A Stumbling Stone
Aslan: Bush Voter?Today, The Chronicles of Naria: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opens in theatres.
I've found some of the reaction to the movie very, very troubling. C.S. Lewis' "reactionary" Christianity is of course a big problem. In a piece subtly titled "Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion"
Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".
Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right.- Polly Toynbee
Other writers who loathe Christianity and neo-fascism just as much - just deny that Christianity is a big deal in the film - or say that Narnia is great because it represents an escape from Christianity or some sort of denial of Christianity- because, of course, people in the grip of Christianity couldn't be possibly be creative or entertaining without in some way attenuating their Christianity. For Adam Gopnik, Narnia is great because it is an escape from Christianity:
The religious believer finds consolation, and relief, too, in the world of magic exactly because it is at odds with the necessarily straitened and punitive morality of organized worship, even if the believer is, like Lewis, reluctant to admit it. The irrational images—the street lamp in the snow and the silver chair and the speaking horse—are as much an escape for the Christian imagination as for the rationalist, and we sense a deeper joy in Lewis’s prose as it escapes from the demands of Christian belief into the darker realm of magic. - Adam Gopnik
Or the Christianity isn't really the important part:
If they [the young audience] don't realize that all this supposedly conceals a Christian message like a drop of monotheistic medicine concealed in a spoonful of pagan sugar, we'll be foolish to think they've been duped. If they're like the generations of children before them, they won't see or learn the lesson Lewis was trying to teach. Instead they'll see battles and adventure and magic -- and who's to say that's not what really counts? - Laura Miller
To you therefore that believe, he is honour: but to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set. - First Epistle of St. Peter 2: 7-8
Hat tips, Eunomia and The American Scene.Toynbee, Gopnik, Miller links under references.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
MOments ago, Slate got in on it and made similar points to those I wanted to make
Some liberals, like the popular children's author Philip Pullman, therefore dismiss him out of hand, claiming that the books amount to pernicious proselytizing—"propaganda in the cause of the religion [Lewis] believed in." Other secular critics argue that the books succeed despite the Christian elements—which they agree are the weakest part. On the flip side of the debate are Christians who see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as fundamentally Christian, and, inspired by the involvement of Walden Media, a production company with evangelical ties, are hopeful that the movie will be presented as such. Whatever the differences among these critics, they all essentially agree that Christianity must be at the heart of any serious analysis of C.S. Lewis' work.
It's easy to see why this is so, since Lewis is a famous proselytizer, and adults reading The Chronicles will find it impossible to miss the Christian overtones. But it is nonetheless unfortunate: Judging the Narnia books solely by their Christianity is an impoverished way of reading them. It is a reflection more of our polarized moment—in which a perceived cultural divide has alienated Christians from secular culture and secular readers from anything that smacks of religious leanings—than of the relative aesthetic merits and weaknesses of Lewis' books. - Meghan O'Rourke
Miss O'Rourke follows Gopnik in attenuating Lewis' Christianity but has some worthy insights
It's to say that Lewis had an insight many of his peers didn't: His bleak childhood, so vividly present to him, made him intuitively understand that kids long to be treated as adults, yet simultaneously look to escape from the harsh truths of dawning adulthood in the refuge of their own inventions.
But I would like to close the post with Ross Douthat's pointed close to his own response to Gopnik
In the end, human beings need to be saved from sin and death, not just stirred up and entertained and comforted. And if there's no one there to save us, then all the magical realms and irrational images in the world are a poor consolation prize indeed. - Ross Douthat
Michael Brendan Dougherty
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These are antsy days for anyone who has loved C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia." Even people with unambivalent memories of the series have reason to be apprehensive about the new big-budget film of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." How often has the screen version of a magical world you passionately entered into as a child lived up to your own imaginings? But those of us who fell for Narnia without realizing the books' Christian subtext have particular reason to be unsettled. The movie i -
Source: PRISONER OF NARNIAThe British literary scholar, Christian apologist, and children’s-book author C. S. Lewis is one of two figures—Churchill is the other—whose reputation in Britain is so different from their reputation in America that we might as well be talking about two (or is that four?) different men. A god to the right in America, Churchill is admired in England but hardly beatified—more often thought of as a willful man of sporadic accomplishment who was at last called upon to do the one thing in life that
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The sins of this "son of Adam" can only be redeemed by the supreme sacrifice of Aslan. This Christ-lion willingly lays down his life, submitting himself to be bound, thrashed and humiliated by the white witch, allowing his golden mane to be cut and himself to be slaughtered on the sacrificial stone table: it cracks in sympathetic agony and his body goes missing. The two girls lay down their heads and weep, Magdalene and Mary-like. Be warned, the film lingers long and lovingly over all this.
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Source: The Lion KingWith the first film version of C.S. Lewis' beloved children's classic The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe appearing in theaters today, his work has found itself at the heart of a vicious debate, now under way for more than a year. Lewis, as many adult readers have long known, was a devout Christian apologist and literary scholar whose spiritual beliefs are reflected in the seven volumes that comprise The Chronicles of Narnia. Some liberals, like the popular children's author Philip Pullman, th
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On the other hand, this venomous, spite-filled garbage from The Guardian suggests that the director has done enough right in faithfully rendering the story to really agitate the Christ-haters out there. -
Related: Myths and RealitiesIt was inevitable, I suppose, that the release of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe would prompt the highbrow media to issue a flurry of bulletins detailing how right-thinking people are to approach the matter of C.S. Lewis and his disquetingly entertaining Christian fantasy. Yesterday, Charles McGrath's Times Magazine essay on Narnia took care to discuss, at length, the "not improbable" possibility that Lewis carried on a long-running affair with a woman twenty-six years his senior, and "the
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Related: First Epistle of Saint PeterTo you therefore that believe, he is honour: but to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: 8 And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set.
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