Re:Christian propaganda...? (Score 2, Interesting)

What creeps me isn't that it's Christian propaganda. What creeps me is that it's inaccurate Christian propaganda.

Lewis is quite clear that Aslan the Lion is Christ in another form - at one point Aslan tells the children that they have been allowed to know him in Narnia so that they will know him in their own world.

But Aslan isn't the Christ of Lewis's church (the Church of England); it's his own creation, meting out punishment on whoever Lewis doesn't like. Look at the way the books pour out contempt on Eustace because he's a pacifist, contrasting him with Reepicheep the swashbuckling mouse, who takes insult at every little thing and, well, "lives by the sword." Somewhat the opposite of what Jesus taught, as I recall. Aslan hasn't come to offer everyone in Narnia hope if they'll accept it. He's come to reward the people Lewis likes and punish the people he doesn't.

I don't want to get into the NT's views of women, but Lewis is worse - Aslan is killed by a woman; one girl is literally damned - excluded from heaven - because her teenaged interest in "nylons and boys" has somehow caused her to forget her time in Narnia; a classroom of "dumpy, prim little girls with fat legs" is unworthy of Aslan's company.

From a theological standpoint, perhaps the most egregious scene is the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Aslan gives the boys swords (and has the girl cut a switch) to beat up their schoolmates. John Goldthwaite wrote of this sequence "I cannot imagine a betrayal of one's faith more complete than this last picture of Christ at the playground, putting weapons into the hands of children."

(For a more complete treatment of this subject, I recommend Goldthwaite's The Natural History of Make-Believe.)