I’m inclined to think that when it came to CS Lewis being a Catholic, he’s not really a Catholic but somebody who’s sympathetic to Catholics and Catholicism to some extent in part due to his conversion by Mr Tolkein (a Catholic himself).
Maybe logically somebody should call Billy Graham a closet Orthodox due to his sympathies to the Russian Orthodox Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church in general. He didn’t necessarily convert to it, but expressed his sympathies.
I sometimes think the real problem with Narnia’s not because it promotes witchcraft but because it’s so jarring that it gives some readers a profound crisis of faith. Why would the God figure of Aslan condone and use magic if magic’s despised in the Bible? Actually it wouldn’t be any better if this was retold with a tantrum-throwing lamb who’s often bullied by puppies even if it’s closer to how he’s portrayed in the Bible and stuff.
I actually think in those cases, that would mean either greater consistency or at least much more transparency than usually deployed. Had Aslan been depicted as a misunderstood, crying but sweet lamb who’s even poor or working class in a world with little to no magic and if magic characters are bad it would be a lot closer to the Bible.
Maybe much more consistent but also too preachy even if it’s less jarring this way.
I sometimes think the Divine Comedy has a much better sell than Narnia does if because it’s so damning to realise just how many people go to hell even if they’re well-adjusted characters. (Whether if it’s true or not, it’s up to you.) There was one Catholic criticism of Divine Comedy, thinking the author’s spiteful. In reality The Divine Comedy’s one of the earliest been to hell testimonies.
(It wouldn’t matter if Dante Alighieri’s technically a Catholic, he would’ve been one of the few medieval Christians in the Evangelical sense of the word along with St Bernard of Cluny, Saint Julian and Girolamo Savonarola. Even the Cathars count.)
I still think the Divine Comedy holds up better than Narnia does when it comes to how shocking to realise even a beloved celebrity can go to Hell. There are people who say that Michael Jackson, Princess Diana and Carrie Fisher are in Hell. The latter two being beloved characters who’re very troubled in their private lives.
(Though keep in mind not all of them stay that way.)
The Great Divorce is decent but it doesn’t seem to have the same staying power if because most of the characters who do go to Hell are completely obscure to most readers. Whereas Carrie Fisher and Michael Jackson are fairly well-known and enough to damn some people if they went to hell at all. The fact that Divine Comedy uses well-known celebrities in Dante’s time makes it comparable to the later been to hell testimonies.
It could be my taste but I still prefer Divine Comedy over Great Divorce, especially in how alarming a beloved celebrity can go to hell.
I have a suspicion that in light of Caitlin becoming a wolf sorceress on the Flash telly along with turning Bart Allen into a sorcerer and sending magic characters like Zatanna and Dr Fate to Hell (both of them are beloved by readers) and turning Barry Allen into a proxy for Dante Alighieri would make for a rather almost fundamentalist take on things. Especially if/when these happen along with Barry’s newfound religiosity makes it sometimes too unbearable for certain readers.
Ironically, DC never really shied away from religious references in Superman. Superman being quite obviously based on Moses with his cousin Supergirl standing in for Miriam especially in more recent stories. At some point when Supergirl herself got changed into somebody else, she ended up fusing with a lost young girl who seemed to be into dubious things. Afterwards the two became one and she ended up doing a lot of good.
For all its flaws, Peter Allan David’s take on Supergirl seemed very close to the Christian idea of salvation wherein the hapless human gets bonded to a supernatural character and starts life all over again. Even the atheist Gail Simone considered pitching a series where Cassandra Cain became a born again Christian. This is a character who wanted to undo her parents’ bad influence and her becoming Christian would’ve fit into it.
(As if Simone actually got it.)
The Flash becoming the place to recreate the Divine Comedy with seems like a far too logical conclusion to be ignored as well as properly updating it. It even makes sense as most superhero stories tend to take place in a world closely resembling the ones readers are used to and still are. This would make Barry’s newfound religiosity as well as Zatanna going to hell seem far too damning and too alarming. Even if these bear resemblance to Christian testimonies and mystical visions.
(The Divine Comedy’s sometimes considered one.)
Perhaps even more alarmingly, the Flash might even become a more religiously explicit version of Narnia. Especially when it comes to magicians, queers (Pied Piper, even Darryl Frye) and dog owners (the evil Caitlin Snow) being equally as suspect as actual criminals are and why even superheroes like Zatanna go to hell anyways. Which’s very in line with the Bible.
It’s not that Narnia’s not Christian but when it comes to Barry’s newfound religiosity and the like with Central City obviously resembling an actual city, it makes the Flash way too close to home by then for atheists. Nobody wants to see their favourite characters going to hell. Nobody wants to read up on Barry’s conversion to Christianity or his own grandson Bart dabbling in magic with Caitlin.
All of these are shocking, even moreso than Narnia. Not that Narnia’s bad but that the Flash’s brand of Christianity’s so explicit as to be naked. (You know, sorcerers and dogs being as unwanted as queers and criminals are even if dogs are relatively more ambiguous by being more useful.) It’s not that Narnia will be forgotten but that the Flash might become the foremost Christian speculative work ever produced and even moreso as it uses familiar characters.
