Legal Commentary

The Horror of the "Frankly Religious Element"

By Kevin Funnell

Some essays not only don't decrease in power as they age, they increase. Frank Furedi, a self-described "secular humanist who is instinctively uncomfortable with zealot-like moralism," had a concern that he expressed in an essay I saved from several years ago and occasionally re-read, a concern that was a bit different than concerns possessed by those of us who are "zealot-like" in our "moralism," yet one that might surprise you, coming from a heathen.

...I am suspicious of the motives behind these doctrinaire denunciations of films with a religious message. Such fervour reminds me of the way that reactionaries in the past policed Hollywood for hints of blasphemy or expressions of 'Un-American values'. Replacing the zealotry of religious intolerance with a secular version is hardly an enlightened alternative.

He was referring to the frothing-at-the-mouth bile spewing from liberal reviewers at that piece of disgusting propaganda, that screed of hatefulness, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Among the enlightened quotations of MSM reviewers cited by Furedi are these gems:

The novelist Phillip Pullman has described CS Lewis' original book as 'one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read'. With the zeal of a veteran cultural crusader Polly Toynbee of the UK Guardian cut straight to the chase: 'Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion.'

What Toynbee seems to find most hateful about religion is that it is able to express a powerful sense of faith. 'US born-agains are using the movie', she warned. Many critics seem especially outraged by this prospect of religious organisations 'using' the film to promote their faith. The advocacy group Media Transparency warns that the film is based on a book that has a 'frankly religious element' - which is not really surprising when you consider that the author was a well-known publicist for Christianity. What is surprising, however, is that Christians promoting Christian propaganda should invite such bitter condemnation.

[...]

Until recently, cultural expressions of religious faith were simply considered old-fashioned and gauche. But over the past decade, scorn has turned into bigotry and hatred.

Furedi is not soft on Christians who use films to push their "agenda." However, he saves his real scorn for those on the Left who, today as then, are shopping for moral values to "adopt" in order to appeal to the unwashed masses; you know, those of us so simple that we seek meaning in our lives. Furedi thinks that the Left is doomed to fail.

The problem with politically motivated calls for the restoration of a moral dimension to public life is that they are driven by the instrumental purpose of gaining or retaining power. But a morality manufactured in response to the demands of political pragmatism is bound to lack any organic relationship to lived experience, and is thus unlikely to find resonance with the wider public. An unfocused and disconnected oligarchy is unlikely to possess sufficient sensitivity to the day-to-day problems confronting the public. That is why the pragmatic search for a ready-made moral purpose usually turns into an arbitrary exercise in picking and choosing some inoffensive values.

[...]

At the end of the day, politically motivated calls among liberals and the left for morality are not so far from the way in which Christians 'use' The March of the Penguins or The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Both are cynical gestures driven by political calculations rather than by a moral inspiration that comes from the soul. What is particularly cynical is that these attempts to construct a 'moral dimension' are always aimed at others: those who apparently need 'simple' answers and 'meaning'. Such a cynical view of the public was clearly spelled out by William Davies of the London-based Institute for Public Policy research. 'The liberal, secular left has somehow to find ways of supplying citizens with emotional and metaphysical comforts even when it does not itself believe in such things', he warned (6). This provision of so-called metaphysical comforts serves the same function that adult-invented cautionary tales play for children. Which takes us back to Narnia: clearly the problem is not the comforts provided by CS Lewis, but the way in which they're branded.

A final point. The very term 'metaphysical comforts' suggests values built by calculation, instrumentalism, manipulation and cynicism. Morality marketed by people who do not necessarily 'believe in such things' is unlikely to set the world on fire. That is why they resent and hate the Narnia film so much. For all its faults, the movie attempts to transmit a powerful sense of belief, bravery and sacrifice. Such sentiments are alien to a cultural elite that regards the expression of any sort of strong belief as another form of that dreaded fundamentalism. Envy, bad faith and instrumentalism: these are the raw materials that fuel today's anti-religious crusade.

Sound observations from someone who may not share my religious beliefs, but who sees the world with a cold, clear eye. Where I would argue that he misses the boat is with his contention that moral values will succeed if they are grounded in "day-to-day problems" of the "ordinary folk." True, the cultural elites are seldom in touch with the concerns of the unwashed proletariat, and, therefore, are unlikely to accurately discern ANY values that will resonate with the low-brow: people like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, J.R. R. Tolkien. Whoops, I just named three intellectuals who were devout Christian apologists.  Sorry.

Christian values resonate with "the masses" because they are eternally true, not because they merely address the "day-to-day problems" of everyday people. Christianity addresses not the mundane but the ultimate problem of people both ordinary and extraordinary: how to live both in the here and now and eternally. It doesn't get much more profound than that. No purely secular construct will ever successfully compete with it for the allegiance of the "ordinary" American who seeks to stand on solid moral ground, no matter how much shoulder-rubbing with their inferiors the irreligious upper classes might perform.

Odds are, though, that the rubbing would do them some good. Some "Truth" might actually rub off on them.

And perhaps a few of them might actually recognize it when it does.