Faith in Narnia

Pauline Baynes’ illustrations from original Narnia books

In February 2027, Netflix are due to release their adaption of the Narnia series, starting with The Magician’s Nephew. There has already been a lot of controversy about the approach that the director, Greta Gerwig will take with her version.

See this open letter I wrote in 2020 to Netflix when they acquired the rights to Narnia: Recreating Narnia: an open letter to Netflix.

And this article responding to all the controversies: Narnia Nerds: Hold your Nerve

Other Narnia content on Grace+Truth:

King Tirian meets the ‘Seven friends of Narnia’, The Last Battle

Narnia: rinsing out stale thinking about Christianity

Why I am interested in a series of children’s books published in the 1950s?

The reason is that these books have been incredibly important to me and many people in their walk of faith.

I grew up in a Christian home as the son of a vicar. In retrospect it gave me loads of things that I am grateful for but in many ways I disliked being the ‘vicar’s son’ in a large church.

I think for the children of church leaders it’s hard to separate out the difference between the church culture which we were so immersed in and the actual message of Christianity itself. I felt that church was boring and I never allowed myself to be personally convicted by what I heard. Church was just somewhere I had to spend a bit of time in each week and I built defences about engaging with the message at the heart of it all.

So one of the things I am very grateful for is that my parents could see the importance of me hearing the message in fresh and different environment. And when I was 16, a time when I was most disconnected from the church, my mum bent my arm to go to a CYFA youth camp in Devon.

It was here that I heard the message in a fresh way. I had a great time but I spent most of the week having fun and still keeping the message at a distance. But on the last night of this camp, the defences I had built crumbled. I remember the very specific moment on 22^nd August 1988 when I felt my heart changed through the Holy Spirit. I knew I was a Christian.

‘The Great Story’

So that’s part of my own journey of faith – but what does this have to do with Narnia?

Well, it was when I returned home from the camp that I re-discovered l the Narnia books and it was as a 16 year old that they made a profound impact on me. Following the camp, my mum had bought me a Bible and in the back I wrote down various quotes which inspired me. But the first one I wrote was the end passage from the final Narnia book, The Last Battle, which will be preached on next week, in the back of it:

‘The term is over, the holidays have begun. The dream is ended, this is the morning…Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

To be part of ‘the Great Story’: this is what excited and inspired me so much.

Adventure of faith

I think that what I was captured by was the adventure of faith that the Narnia books portrayed. That following Jesus could be something like following Aslan and fighting his battles with him.

For a similar reason the Book of Acts became my favourite book of the Bible – as it shows how ordinary, fearful and flawed people are captured by faith in Jesus and risk everything for Him – and change the world. I think the theme of adventure was a key desire for me.

Rinsing out what is stale

In his book on Narnia, Rowan Williams asks the question ‘What is the point of Narnia?’ His answer is:

‘Lewis is trying to re-create for the reader what it is like to encounter and believe in God…The point of Narnia is to help us rinse out what is stale in our thinking about Christianity – which is almost everything…the essential thing is this invitation to hear the story as if we have never heard it before.’

This is what it did for me. Alongside the summer camps, Narnia was a key way that my vision and imagination about what being a Christian was fed and nurtured.

Williams makes the point that there is no church in Narnia, no religion even – following Aslan is integrated within the everyday ‘something worked out in the routines of life itself’. And actually, this is how faith operates on summer camps – the idea of following Jesus runs as a thread through the whole day – very different to a Sunday religion. This is what makes camps magical and powerful.

We so need experiences which can rinse out what has become stale in our understandings of God.

Narnia content on Grace+Truth