STRONGWILLED

Important note: I (D.L.) say Dr. Cronin is at the University of Florida when in fact she teaches at Florida State University. Me and my West Coast bias/ignorance showing--sorry about that!

Dr. Sonya Cronin teaches classes both on the Hebrew Scriptures and Fantasy Literature--which makes her the perfect guest for this podcast. You can visit this site to learn more about her, including her books (and she is currently working on one about the gospel of Mark!). 

We reference the recent controversy surrounding JK Rowling and her recent anti-trans public statements. You can learn more about this situation here. 

Krispin references his interview with Connie Baker about interacting with authors who are problematic. You can listen to his interview with her about spiritual abuse here. 

Dr. Cronin references Philip Pullman, saying “Fantasy is a safe space to learn the virtues of the world, in a way that is not quite ‘thou shall’. ‘Once a upon a time’ does something for us that ‘thou shall and thou shalt not’ just doesn’t do.” (11:54)

When talking about Lewis and Tolkein they must be set in their context, the 1950s--including their portrayals of women. 

Lewis was considered safe for evangelicals because before he ever wrote fantasy he wrote apologetics--so we knew exactly what he believed. (25 min)

Harry was created a wizard — the idea of being created to be something is very much connected to the Christian tradition.  

Christian responses to Harry Potter: 

Richard Abanes wrote Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace behind the Magik

John Granger is a Christian who says we SHOULD read these books. - 35min

A clip of our just-released patreon-only episode talking about evangelicals, politics, and the recent “worship protests” out of Bethel - and how do you talk to family members about why it’s problematic?

Become a patreon here , beginning at $1.50/month and get a monthly episode, access to our facebook group and more!

Link to her biography and faculty page here.

Buy her incredibly detailed, thoughtful, academic book Re-Enchanted: The Rise of Children’s Fantasy Literature in the Twentieth Century

Questions to consider when reading books like The Chronicles of Narnia:

What are these stories, what are they doing, and how did they become so ingrained in American culture? How do these stories both aliant people and enchant them at the same time? How do we re-evaluate classics? How can we get better at interrogating what are classics?

Cecire on experiencing “the moment” when she realized she didn’t see herself represented in fantasy stories: “I looked in the mirror and it hit me like a ton of bricks: I would never be a blonde-haired blue-eyed fairy tale princess and that those stories were just not about me.”

Tolkein and Lewis were anti-modernists, and they were able to overhaul the English curriculum at Oxford to focus on the middle ages--choices that had ripple effects for generations. 

Second wave of the oxford school of children’s literature includes people like Susan Cooper (Dark is Rising) Diana Wynn Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle), Phillip Pullman (His Dark Materials), Kevin Crossly Holland (Arthur Trilogy)--and influenced people like J.K. Rowling. 

Thanks to Lewis and his curriculum developed at Oxford we have seen a major push in Children’s Fantasy Writing-- all about Arthurian Legends, Medieval texts,and reworking them for the 20th writing. These books are serious about the magic, but incredibly Northern Euro-centric. 

Peoples of Africa descending from Ham. (28:00) -- this comes directly from Christianity

“I am an academic so I think visiting, rereading, and thinking about books in general is a good thing . . . Remember that humans are complicated and our artistic productions are complicated.” (30:38)

You can identify pleasures or desires in your life that you would not like to carry forward.

Cecire references authors Nnedi Okorafor and the Binti series, N.K. Jemisin and Saladin Ahmend Throne of the crescent moon as different narratives to contrast with Lewis/The Horse and His Boy.

D.L. mentions reading Birchbark House series in conjunction with the Little House books to her daughter. Read her essay on it here. 

Rhodes must fall (39:40)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mscecire

Website: https://mariacecire.wordpress.com/

American Library Association Great Stories Club

Welcome to Season 5 of The Prophetic Imagination Station Podcast: The Lion, The Witch, and The Evangelicals. In this episode Krispin and D.L. discuss what the chronicles of Narnia is, a bit about Lewis’ background when he was writing the books, and their own experiences growing up evangelical and reading them.

For a good overview of the seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia, go here. 

The main biographies D.L. read to prepare for this season were The Narnian by Alan Jacobs (someone who unabashedly loves Lewis and writes his bio accordingly), and The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller (who writes as a non-Christian about her love for the books). 

Fake CS Lewis quotes are everywhere! If you find any good ones, please send them to us at [email protected] so we can use them in upcoming “My Dear Wormwood” segments.

According to this site, less than 5% of people in England attend church services regularly (and this was before Brexit!). 

Click here to buy The Myth of the American Dream where D.L. mentions C.S. Lewis four times!!!

Come join us on Patreon for as little as $1.50 a month and hear our monthly patreon-only podcasts and join our Facebook group! 

Stay tuned for next week, when we interview Maria Sachiko Cecire, professor of literature at Bard college and the author of Re-Enchanted (an excellent book!). 

Starting September 14, we will launch into a series on The Chronicles of Narnia, interviewing several experts and also discussing our own experiences with this series. We're asking why American evangelicals resonated so deeply with an author who was neither American, nor evangelical - and what still enchants us about this series today.

We decided to make our Patreon-only episode available for everyone this month to get a sense of what our episodes are like. We dissect one piece of evangelical media each month - prior months have been Focus on the Family's Brio Magazine and WOW 1999, as well as others. This month We discuss a 1970's Christian claymation cartoon - Davy and Goliath, and the topic is racism.

Watch Davy & Goliath: Blind Man's Bluff

Watch Phil Vischer's video on Race in America

In this episode we reference:

I Bring the Voices of My People by Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes,

The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby

Divided by Faith by Emerson & Smith.

Krispin and Danielle reflect on the past season of Frank Peretti's America.

TW: We discuss sexual abuse.

Check out Danielle's new book, The Myth of the American Dream! We mention in the episode.

And don't miss our discussion of WOW 1999 on our patreon-only podcast.

Krispin talks with Connie Baker about the psychology of why churches end up protecting abusers and discrediting those who speak up about abuse. She is the author of Traumatized by Religious Abuse and facilitates a facebook group with 500+ members about religious abuse.

Leah Payne a professor of Christian studies at George Fox University, author of Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism: Making a Female Ministry in the Early Twentieth Century and co-host for The Weird Religion Podcast. We talked with her about pentacolism in the broader history of the church and how Peretti’s book led the way for traditions that had previously been disregarded to make a big impact on American evangelicalism.