Lionel Basney

Who was Lionel Basney?

Lionel Basney was a poet and professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Prior to his time at Calvin, Basney taught at Houghton College, where his father also taught before him. Basney was interested in Samuel Johnson, William Shakespeare, and Ned Ludd and the origins of the Luddite movement. He was the author of An Earth-Careful Way of Life: Christian Stewardship and the Environmental Crisis. Wendell Berry's Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition is dedicated to Basney.

In 2000, The Conference on Christianity and Literature at Pepperdine University began awarding the annual Lionel Basney Prize "to the article deemed by the CCL Publications Committee to be the most outstanding article of the year in Christianity and Literature". According to the website, "the award...commemorates both the scholarly career and the personal character of a teacher, scholar, poet, and essayist who, during nearly two decades of affiliation with Calvin College, was deeply committed to CCL and all that it seeks to promote."