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To World, the controversy is that black and white. "And so the battle is joined," Olasky writes. "Zondervan, HarperCollins, and those who control the C.S. Lewis estate versus those who refuse to adulterate Lewis's ideas." The heroine of the story is Carol Hatcher, "a Christian screenwriter/producer" whose PBS documentary on Lewis reportedly was squashed by the C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. "because … the film script emphasized Lewis's 'Christianity' too much." The villain is the C.S. Lewis Company's Simon Adley, whom World identifies as a former publicist for a leather furniture maker, "a spokesman for the Labour Party's opposition to privatizing Britain's state-owned railroad," and a former employee of Scholastic, "which publishes the Harry Potter series in the United States."

It's all a terribly exciting read, until one takes a peak at the man behind the curtain. (Sorry, wrong children's book series.) Kudos to World for pointing out that the C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. and its C.S. Lewis Company are a pretty secretive bunch—but that doesn't make them nefarious. And World neglects conflicting evidence. As Adley himself recently told The New York Times, "It's fatuous to suggest that we're trying to take the Christian out of C. S. Lewis. We wouldn't have made the effort that we have with Mere Christianity if we felt that way." Indeed, HarperCollins has released special editions of Lewis's nonfiction works with well-known Christian authors providing introductions and forwards. Kathleen Norris introduces Mere Christianity, Madeleine L'Engle writes the foreword to A Grief Observed, Jan Karon and John Updike are also attached to the project.

And though World notes that Hatcher's documentary is only one of three such films in the works, it dismisses one as "a 'Harvard psychiatrist project comparing Lewis and [Sigmund] Freud,' and the beneficiary of 'Simon's enthusiasm'" (the quotes are actually from Steve Hanselman, senior vice president and publishing director for HarperSanFrancisco.) But what World doesn't note is that this Harvard psychiatrist is Armand M. Nicholi Jr., a Christianity Today corresponding editor and board member of both Gordon College and the Family Research Council. His comparisons between Lewis and Freud have long been the subject of one of his classes, as well as an article in Christian Leadership Ministries' The Real Issue. The documentary will certainly examine Lewis's Christian worldview in detail; it won't be an analysis of how the apologist felt about his mother.

Still, World seems to have the benefit of a smoking gun. If there is evidence that anyone at Zondervan, HarperCollins, or the Lewis estate is trying to, in World's words, "disconnect [Lewis] from the immortal Head," it's that infamous memo from Steve Hanselman. "We'll need to be able to give emphatic assurances that no attempt will be made [in Hatcher's documentary] to correlate the [Narnia] stories to Christian imagery/theology," he wrote—among other incendiary remarks. But Hanselman is no devil, and in fact his review of Hatcher's documentary was generally positive: "As treated, there is no characterization of what 'true conversion' or 'true Christianity' is supposed to be. We'll need to make sure it stays that way." Again: "Lewis was much more than a mere apologist. The script does a good job of walking this line and should be followed closely." Clearly Hanselman was worried about something. Clearly there is a context to his remarks. But what is it?

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June (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45