http://blackmarketkidneys.com/blog/2005/12/06/guardian-of-bad-religion/ In Five Years This Blog Will Be Completeley Legitimate. Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:31:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://blackmarketkidneys.com/blog/2005/12/06/guardian-of-bad-religion/comment-page-1/#comment-320 Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant » Is It So Wrong to Read C.S. Lewis? Wed, 07 Dec 2005 01:35:46 +0000 http://blackmarketkidneys.com/blog/?p=717#comment-320 [...] A number of people have offered their thoughts on the subject already. But let’s ponder what seems to be considered the most offensive passage: Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. 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. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis’s view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis’s earth. [...] [...] A number of people have offered their thoughts on the subject already. But let’s ponder what seems to be considered the most offensive passage: Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. 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. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis’s view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis’s earth. [...]

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