Narnia and religious intolerance
interesting essay here
2 Responses to “Narnia and religious intolerance”
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author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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Interesting indeed. I think the writer doesn’t understand what it’s like these days in America, when we’ve had three (I think) “Justice Sundays” when churches from coast to coast were instructed to show videos during services that instructed them to pray and lobby hard for more conservative Supreme Court justices. All Saints’ parish in Pasadena, California, is being investigated by the IRS because a preacher said from their pulpit that he didn’t think that Jesus would support preemptive war. I’ve known people who were beaten and seriously hurt by people who yelled bible verses while kicking them after they fell, and churches in my hometown are lobbying the state house to make it so that if Karen were in the hospital, I wouldn’t be allowed to see her — and they’re doing it in the name of their Christianity. I’m a Christian, and what I see is enough to make me nervous — at least, when I’m not living prayerfully in a way that keeps me grounded in God’s presence. Jim Wallis is not the world’s greatest writer, but his voice is crucially important in America, as it seems that many of our most civically active churches have been distracted into thinking that other people’s sex lives are somehow more important to God than millions of children dying of what is rightly called “stupid poverty,” the kind we could end if we had the will. If Jim Wallis wants to encourage churches to work to end poverty and become peacemakers, more power to him! All this talk about how supposedly anti-Christian our culture is reminds me of a wonderful moment on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, when he said something like this:
“Yes, Christians are so marginalized in America today. I dream someday that my children’s children might live in a world in which someone could be openly Christian and even serve as a senator, on the Supreme Court, or even as president … when people could wear jewelery with religious symbols like crosses without fear …”
Gotta love Jon Stewart.
I’m not always a fan of Furedi, but this time I was pleasantly surprised
until
He criticised the 1947 version of Miracle on 34th street
huh, has the man no taste!
on Dylan’s point, I guess that the article was very much a British perspective.