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In an article on Slate.com, frequent Christianity Today contributor and Beliefnet books producer Lauren Winner takes a saner approach. She still falls for the widespread conflation between Hanselman's memo about the PBS documentary and HarperCollins' plans for new Narnia books, but her analysis is not dependent on the canard, and she does qualify her statements with an "if this is the case." Winner actually adds some substance to the debate, notably by quoting Lewis himself. It will be impossible to separate Narnia from Christianity, she writes, quoting Lewis's statement that "The whole Narnian story is about Christ." And she begins by telling the tale of Lewis's rebuke of a children's author who'd written of a magic machine simply because "it is what the modern child wants." "Better, Lewis argues, to start with the question 'What moral do I need?' and better still 'not to ask the questions themselves.'" Sound advice for a publishing company asking itself how to bring younger readers to the Narnia series. But Winner's article corrects more than just reputed bad thinking at HarperCollins and the C.S. Lewis Company—she also reminds readers that The Chronicles of Narnia aren't as blatantly didactic as, say, Mere Christianity:

Like all successful religious allegories, Narnia can be read on many levels: The Song of Songs can be either an erotic love poem or a description of God's relationship with Israel; the famous medieval unicorn tapestries tell both of the capture and taming of a unicorn and of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Indeed, part of what makes the Narnia series endure is its light touch. (The same goes for other children's classics with Christian casts, such as Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.) It's bittersweet to see Lewis' restraint, his lack of preachiness, rewarded with an attempt to make the denizens of Narnia as unchristian as, say, the wizard named Harry Potter.

Also offering wonderfully levelheaded commentary on the controversy is Beliefnet columnist (and former Christianity Today columnist) Frederica Mathewes-Green. For starters, Mathewes-Green notes that "much of the uproar was due to a misunderstanding; readers thought that the plan was to de-Christianize the stories. The misunderstanding was reasonable, since the [The New York Times] article was confusingly headlined 'Marketing Narnia Without a Christian Lion.'" But she outlines the three separate and distinct bombshells that really have detonated: plans for Narnia toys and clothing are in the works, new Narnia books are being commissioned, and "the publisher hoped to tone down Lewis' image as a Christian apologist in order to broaden his appeal." Clearly the first two are not as problematic for Lewis fans as the third. Still, Mathewes-Green gets credit for being the first to defend HarperCollins, calling its strategy reasonable. "Some people find the label Christian apologist distasteful and lump Lewis in anachronistically with the modern-day religious right. HarperCollins hopes to minimize these associations and present Lewis to these people as a thinker worth listening to." Those up in arms should be careful:

The danger is that we could prize his image, and what it does for us, more than his message and what he intended it to do. Lewis never wanted to be a symbol. In fact, he questioned whether "little books about Christianity" had much lasting impact. … It's a good guess that he would prefer his own Christian identity to be something for the reader to discover, just as we gradually realize who Aslan is. Tampering with the words of Lewis' books would be a travesty. However, if Lewis is not labeled "Christian apologist," if he's mainstreamed into the community of other writers, it may help him escape the prejudice that traditional Christians face today. It won't limit his message; he'll still be a Christian apologist. Just one who can slip behind otherwise-locked doors more easily.

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June (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45