About Dwight Longenecker

Fr. Dwight Longenecker is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. A graduate of Oxford University, he is the Pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church, in Greenville, SC, and author of twenty books, including Immortal Combat, Beheading Hydra: A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age, The Romance of Religion, The Quest for the Creed, and Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men, and The Way of the Wilderness Warrior. His autobiography, There and Back Again, a Somewhat Religious Odyssey, is published by Ignatius Press. Visit his blog, listen to his podcasts, join his online courses, browse his books, and be in touch at dwightlongenecker.com.

Pitiful Caliban and Gollum

By |2023-12-06T20:05:20-06:00December 6th, 2023|Categories: Dwight Longenecker, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Senior Contributors, William Shakespeare|

Gollum and Caliban are not humans who transmogrify temporarily into beasts. They are horrific hybrids: half humans (or hobbits) who have been taken over by the bestial nature of the dark side. While they have become monstrous, their horror is mixed with humanity. J.R.R. Tolkien was famously antipathetic towards Shakespeare, and there is no suggestion [...]

Whatever Happened to Saint Nicholas?

By |2023-12-05T19:48:16-06:00December 5th, 2023|Categories: Advent, Christianity, Christmas, Dwight Longenecker, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Let us remember this day in Advent as a reminder of the true spirit of Saint Nicholas—a valiant defender of the faith, a tender-hearted lover of the poor and a kindly, generous soul, who saw that the true message of Christ’s nativity was that unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the [...]

The Underground Shakespeare

By |2023-11-27T19:03:58-06:00November 27th, 2023|Categories: Books, Culture, Dwight Longenecker, England, History, Literature, Mystery, Senior Contributors, Theater, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare|

Despite their obscurity, “The Rape of Lucrece” and “Venus and Adonis” were Shakespeare’s best-sellers. But why were these poems so wildly popular? Shadowplay, by Clare Asquith, 370 pages,  PublicAffairs, 2018) In Shadowplay—her first book about the secret messages in Shakespeare’s plays—Clare Asquith explains what sparked first her imagination and then her research: In the early [...]

England’s “Red Rose Revolution”

By |2023-11-20T23:17:04-06:00November 20th, 2023|Categories: England, Film, Monarchy|

The Red Rose Revolution brought about by Princess Diana's tragic death was a triumph of sentimentality over reality. In the intervening twenty-five years, that sentimentality has prevailed in England, sweeping away the sterling values that had been the hallmark of English character. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I have watched the most recent [...]

A Mystical Metaphysical: An Introduction to Thomas Traherne

By |2023-11-18T21:55:23-06:00November 18th, 2023|Categories: Dwight Longenecker, Liberal Learning, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

In a world beset by violence, doubt, despair, cynicism and sin to turn to the works of poet Thomas Traherne is to breathe a gust of fresh Spring air. My little sister followed me to England, fell in love with the country, fell in love with an Englishman, and fell in love with the English [...]

John Senior and the Restoration of Realism

By |2023-11-11T08:34:52-06:00November 9th, 2023|Categories: Books, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Featured, John Senior|

John Senior’s great contribution was to forge a middle way between indoctrination and the chaos of complete relativism. Instead of indoctrinating students, the classical knowledge of a Christian culture provided the tools and the framework for true education. John Senior and the Restoration of Realism by Francis Bethel It was one of those serendipitous meetings that [...]

On the Incorruptible Bodies of Saints

By |2023-11-01T20:02:58-05:00November 1st, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Senior Contributors|

It may be that incorrupt bodies are proof of the possibility that spiritual practice has physical effects. When we understand how the mind and body work together, we may also start to understand why some saintly characters wind up being both dead as a doornail and fresh as a daisy. On All Saints Day we [...]

Nietzsche, Napoleon, & Narcissism

By |2023-10-19T19:46:40-05:00October 19th, 2023|Categories: Culture, Dwight Longenecker, Friedrich Nietzsche, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Rooted in Nietzsche’s idea of the ”Superman” is the idea is that a new breed of humanity will emerge who will be superior to the old, joyless Judeo-Christian ethic. Striding confidently into a brave new world, this new super-humanity will rise above the old humanity groveling before their gods. “I am better than everybody else” [...]

Bishops at Large

By |2023-10-07T15:21:39-05:00October 7th, 2023|Categories: Anglicanism, Catholicism, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Senior Contributors|

What Peter Anson’s collection of apostolic oddballs teaches us is that to be cut off from the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is to descend into a self-styled fantasy world of religion—a world where the reality is no deeper than the scarlet silk of one’s cape. When I was an undergraduate at Bob Jones [...]

C.S. Lewis’ Physics of Angels

By |2023-09-28T18:29:11-05:00September 28th, 2023|Categories: Books, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

A balanced view does not dismiss the reality of the supernatural, nor does it indulge in curiosity and unhealthy fascination with the unseen world. Instead it understands that the invisible realm—like the angels themselves—is everywhere present. I have in my library a book by two heretics. Matthew Fox is an Episcopal priest who was once [...]

C.S. Lewis on Neutered Drones

By |2023-09-28T05:52:10-05:00September 27th, 2023|Categories: C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Dwight Longenecker, Senior Contributors, Wokeism|

The liturgical imagery of the priest connects directly to our concepts and language about God. It does so because our concepts and language about God are necessarily personal. We are called to be in a person to person relationship with God—a relationship of intentional love, and as human beings we can only relate personally through [...]

The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self

By |2023-11-25T12:28:01-06:00September 14th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Dwight Longenecker, Philosophy, Rene Girard, Senior Contributors, Theology|

The prevalent tendency in our society to overestimate individual freedom is wreaking havoc on personal happiness and threatening to bring down Western culture. This culture is built on a Judeo-Christian foundation and it will not survive the dismantling of that foundation. Fr. Longenecker concludes his interview with author and friend of René Girard with a [...]

How God Used Poland to Save the World From Darkness

By |2023-08-31T19:13:39-05:00August 31st, 2023|Categories: Dwight Longenecker, Poland, St. John Paul II, Timeless Essays|

God was not absent in the darkest corner of Europe during the horrors of World War II, but he was planting the seed in Poland in the combined work of a hidden nun and a dynamic pope, which would burst through the darkness. As we traveled across Poland on a recent parish pilgrimage, we watched [...]

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