During the years leading up toWorldWar II, Oxford University was far from a detached, peaceful academic sanctuary. Instead, it became a fierce intellectual battleground where traditional values and foundational beliefs were rapidly slipping away.
The cultural shift became undeniable in February 1933, when the Oxford Union passed its infamous motion: “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.” This “Oxford Oath” signaled a massive wave of absolute pacifism and deep moral cynicism among Britain’s younger generation.
Having survived the grim, muddy reality of the frontline trenches in World War I, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis understood the horrors of war.Yet, they fiercely rejected this trend of absolute passivity. They viewed it as a naive mindset to the “gathering storm” of totalitarianism rising across Europe, recognizing that total pacifism in the face of unchecked tyranny was a dangerous compromise. Lewis actively challenged this cultural mindset, presenting an essay titled “Why IAm Not Pacifist” to an Oxford pacifist society, where he argued that some earthly evils must be physically resisted to protect the innocent.
This idealogical battle extended deep into the university’s faculty commons, where traditional Christian values were increasingly dismissed as obsolete relics of a bygone era. Modernism, Freudian psychoanalysis, Marxist communism, and fascism were gaining significant ground.
As professors heavily involved in college governance, Tolkien and Lewis watched with growingdismayastheirowncolleagues rationalized the aggressive, brutalactionsofdictatorslike Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
The Moral Counteroffensive
Rather than retreating into despairing silence, the two men drew upon their profound expertise in classical, medieval, and other literate to launch a positive, targeted moral counteroffensive. They refused to let modern cynicism define their era. Crucially, they realized they could not fight this battle alone; their deepening friendship would become the sanctuary for their resistance.
When the Munich Crisis of 1938 brought a suffocating sense of dread and imminent destruction directly to Oxford’s doorstep, the looming threat of war gave them with a sense of urgency. Realizing the Western civilization would collapse around them, they poured their energies into their creative work, establishing a weekly gathering with like-minded friends known as the Inklings. Within this circle, Tolkien and Lewis acted as each other’s chief confidants, sharpening their arguments and anchoring each other’s faith against the advancing cultural darkness.
When war finally erupted, Tolkien and Lewis were too old for frontline military service, but their intellectual, moral, and creative contributions provided a vital shield for a war-weary public. From their weekly meetings, they advocated an unyielding counter-narrative against totalitarian regimes that weaponized language, myth, and theology to erase individual value and demand absolute submission to the State. Their creative output was not solitary; it was a deeply collaborative defense of human dignity, forged through relentless mutual encouragement.
“The Voice of Hope”
C.S. Lewis became a crucial national voice of hope, providing a psychological anchor second only to Winston Churchill.
During the terror of the London Blitz, the BBC recruited Lewis for live radio broadcasts to talk directly to a civilian population under siege.These historical talks, later compiled into the book Mere Christianity, offered a deeply rational, accessible defense of objective morality.
Lewis also traveled to military bases to lecture young Royal Air Force pilots, addressing the fear of death faced by soldiers in active combat, and helping them to find lasting purpose.
Even his private home became an active sanctuary.When the bombing of London forced thousands of displaced children to flee into the countryside, Lewis welcomed several evacuees into his home, an experience that directly sparked his imagination and inspired The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Collaborative Endurance
Meanwhile, J.R.R. Tolkien anchored his wartime service in academic duty and deeply personal literary support. He volunteered forthelocalOxfordHome Guard, working midnight shifts to watch the skies for German paratroopers or air-raid fires.
His most profound moral impact, however, were in personal letters sent to his son, Christopher Tolkien, who was stationed in South Africa with the Royal Air Force. Tolkien sent Christopher newly written chapters of his developing epic, The Lord of the Rings.
Before these pages ever left England, however, they were ready aloud to Lewis. Lewis’s exuberant praise, constructive criticism, and fierce insistence that the story must be finished served as the vital fuel Tolkien needed to keep writing.
Ultimately, the collaborative efforts yielded a spiritual victory over the despair of the age. As historian Joseph Loconte wrote in his book The War for Middle-Earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, “Nevertheless, this was their aim: to aid in the recovery of moral and spiritual truths, in the restoration of a vision of man’s dignity that had been stolen away.” Through their unyielding defense of morals, Loconte wrote, “The story of the friendship between J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis is a story of how two men helped each other to emerge from their own private darkness and climb back into the daylight.”
“My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.” Psalm 45:1