An easy choice for me also: Lewis. I love Chesterton and Tolkien, but if I escape Hell some of the credit will go to The Screwtape Letters:
“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”
CS Lewis, Preface to The Screwtape Letters
Lewis for me too
Can’t choose, all three are facets of the same jewel.. but Lewis was/is most apt at speaking/sowing to the common man.
Chesterton a genius.
Tolkien a wizard.
Tolkien. Hands down. Started reading LOTR in high school. Have read the entire set (Hobbit plus the Trilogy) six times. The last two were after I became Catholic and inspired by learning of Tolkien’s Catholicism. Still trying to get through the Silmarillion, though. 😂
Chesterton is marvelous but can’t be put down and taken back up a few weeks later; I have to start the book over again or lose the thread. Lewis is brilliant but never grabbed me the way the other two did.
You may as well ask me to pick a favorite child. (Well I’m not big on Chesterton but George MacDonald on there instead? Impossible to choose.)
Tolkien. I’ve said before I was never a big Fantasy/Sci-fi person. I first read LoTR in college and it bored me silly. I think I got through it. In seminary, however, I ran into several students who held Tolkien in the highest regard, so I gave it another chance. By then I warmed up to fantasy and sci-fi somewhat. That time it blew my socks off. And I couldn’t help but catch a very sacramental flavor to the story, one that got me to looking more in that direction.
I’d have to pick Lewis, at least based on the frequency with which I reread some of his his material over against the others. Personally, I find his Space Trilogy superior to the LOTR, at least in terms of the same metric, although I really hope someone doesn’t ever try and make a movie out of it.