Bruce Edwards
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SpecialtyLong-time academic on C.S. Lewis, author and speaker, Bruce's most recent and publicized venture is with the new disney movie The Chronicles of Narnia out in theatres December 9th, 2005. BIOBruce L. Edwards is Professor of English and Associate Dean for Distance Education and International Programs at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, where has he been a faculty member and administrator since 1981. He has served as Fulbright Fellow in Nairobi, Kenya (1999-2000), a Bradley Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC (1989-90), and as the S. W. Brooks Memorial Professor of Literature at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia (1988). Bruce and his wife, Joan, live in Bowling Green, and have four grown children, ranging in age from 21 to 30. Bruce was born in Akron, OH, attending the Akron City Public Schools. He graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1977, and received his Masterπs Degree in English from Kansas State University in 1979. He earned his Ph.D. in Literature and Rhetoric from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981, writing his dissertation on the literary criticism of C. S. Lewis. Bruce has two books in press on The Chronicles of Narnia, and has published two previous books on Lewis, including A Rhetoric of Reading: C. S. Lewisπs Defense of Western Literacy and The Taste of the Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer. He is also a contributor to many collections of essays about Lewis and the Inklings, and has for many years maintained a popular web site on the life and works of C. S. Lewis (http://personal.bgsu.edu/~edwards/lewis.html). He has also published several successful textbooks for college audiences, including, Roughdrafts (Houghton-Mifflin, 1987), Processing Words (Prentice-Hall, 1988), and Searching for Great Ideas (1st and 2nd editions; Harcourt, 1989; 1992). He was the recipient of a 2005 Fulbright-Hays Grant that allowed him to take a contingent of public and private educators to Tanzania for six weeks in the summer of 2005 to establish internet-based educational opportunities for both Midwestern U.S. and Tanzanian students. He serves as an elder in his local church, Bowling Green Covenant Church, and is an ordained minister.
TESTIMONYI was reared in a Christian home, but gave my life to Christ in a conscious and personal way first when I was eighteen and a freshman at the University of Akron (OH). I soon thereafter made the decision that I wanted to become a minister and made plans to attend a Bible college recommended by our local pastor. This provided me with a Biblical, if sometimes sectarian, foundation to my faith, and, most importantly, the opportunity to meet my wife, Joan. Joan has been an inspiring and faithful life companion and one whose faith and nurture have been as important to me as any factor in my growth as a Christian. I must quickly add, however, that it was also at this Bible College where I was introduced to the work of C. S. Lewis and, like many before me, found myself intrigued, then challenged, and, finally, persuaded by his call to embrace “mere Christianity” and thus to pursue a more inclusive yet orthodox “core” faith. I served several (precocious) years as a local minister in Missouri (1973-77) before our convictions led us out of our former fellowship, and into a more dynamic evangelical church life. This move coincided with my pursuit of graduate studies, first at Kansas State University and the University of Texas at Austin. At both institutions, my association with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship continued to provide gracious means of discipleship and apprenticeship in ministry for which I forever grateful. God has permitted me to travel widely and professionally over the last several years through various Fulbright Grants and we have lived in Kenya and been active in mission work in Tanzania. During our time in Bowling Green, we have been active in Bowling Green Covenant Church, a non-denominational fellowship which began as a campus fellowship in the early 1970s. It had become, by the time we arrived in Bowling Green in 1981, an established and well-regarded evangelical church featuring vibrant worship, a Biblical emphasis in the pulpit and adult education, and many outreach endeavors dear to us, including: missions in Kenya, Mexico, and China, a K-8 Christian school; an abortion alternatives counseling center; and an active program to house and feed the homeless and poor in our county. Since 1993 I have served the church as one of its elders, heavily invested in its pulpit ministry, adult education, and children’s ministry. I say with great joy that the greatest treasure I have as a believer is witnessing the growth and true faith of my four children and a son-in-law and daughter-in-law, Matt (30) and Tracey (29), Casey (28) and Mary (28), Justin (25), and Michael (21), each of whom is active either in our local church or an evangelical church in their locality. I would also like to point out that throughout my collegiate career as a student and since becoming a faculty member that I have been active in campus ministry, especially in the past decade in the role of mentor to Christian graduate students. I was one of two founding faculty members of our graduate InterVarsity fellowship, “Fellowship of Christian Graduate Students,” and have served as faculty advisor to several other Christian student groups over the last eighteen years, including Campus Crusade and Students for Life, a pro-life student organization. In addition, have developed a three-day workshop, Understanding C. S. Lewis, which I have conducted on the campus of BGSU each of the last sight summers, as well as on other Christian campuses and many churches throughout North America. I also have developed an online, credit course on Lewis’s life and fiction which has become one of the best enrolled courses on or off campus. My four books on C. S. Lewis, two of which are coming out this Fall, have been very well received. |
