWOM-Y

For more information, contact the Wade Center at 630.752.5908 or [email protected].

09/02/2026

On September 2, 1973, J.R.R. Tolkien passed “Into the West.” He shares a grave with his wife, Edith, and the tombstone bears the names “Beren" and "Lúthien” beneath their names, referencing two characters in one of Middle-earth’s greatest romances.

Photo: Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford, May 2018. Taken by Laura Stanifer.

08/28/2026

WE’RE HIRING!

The Wade Center is seeking a Manager of Publications and Publicity to join our staff. See the full job description here: https://tinyurl.com/3vzbsxa2.

Please share with any individuals you think would be a good fit for this position.

08/25/2026

We're looking forward to the start of a new academic year at Wheaton College tomorrow! Returning students are ready to welcome new students to campus life, including members of the Wheaton College Tolkien Society. Photo from Fall 2025.

08/19/2026

REMINDER: The Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College presents "Bookending C.S. Lewis: On F.P. Wilson, his Oxford Tutor, and J.A.W. Bennett, his Cambridge Successor," a lecture by Rev. Dr. Joel D. Heck, on Thursday, August 20, 2026, at 7:00 PM.

This presentation surveys the life and influence of two people whose lives intersected in significant ways with C.S. Lewis, both at Oxford and at Cambridge. Wilson, Lewis's tutor, was the General Editor of the Oxford History of English Literature for which Lewis wrote the volume on the sixteenth century, and Bennett succeeded Lewis at Cambridge as the man who held the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English. Bennett's inaugural lecture gave tribute to Lewis.

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Heck retired from pastoral ministry on July 1, 2022, after fifty years in ministry. He has been pastor of Zion Lutheran Church, Valley Park, Missouri; Professor at Concordia University Wisconsin; Chief Academic Officer and Professor at Concordia University Texas; and most recently as President of Concordia Lutheran Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He holds the Doctor of Theology from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. He is the author of more than 120 articles, more than forty of them on C. S. Lewis, and the author or editor of sixteen books, most recently No Ordinary People: Twenty-One Friendships of C. S. Lewis (Winged Lion Press, 2021) and The Lion That Roared (Lulu, 2023), a children’s story that he co-authored with his daughter Brenda, who lives in Cincinnati. Besides their daughter Brenda, he and his wife Cheryl have two grown sons and four grandchildren.

This event is free and open to the public and will take place at the Marion E. Wade Center in Bakke Auditorium. For more information, contact the Wade Center.

The Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College presents "Bookending C...

08/13/2026

How did C.S. Lewis handle Scripture in his various works—especially in The Chronicles of Narnia? In this episode of the Wade podcast, co-hosts Dr. Jim Beitler and Aaron Hill sit down with Dr. Leslie Baynes, to discuss her new book Between Interpretation & Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible.

How did C.S. Lewis handle Scripture in his various works—especially...