Videos, Awards, and a New Trilogy of Books: Dr. Swafford’s Big Year

“Don’t be afraid to fail,” Dr. Andrew Swafford tells students in the first episode of “After Class,” a new series on YouTube.

In his career, Swafford, a theologian at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, hasn’t done much failing recently.

This past summer, his Christ the Storyteller series was the most-watched series at Media & Culture. Now, awards, new books, and a new show are putting his work in the spotlight again.

Swafford has spent his career trying “to preach the Gospel in a compelling and transformative way,” he said. This past summer, Swafford won two awards from the Catholic Media Association for doing just that. He won first place in the “Scripture series” category with his Catholic Guide to the New Testament, which he co-authored with Jeff Cavins, Jeffrey Morrow, and Biff Rocha. The Great Adventure Catholic Bible, on which he is a general editor and contributor, received an honorable mention.

And Swafford begins the new semester at Benedictine with a trilogy of books about C.S. Lewis now available.

“I’ve found that Lewis has a way of touching every kind of person, those who care about their faith and those who don’t,” he said. His C.S. Lewis trilogy includes:

• Lunatic, Liar, or Lord: Unveiling the Truth of Catholicism with C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, published in August of 2025. In it, Swafford makes the case for belief in God, belief in Jesus, and belief in the Church.
• The Afterlife: Unveiling the Truth of Heaven and Hell with C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, published in January 2026, looks at how belief in hell and heaven is reasonable.
• Wise as Serpents: Unveiling the Truth of Sin and Sanctity with C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, published in July 2026, focuses on many of the small ways the spiritual battle of our lives unfolds in everyday life. This third part of the trilogy comes first in one sense, because an earlier version of the book previously appeared with a different title.

What’s next for Swafford? “Speaking, teaching, and preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said. “I’ve recently recorded an adult faith formation class on Vatican II for Scott Hahn at the St. Paul Center. It should come out in the near future,” he added.

In addition to the awards Swafford won this summer, his Gift and Gift: How Heroic Virtue Can Change Your Life and Relationships received first place in the Spirituality Books category at the 2024 Catholic Media Awards. He also received two Telly Awards for video series released in 2021 and 2023: one on Hebrews for Ascension Press and another for What We Believe: The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, which he filmed in Rome with his wife, author and popular speaker Sarah Swafford.

Image: The Swaffords speaking at the Eucharistic Congress in 2024.

By Editorial Staff