The curious rise of anti-religious hysteria

Essay23 January 2006
It is the Anglo-American cultural elites' insecurity about their own values that encourages their frenzied attacks on religion.
by Frank Furedi

The verdict of my son's 10-year-old mates was that it was 'not bad', but a little bit 'boring'. Maddie, a sassy nine-year-old, said it was 'okay for young kids' but it was not in the same league as King Kong. In a few years' time, these kids will recall the unexceptional film that was Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and wonder why it attracted so much adult controversy.

The intense and venomous attacks on the Disney-produced Narnia film are truly puzzling. 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.

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