Re: The Folly of Censoring C.S. Lewis

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: This rocks! Wake people up! : : I thought this was interesting. I got it from MSNBC.com (Opinions)... : : By Andrew Greeley : : SPECIAL TO MSNBC : : ---------------- : : Plans are afoot to purge Christian content from the seven Narnia stories. These children’s tales written by C.S. Lewis, one of the most important writers of the century, are apparently too Christian for Harper Collins publishers. : : ---------------- : : IN THE STORIES a band of children (not unlike Harry Potter’s crowd) find access to another world through a secret door in a closet (or wardrobe as the Brits call it). In this magical world, the ruler is a noble lion named Aslan who dies and rises from the dead. 65 million copies of books in the series have been sold in more than 30 languages. : : : : Harper Collins, sniffing the winds created by Harry Potter, want to reissue the Narnia series and connect it with a marketing campaign that will sell Narnia dolls. In their world, it is a “biggie.” : : : : THE CHRISTIAN PROBLEM : : However, there is one fly in their greedy ointment. The stories are suffused with Christian imagery, belief, and even mysticism. You can’t make much money off those elements which might offend non Christian readers. So you purge the Christianity from books which in their original version were profoundly Christian. As a Harper memo (uncovered by the New York Times) puts it: “We will have to give emphatic assurances that no attempt will be made to correlate the stories to Christian imagery/theology.” Harper has also, according to the Times, blocked the making of a documentary film about Narnia because the film was too “Christian.” : : Moreover, it has been argued by someone connected with the plotting on the Lewis Web page, “The surest way to prevent secularists and their children from reading it is to keep it in the religious section of the book stores or to firmly link Narnia with modern evangelical Christianity.” : : Harper intends to censor out of C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece that which is most essential to it — it’s Christian imagery — because that imagery would be offensive to mostly imaginary secularists : : I think that’s called censorship. Harper intends to censor out of C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece that which is most essential to it — its Christian imagery — because that imagery would be offensive to mostly imaginary secularists. Such a plan is not only vile, it is also stupid. : : The series would flourish in the Christian Booksellers Association stores. There are far more evangelical Christians in the United States than there are “secularists.” Somewhere between eighty and eighty five percent of Americans identify as one kind of Christian or another. : : : : SECULARIST RESENTMENT? : : Secularists are lucky if they can command five percent of the population. Moreover, there’s no real evidence that most of them would resent Lewis stories. I know Jewish mothers who read the tales to their kids. : : This strategy might be compared to the demands in some quarters that racist language be cut out of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.” Christianity, it would seem, is in the same situation as racist language. Publishers must censor both out of their books less secularists refuse to buy the books. : : Christianity is offensive, so let’s get rid of it. That such a strategy rapes Lewis’s work is beyond the comprehension of the Harper publishers. That it insults Christians of every denomination is irrelevant. : : Presumably the Harper publishers do not know many Christians and are not Christians themselves. Hence they figure that since there are no Christians in their world, there aren’t really many left any more. Ignorance mixed with bigotry and greed drives the New York publishing world to folly. : : : : ARROGANT AND GREEDY : : The Harper plot is evil, not merely because it is dumb, arrogant and greedy, but because it shows no respect for a great writer. Let us purge social concern from Dickens’ novels, Christian imagery from the poems of Thompson and Hopkins, change G.K. Chesteron’s Father Brown to Professor Brown from Oxford, attach happy endings to the stories of Henry James, eliminate the Catholicism which permeates the novels of your man from Dublin. Rewrite the bible so the New Testament isn’t Christian any more and there is no hint of God in the Jewish scriptures. : : Lets give veto power to imaginary secularist bigots like ourselves. It’s like recording companies who censor out the sexual implications of some of their songs for radio stations. Obviously if you work for Harpers you don’t have to possess any literary sensibility. Eradicate religion from Narnia and you destroy all the charm and the power of the stories. You might just well issue them as comic books. Hopefully, those who detest bigotry, arrogance, greed and violation of a writer’s work will leave the Harper corruption of C.S. Lewis stories rotting on the book shelves. : : --------------------- : : Andrew Greeley is a sociologist, best-selling novelist and Catholic priest. He is a frequent contributor to MSNBC.

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