Which makes its shock value about as credible as saying Princess Diana’s in hell.
Should CS Lewis ever turn out to have a serious opium addiction just prior to his death, I suspect Christians and especially Evangelicals may’ve turned him into a idol. There’s nothing wrong with admiring somebody but when God gets angry and jealous (as usual, he’s often angry and tired) I have a feeling that many more Christians pay more attention to Lewis than to Christ.
Or at least ironically care for him more to the point of pedestalising him above Christ. It’s not that he hasn’t done any good. He did. But I’m afraid Christians pay more attention to him than to Christ and rather than Narnia, they should really prioritise devotionals and the Bible. The day CS Lewis turns out to be a drug addict suggests that Christians should pay more attention to Christ than to him.
Or anybody and anything else.
If the X-Files is any indication, people will want to believe in the supernatural. Anything relating to the supernatural could indicate a yearning for religion or at least higher spiritual meaning. Miracles and disasters happen. There has to be a bigger meaning to it, whether if it’s a merciful or wrathful entity.
Chances are people will still do anything to find meaning and proof of what’s supernatural and odd and even science’s beginning to understand how humans developed religion through their closest relatives. Evolution itself is debatable. It could be real. It could even be directed by God.
Which might confirm that the creation thing’s partly correct and something CS Lewis’s aware of. So anything supernatural happens and the yearning for wanting it to be verified’s there too.
It’s debatable whether if Buddhism is a form of paganism or not’s up to anybody’s guess but it does have profoundly syncretic tendencies that blur the line between what’s supposed to be technically nontheistic and what is polytheistic. (Same with Christianity and even Islam to some extent, especially when it comes to Anatolian Crypto-Christians being similar to Orthodox Christians.)
Technically, Buddhism does have similarities with Hinduism and I think I remember reading elsewhere that it may be a difference in philosophy. There are Hindu gods being worshiped in Buddhism, some of them go by different names especially in China, Japan and Mongolia. That and the use of Sanskrit and the like. (CS Lewis even said that Buddhism’s a simplification of Hinduism and most strains of Islam a simplification of Christianity*.)
There’s already a good study trying to quantify what constitutes as polytheism but my own understanding’s that it’s based on deifying the natural world and the dead (especially dead relatives) as well as actions causing effect, performing rituals using inanimate items and multiple deities in whatever degree of importance. Personal or otherwise.
(Saint veneration could count but at other times it’s similar to Evangelical love for CS Lewis.)
*Like I said, the existence of Crypto-Christian syncretic Islamic sects complicates things.
I think I remember reading a post on how and why Romanticism strongly informs European neo-paganism and it makes sense given the context of how that developed in the 19th century. Especially with the growing nationalist movements and attempts to find traces of folk paganism and archiving folklore. It’s not wrong to like folklore, even CS Lewis indulged in it.
The real issue maybe that if you have a good knowledge of Japanese and Indian culture and yet be a Christian, you’d be inclined to see Japan and India as better representatives of what Ancient Rome and Greece were actually like in terms of influence and power though others have come close. The tendency to worship in secrecy’s not unique.
But that Japan and India are significantly better representives of paganism still in continuity and as majority religion. (Catholicism to some extent, though I think the likes of St Julian of Norwich and Margery Kemp as well as Irish missionaries, Dante Alighieri and Girolamo Savonarola are closer to Pentecostals and Evangelicals.)
Not to mention paganism strongly entwines with ethnocentric racism. Look no further than the German fascists looking up to Nordic mythology as well as comparable counterparts in Japan, India and Asatru. (Both Japan and India seemingly tolerate Hitler and there’s even Hitler ice cream in the latter.)
Others aren’t any better but that paganism tends to attract those kinds of cranks real badly when you think about it.
I don’t think the theory of evolution’s entirely untrue in the sense that current attempts at understanding the development of species resembles genealogy (especially phylogenetics). That and transferring such things whether DNA with closely related species or often likely diseases from even unlikely ones like birds. (This is analogous to the use of loanwords and substrata in language to a degree.)
Conversely speaking, it’s like either literally catching diseases from family or being under a bad influence. So evolution does exist to some extent. But so is the belief that there’s some force or a feeling that things are destined and created by a singular character. The idea that somebody’s behind everything’s destinies is always there.
Even CS Lewis pretty much reconciled his religiosity with his acceptance of evolution in the sense that everything’s destined to do things and something science is catching up on.
CS Lewis did have an idea of hell that stems from the consequences of one’s choice and he certainly is half-right about it. But it also gets complicated by that even missionaries and pastors can land in hell too. Though he did have a good idea of sin and its consequences, he’s also unaware that even a good Christian can end up in hell. There are Christians with testimonies of seeing clergy like nuns and pastors in hell.
Meanwhile God’s more willing to let a problematic character (Donald Trump or even Muslims) guide people. (I think Dante had a vision of a Muslim in heaven or something because he helped Christians.) I suspect the real popularity of CS Lewis lies in wanting a less punitive view of life and the consequences of sin, in which sin’s often self-imposed. But the fact that people sometimes sin by mistake necessitates taking God’s temper into consideration.
That’s not to say Lewis is a bad Christian but he found the real hell to be much too frightening to admit.
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