The December 9th release date of Disney's The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the movie based on the beloved Christian fairytale by C.S. (Jack) Lewis, is getting closer.

It's no surprise, then, that the secularists and Christian-haters are really stepping up their attacks on Narnia and Lewis.

Remember how Mel Gibson was all but crucified about the time of the release of The Passion Of the Christ? Gibson was accused of being an anti-Semite… he was called a homophobe because of the way Herod was portrayed in his film… he was called misogynistic because Satan was portrayed in the film by a female actor… yadda, yadda, yadda.

Well, here they go again.

The liberal media has started flogging C.S. Lewis, with obvious hopes of killing The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe before it's even released. Why are they so threatened by a story with a Christian message?


Adam Copnik has written a piece for the New Yorker, in which he says that while Lewis is loved in America, he's an embarrassment to most Englishmen. Further, Copnik reads into Lewis's struggles with his faith and deduces that he didn't so much have "belief but a very strong desire to believe." Copnik tries to shoot holes in the Narnia series, saying that the books work best at their most pagan and least Christian. The icing on Copnik's cake is in the form of speculation that Lewis's sex life was "weird and complicated." Then, for good measure, he compare's Lewis's wife to Barbra Streisand. Boy, I really wanted to punch him over that one.

Writing for the New York Times Magazine, Charles McGrath continues with many of the same themes, although somehow voices them less artfully than Copnik. I suppose that's to be expected from the Times, at least when compared to the New Yorker.

It's apparent from both articles that neither of the writers have read much of Lewis's apologetics. Each of the supposed holes they congratulate themselves on finding in his faith was explained, explored, and resolved by Lewis himself over the course of his many theological volumes. Copnik and McGrath, of course, approached the subject with an end already decided; not surprisingly, neither of them found anything in the source material that stirred second thoughts.

I'm glad to have found some well-written, sound rebuttals of those two pieces in the blogosphere. I'm happy to defer to better writers than myself:

At the American Scene, Ross Douthat devalues Lewis as an apologist, but his defense of the allegory of Narnia is clear and concise:

The greatness of Lewis's achievement, then, has nothing to do with an "escape from Christian belief into the darker realm of magic," and everything to do with the way that Narnia's magic lets the reader experience the Christian story again, as if for the first time, in an alien landscape shorn of all the baggage that historical Christianity has accrued. There have been a thousand children's books about witches and dragons, dwarves and talking animals, and none have succeeded half so well as Narnia - and it's precisely because Lewis thought his fairy story wasn't just rich, but also fundamentally true in a way that no other fantasy could be. Calling this dream of a truth behind the beauty "the futile hope of the mystic" may make Adam Gopnik feel better about his unbelief, but who's to say it's futile? (The mystics certainly don't think so.) And if it is, then what comfort, really, are all the "ghosts and kings and magical uncles and strange coincidences, living fairies and thriving Lilliputians"? I like poetry and fantasy just fine, but if they are all we have to fill the "deeper spiritual appetite," then I say to hell with them.

Writer and Lewis student Robert Velarde argues against Gopnik's ideas, and in favor of Lewis's apologetics at Culture Watch.

Dignan, writing at his own 75 Year Plan, simply balks at the Lewis revisionists, much as I do.

Linda Dickey found much to ponder about the way Christ is viewed Gopnik's article… and sees parallels between McGrath and one of the characters from the Narnia books.

Mark Daniels blogged his 21 year old son's reaction to the McGrath piece… and I enjoyed reading it.

One of the very first items I ever wrote at this blog was inspired (at least indirectly) by Lewis. The guy is a hero to me. It's tough to his legacy mocked and butchered by the likes of Gopnik and McGrath… but I'm glad to have found other bloggers who seems to feel the way I do about the matter.