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Also unanswered are questions about the terms of the publishing rights between HarperCollins and the C.S. Lewis Company. "Simon has made it pretty clear that the only way forward (without jeopardizing our business relationship) will include a provision for the Estate's consultation and approval, as well as granting them a stake in the project," Hanselman wrote in the leaked memo about the documentary. So what are the estate's priorities? What are they so on guard against? Right now, these questions remains unanswered, and there seems to be a gag order over at HarperCollins/Zondervan on this issue.

That's mighty unfortunate—especially for HarperCollins/Zondervan. The last word was spokeswoman Lisa Herling's non-denial denial of plans to de-Christianize Lewis and the Narnia series. "One of the issues the correspondence addressed was whether the project would appeal to the secular as well as the evangelical market," Herling said in a statement to The New York Times. "The goal of HarperCollins is to publish the works of C. S. Lewis to the broadest possible audience and leave any interpretation of the works to the reader."

Meanwhile, Lewis fans and media outlets around the world continue to rend their garments. "For HarperCollins's writers to devise new stories purged of their spiritual content is the rankest kind of political correctness," says a Montreal Gazette editorial. "Even if they were to attempt to sprinkle in some of Lewis's theology, the new novels would by their very inspiration pollute the ideals that this important author stood for."

Have an opinion of your own? Be sure to vote at our online poll this week.

Supreme Court says Christian club can meet in grade school
Good news for the Good News Club of Milford, New York: The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision today that the local school district that banned its meetings "violated the Club' s free speech rights." "When Milford denied the Good News Club access to the school's limited public forum on the ground that the club was religious in nature," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, "it discriminated against the club because of its religious viewpoint in violation of the free-speech clause of the First Amendment." The Court rejected the school district's arguments that such young students should be protected with extra precautions distancing the school from religious instruction. "We cannot operate, as Milford would have us do, under the assumption that any risk that small children would perceive endorsement should counsel in favor of excluding the Club' s religious activity," Thomas wrote. Quite the contrary: "Any bystander could conceivably be aware of the school' s use policy and its exclusion of the Good News Club, and could suffer as much from viewpoint discrimination as elementary school children could suffer from perceived endorsement."

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June (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45