Irvine Under Study as Site for New College : Education: Liberal arts school would blend academic inquiry, Christian thought of British author C.S. Lewis.

The city is one of five locations being considered by a group of scholars intent on creating a liberal arts college that would blend academic inquiry with Christian thought as embraced by the late British author C.S. Lewis.

The C.S. Lewis Foundation of Redlands hasn’t begun raising funds to build the proposed nondenominational college, planned to open in fall 2001 with about 800 students.

But it is searching for a site and, besides Irvine, the candidates include Claremont; Raleigh, N.C.; Princeton, N.J., and Amherst, Mass. The choice will be narrowed to three within the next 18 months, but a final decision could be three years away, according to foundation President Stanley Mattson.

An important consideration is the fund-raising potential in the city that is chosen, Mattson said. Other selection criteria include quality of life, affordable faculty housing and access to cultural resources.

“With all those things in mind, Irvine is very attractive,” Mattson said. “The university (UC Irvine) is also a highly international campus, which is very appealing to us.”

Mattson, a former American history professor who retired from the University of Redlands in 1986 as director of corporate and foundation relations, said the proposed college would counter the rejection of Christian thought by most American universities.

“This idea grew out of a concern that the current intellectual landscape within American higher education is one that is inhospitable to scholars of faith,” Mattson said.

Lewis, who died in 1963, wrote than 40 books, including “The Screwtape Letters” and a series of children’s books known as “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

The foundation was initially interested in land next to Concordia University, a campus affiliated with the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church.

“Just about the time they said, ‘This land has real possibilities,’ it was too late,” said Concordia theology professor Rod Rosenbladt, a member of the Lewis Foundation. “The university sold the land for a housing development.”

Rosenbladt, an admirer of Lewis, said the foundation’s ambition to create a college reflects more than a desire to link Christianity with scholarship. He said foundation members are also concerned about a decline of academic traditions based on Western civilization.

“It’s part of the same basic movement that says our universities have become propaganda centers,” Rosenbladt said. “So people are going out to try something different.”

Officials at UC Irvine and Irvine Valley College said they had not been contacted by the Lewis Foundation. About 30,000 students attend Irvine’s three colleges.

Members of the 8-year-old Lewis Foundation are primarily university and college educators, according to Mattson. The foundation bought the Lewis home in Oxford, England, in 1988, where it is establishing a C.S. Lewis study center. The foundation also sponsors summer institutes in Oxford and Cambridge.