The spring of 1972 marked the beginning of the C.S. Lewis Foundation when a small group of Christian scholars met for a weekend retreat convened by Dr. J. Stanley Mattson at the Covenant Presbyterian Church Retreat Center in West Simsbury, CT. As the participants reflected upon the current state of Christian scholarship within the mainstream of contemporary American higher education, they affirmed Dr. Mattson's vision to pray and work towards the establishment of an inter-disciplinary, faculty governed, "mere Christian" community of higher learning that would be situated on or near a major secular college or university.  It was this very vision that led ultimately to the founding of the C.S. Lewis Foundation in September of 1986.  It was in that year that Dr. Mattson, an American historian by training, resigned from his position as Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at the University of Redlands in California, to invest his primary energies in leading an effort to help establish a meaningful Christian presence at the faculty level within the mainstream of American higher education.

One year later, following extensive travel, study, institutional visits, and interviews with many educators, including both Christians and non-Christians, Dr. Mattson convened a group of Christian scholars and interested supporters at St. Andrew's Priory in Valyermo, CA.  For five days, twenty participants, including those involved in both the initial Connecticut retreat group of 1972, deliberated on Dr. Mattson's report and recommendations concerning the establish-ment of a prototype Christian "Great Books College" with a school of visual and performing arts, to be named in honor of C.S. Lewis.  Drawing upon the inspiration of Lewis' own academic settings in Oxford and Cambridge, and trusting in God's ultimate direction and provision, they embraced Dr. Mattson's vision to establish a "mere Christian" college on or near a major secular university setting within the U.S.  The C.S. Lewis College Foundation was born!

Wholly independent of this initiative, another small group of Christians, under the leadership of Robert Cording of San Diego, had formed a limited partnership, The Kilns Association, in 1984 for the purpose of purchasing and restoring C.S. Lewis' home in Oxford, England.  In 1986, the partnership was dissolved and a charitable company was formed for the purpose of carrying out the original plans.  In March of 1988, The Kilns Association, lacking the resources needed to achieve its worthy goal, proposed that the C.S. Lewis College Foundation assume responsibility for The Kilns.  After much thought and prayer, the Foundation agreed to assume full ownership and responsibility for The Kilns but with the condition that the Boards of both organizations combine their efforts in pursuit of their essentially common goals.

During the following summer, the newly combined force of the C.S. Lewis Foundation launched the first of its triennial C.S. Lewis Summer Institutes in England. 

• Oxford '88, a symposium on "The Christian and the Contemporary University," was conducted at St. Hilda's           College, Oxford, with over one hundred registrants attending. 
• More than two hundred conferees attended Oxford '91, held at Keble College, Oxford on the theme "Muses             Unbound: Transfiguring the Imagination."
• Cambridge '94 broke new ground in the realm of science and religion on the theme "Cosmos and Creation:             Chance or Dance?"  Over three hundred participants returned home from Queen's College, Cambridge, with                    a fresh vision for the Christian's role in both the arts and sciences.
• The Foundation hosted over eight hundred attendees at the international centenary of C.S. Lewis’ birth at                 Oxbridge ’98, a celebration of his life and legacy with the theme “Loose in the Fire,” a tribute to                            Lewis’ courage and faithfulness in defending orthodox Christian faith within an intellectual environment                  decidedly hostile towards all things Christian. 
• Having established its Summer Institute as an international major conference of stellar reputation, the                                   Foundation conducted Oxbridge 2002 on the theme: Time and Eternity: the Cosmic Odyssey. Also                          incorporated there for the first time was the component of concurrent academic paper sessions. 
• Oxbridge 2005 centered on Making All Things New:The Good, the True and the Beautiful in the 21st                                  Century, with the academic conference component nearly double the size of 2002. 
• In July 2006, the inaugural stateside C.S. Lewis Summer Institute was held at Williams College, MA                                   on the theme of Love Among the Ruins: On the Renewal of Character & Culture, to be repeated in 2007

          on the West Coast at the University of San Diego.

At its strategic planning retreat in June 1992, the Foundation's Board of Trustees resolved that the establishment of
the C.S. Lewis Study Centre at The Kilns would receive its highest priority.  Furthermore, they determined that the Foundation's focus would be directed more broadly towards securing academic freedom for scholars of faith at work within the ranks of faculty serving primarily within secular institutions of higher learning.  The primary means of achieving this would be through the conduct of Faculty Roundtables and Forums involving both Christian faculty
and representatives of other interested campus constituencies.

