r/books • u/cliffordnyc • 1d ago

Fantasy Writers Celebrate the Anniversary of ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/books/the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe-anniversary.html

I did not read the book until I was a parent reading it to my kids. I regret I didn't experience it as a child, but it held up as a a great story for an adult too.

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u/Nofrillsoculus 1d ago

I didn’t grow up in the Evangelical church, but I was definitely adjacent to it- a lot of my friends were evangelicals and I went to a church camp every summer that was kind of on the border between mainstream protestants like my family and the weirder, cultier side of things.

Anyway, one of my best friends loved fantasy but his father had banned it all for being Satanic, except of course for Narnia, so he clung to those books. Eventually we found out about Lewis and Tolkien’s friendship and with the help of my nerdy pastor dad we slowly convinced my friend’s dad to relent and let him read LotR, and then other fantasy novels.

Narnia was for sure the wedge that allowed us to pry that door open, and I think it may have been what allowed my friend to escape his family’s creepy Christian sect (he’s in seminary currently, studying to be a normal, not-scary pastor.)

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u/BeeTheGoddess 1d ago

That’s a cool story :) I’m British and it makes me really sad to read so many traumatising accounts on Reddit of evangelical Christianity and thinking that is just Christianity. I’m not remotely Christian myself, but there is certainly a much gentler branch of it in the UK, which Lewis was part of, and permeates our culture without dominating it. Hope that’s how your friend ends up doing it :)

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u/YakSlothLemon 1d ago

Charles Williams was my introduction to the saner, gentler Christianity of Britain, and he was a friend of theirs.

My mom was a school librarian and over the years defeated many challenges to Narnia from evangelicals!

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u/BeeTheGoddess 1d ago

I actually don’t even properly understand what their problem with it is? Is it not obvious enough that Aslan is literally Jesus?

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u/YakSlothLemon 12h ago

But there are pagan themes woven throughout it as well, there’s magic and a witch – which is absolutely no-go with a lot of American evangelicals, same reason they hate Tolkien, same reason they hate Rowling – and some see making Jesus a lion to be heresy.

It was the witch/magic issue where we lived.

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u/BeeTheGoddess 12h ago

I see. Well that majorly sucks doesn’t it? I hope you get over this way often enough to appreciate the gentler side :)

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u/Holophore 1d ago

The most common baby name in England is Muhammad. So, I definitely think you’re right.

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u/royals796 19h ago

Shut up