A columnist at the relentlessly secularist Huffington Post is upset about Christianity. Link. Excerpts:
The Palm Beach Post reports that Bush's "Just Read, Florida" program has selected CS Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (which, as the director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State correctly points out, is a "retelling of the story of Christ") as its most recent selection. . .
No one is really questioning Lewis' literary worth – he's an exceedingly well-regarded author – but some are concerned that the selection is an attempt to Christianize the students of Florida. It's a particularly odd choice for Jeb and Columba, who are Roman Catholics – Lewis is widely regarded as having been anti-Catholic (although it's true that many Catholics love the Narnia books, and detect no hint of prejudice in them). . .
[I]f they're going to push Christian dogma on Florida schoolchildren, why not just pick the New Testament? They could start with Matthew 19:24 [the camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle verse]. But along with all the verses about tolerance and judging not lest ye be judged, that's probably one part of the Bible the religious right chooses to ignore.
Lewis was raised in Belfast as a Protestant, so he inherited some of the Orange, no doubt about it. But he wasn't anti-Catholic when it came to dogma. His dogma is sympathetic to saint veneration, Purgatory and other Papistry. Even so, why would Jeb care either way, since (as the author admits) the books have no anti-Catholicism in them? Maybe Jeb just thinks it's a great book for kids, without regard to the religious undertone. But that, of course, is something the secularists at Huff Po can't fathom.