The Kilns restoration project, designed to restore the property to its authentic early 1940s appearance, began in earnest
in 1993 when the Foundation launched its all-volunteer “Vacation with a Purpose” program.  The aid of a multitude of primarily American workers was enlisted to help rebuild, restore, repair, paint, decorate, furnish and landscape the historic property. After nine summers of work, The Kilns was officially dedicated as the C.S. Lewis Study Centre at
a Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication during Oxbridge 2002.

Seminars-in-Residence at The Kilns

• In late July 2001, the first week-long Seminar-in-Residence was offered.  Entitled “Branches to Heaven,”                        it was conducted by Dr. James Como, author of a recent book on Lewis by the same title and Professor of                Rhetoric and Public Communication, York College of the City University of New York.
• Following on the successful launch of this inaugural program, two week-long seminars were offered in

          August 2002, and three weeks in July-August 2003. The theme was Pilgrim Passages: C. S. Lewis and
          the Soul's Journey.  Professor Jerry Root from Wheaton College guided participants through the corpus of      Lewis' published work, looking particularly at material to encourage each in their own pilgrimage. 

• The summer of 2004 saw Dr. Don King of Montreat College offering a session on poetry, featuring Lewis,               Joy Gresham and Ruth Pitter, and two weeks with Dr. Bruce Edwards of Bowling Green State University                 on Lewis as critic, apologist, and mythmaker. 
• In July 2005, Dr. Michael Macdonald, Professor or European Studies & Philosophy at Seattle Pacific                                  University provided two sessions on C.S. Lewis and the Permanent Things, largely focused on Jesus and                       the significance of the classical and cardinal virtues.
• In 2006, three week-long seminars were offered by Dr. Jerry Root, Dr. Walter Hooper & Aidan Mackay,                 and by Dr. Stan Mattson.

Responding to growing requests for day-long and weekend programming for readers of Lewis drawn from many professions and churches, the Foundation conducted its first ever “Inklings Weekend Retreat” in January 2001 at the Billy Graham Training Center, “The Cove,” in Asheville, NC, and conducted them there annually through 2004.  This retreat format, developed in the Southeast, was instituted in 2003 in the Southwest as well, with annual fall gatherings since then at Camp Allen, the Episcopal Retreat Center in Navasota, TX..  In June 2001, an all-day conference on C.S. Lewis was conducted in San Antonio, in conjunction with the Texas Military Institute, with over 400 attending during the day and over 500 for the evening program.  A second such conference was convened at St. Edward’s University, Austin, in May 2002, with nearly 500 in attendance The theme was The Rediscovery of Evil: A Christian Response.  A major conference on ethics was held in April 2004 at the University of Texas, Austin.  In June 2003, a 3-day C.S. Lewis Summer Conference was held at the University of San Diego on A Celebration of Mere Christianity.  Building on its success, the Foundation returned in June 2004 with a program centered on The Fantastic Worlds of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Faculty Forum initiative of the Foundation was launched in the fall of 1999 through generous seed grants from a Southern California foundation.  A model was developed and refined, with a number of key strategies for reaching out to network and support Christian faculty, administrators, graduate students, and trustees living out their callings within the mainstream university world.  Half-day RoundTables, area Prayer Luncheons, and full-day conferences in the Western Region of the United States and Canada have brought together hundreds of participants who have returned to their campuses with renewed vision and courage to serve Christ in their professional lives.

The most recent full forum was held at UC Berkeley in October 2003, on the theme of Free Speech: Academic Freedom and Religious Expression. In 2004, the Faculty Forum co-sponsored the local Southern California appearances of Dr. Armand Nicholi, Jr., Harvard University psychiatrist, speaking on his coursework, book and PBS series which compared the lives and worldviews of Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis. An Adopt-a-Campus Prayer project has been developed as an integral component under girding the entire initiative.  2005 featured Academic Paper Sessions at Oxbridge 2005, where 75 scholars and advanced graduate students presented their work. A luncheon and lecture at the University of Colorado, Boulder in February 2006 was precursor to a national Faculty Forum to be held there in October 2007, on
the theme of The Crisis of the University: Freedom, Tolerance and the Pursuit of Truth.