The Anti-Manichaeist

Kudos a Carlos a Haysoos Politicas, for this well written article , “Bad Faith in the Land of Narnia”, by Jewish cultural and film critic, Sheerly Avni. The interesting thing about it is the author describes how her faith in God was nurtured very much by the writings of C.S. Lewis against his parents’ “pessimism: God doesn’t exist, and He’s out to get us anyway“. While she didn’t become a Christian, she avoided becoming an atheist, in part due to the concept of God in the writing of Lewis. She describes for us her informed outsider’s view of why the Narnia books are so special.

Narnian Christianity operates on a symbolic, imaginative level. Religious fundamentalists of all creeds insist on literal interpretations of ancient texts. But creative readings of those same texts offer us a moral blueprint for making our way in the world, and that alone should make the film’s content an antidote to the ugly anti-intellectualism of fundamentalist Christianity.

She also provides us clues that the hypocripsy and anti-intellectualism of much of US Christianity is what kept her Jewish. She wants liberals to boycott LWW because of how its earnings will go to billionaire Philip Anschutz, the chairman of Walden Media. Anschutz, according to Avni,

is a Bush-loving, moralizing, hypocritically dogmatic Christian–a socially conservative devil. His business entities bankrolled the group that put Colorado’s notorious anti-gay constitutional amendment on the ballot in 1992. (Voters approved the measure but it was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.) He’s been investigated for allegedly cheating his employees and shareholders (many of his charitable contributions are part of a settlement deal made after a scandal at Qwest, one of his companies), and in 2002 Fortune magazine put him atop its list of greediest corporate executives.

She ends by affirming how, while Lewis was a troubled but believing Christian who used his lively imagination to search for moral purpose, Anschutz parallels the White Witch with his venal blend of greed and self-righteousness. (Although I checked out the list of movies made by Walden and in the works and it looks pretty good. He does seems committed to taking advantage of how Hollywood is out of tune with much of the United States in terms of their religiosity and views on morality. He apparently helped clean up the movie Ray to deemphasize his womanizing and drug-use from. )

I love reading how non-Christians see Narnia. I find their reactions to be a promising source for doing apologetics in the spirit of CS Lewis, with perhaps less of an emphasis on “mere Christianity” and more of an emphasis on Christian dialogue about our differences on how we should communicate the identity and significance of Yeshua of Nazareth in our context.

dlw