If anything, the article went off in the opposite direction from what I had hoped, talking about controversy over The C.S. Lewis Bible, which puts Lewis’s religious musings together with the traditional contents of The Bible, all under a single cover (available in leather and hardback).  Apparently, nobody complained about the pairing itself.  Instead, the furor has arisen because Lewis was squished side-by-side with the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

The NRSV, you see, is a gender-neutral translation.  While there appears to be some academic disagreement, the general consensus among Lewis scholars is that he would have found the gender-neutral stuff offensive.  As a product of an earlier generation, Lewis would have taken The Bible seriously when it says that women are to be subservient to men, that they are to keep quiet in public, and that their salvation comes through bearing children.  As a result, it seems likely he wouldn’t have supported changing the language of The Bible to treat women as full partners.

So here we are again.  Is The Bible the cause of bigotry and prejudice?  Of course not.  But nobody ever said it was.  What we do say, though, is that The Bible justifies and even encourages (among other things) certain types of bigotry, such as the subjugation of women.

For those moderate and liberal (“enlightened”) Christians who claim that their eulogizing and support of The Bible is morally blameless, here is a counter example.  A small little thing, sure.  But the matter does warrant some soul-searching.  Would prejudice of this sort be getting aired in public, without apology, by college professors and magazines like Christianity Today, in the year 2011 (half a century after the civil rights movement of the 1960s), if such attitudes weren’t actively supported by Christian tradition and, more specifically, by The Bible?

The revised edition of Destiny Unfulfilled: A Critique of the Harry Potter Series is now available in both hardcover and paperback from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.

• Part 1: The Protagonist’s Goal
• Part 2: The Protagonist Switcheroo
• Part 3: The Overshadowed Protagonist