Today's Guardian carries a long piece by regular columnist Polly Toynbee, in which she suggests that British children will be largely oblivious to the Christian message of The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe. But the iconography, which has been heavily touted by evangelical Christian groups on both side of the Atlantic, represents a muscular, macho Christianity 'that thinks might is proof of right.' And she invokes Philip Pullman in making her case: read more.

[…]Philip Pullman – he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials – has called Narnia “one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read”.

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America – that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.