{"id":21,"date":"2005-12-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/the-narnia-scare.html"},"modified":"2005-12-07T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-07T12:00:00","slug":"the-narnia-scare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/the-narnia-scare.html","title":{"rendered":"The Narnia Scare"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The excitement in the conservative Christian community over the forthcoming movie of C.S. Lewis\u2019s \u201cThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/a>\u201d is matched only by the hysterics the \u201cChristianization\u201d of Narnia is causing elsewhere. In Salon<\/a> today, Laura Miller asks, \u201cCan we still cherish the books without believing in their most obvious message?\u201d<\/p>\n

The obvious answer, which Miller herself arrives at, is \u201cyes.\u201d The adventure and magic <\/a>of the Narnia books stand out from any purported message Lewis implanted in his tale.<\/p>\n

Another answer, which Miller also hints at with her quick course in Manicheism, is that Lewis\u2019s books aren\u2019t really, or at least purely, Christian<\/a>. By all accounts, including his own, Lewis never \u201cintended to teach a form of the gospels,\u201d as Miller would have it, but used the stories to place the Christian story amid the fund of myth and folklore he grew up with (and lived with: he was a pal of J.R.R. Tolkien). Sounds more like a project for Gregory Maguire, whose novel \u201cWicked,\u201d about the witch in “The Wizard of Oz,\u201d became the Broadway musical.<\/p>\n

American conservative Christians, hard up for culture they can accept or call their own, have taken up the movie as a cause celebre, with plenty of encouragement from Disney, because in other books Lewis was a sly, funny Christian apologist. But had Disney commissioned \u201cThe Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe\u201d from a high-priced Hollywood scriptwriter, conservative Christians would likely have attacked it as a pack of pagan desecration of the crucifixion. And Miller would likely have seen it opening weekend.<\/p>\n

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The excitement in the conservative Christian community over the forthcoming movie of C.S. Lewis\u2019s \u201cThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe\u201d is matched only by the hysterics the \u201cChristianization\u201d of Narnia is causing elsewhere. In Salon today, Laura Miller asks, \u201cCan we still cherish the books without believing in their most obvious message?\u201d The obvious…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Narnia Scare<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2005\/12\/the-narnia-scare.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Narnia Scare\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The excitement in the conservative Christian community over the forthcoming movie of C.S. 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