The Chronicles of Narnia/Christian parallels

==Christian parallels==
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C.S. Lewis was an adult convert to Christianity and had previously authored some works on Christian apologetics and fiction with Christian themes. However, he did not originally intend to incorporate Christian theological concepts into his Narnia stories. As he wrote in Of Other Worlds:
Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory and the author of The Allegory of Love, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". This indicates Lewis' view of Narnia as a fictional parallel universe. As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs Hook in December 1958:
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality, however, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia, and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all.Martindale, Wayne; Root, Jerry. The Quotable Lewis.
Although Lewis did not consider them allegorical, and did not set out to incorporate Christian themes in Wardrobe, he was not hesitant to point them out after the fact. In one of his last letters, written in March of 1961, Lewis writes:
:Since Narnia is a world of Talking Beasts, I thought He [Christ] would become a Talking Beast there, as He became a man here. I pictured Him becoming a lion there because (a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts; (b) Christ is called "The Lion of Judah" in the Bible; (c) I'd been having strange dreams about lions when I began writing the work. The whole series works out like this.
::The Magician's Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia.
::The Lion etc the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
::Prince Caspian restoration of the true religion after corruption.
::The Horse and His Boy the calling and conversion of a heathen.
::The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" the spiritual life (especially in Reepicheep).
::The Silver Chair the continuing war with the powers of darkness
::The Last Battle the coming of the Antichrist (the Ape). the end of the world and the Last Judgement.
With the release of the 2005 Disney film there was renewed interest in the Christian parallels found in the books. Some find them distasteful, while noting that they are easy to miss if you are not familiar with Christianity. Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, implies that through these Christian aspects, Lewis becomes "a pawn in America's culture wars". Some Christians see the Chronicles as excellent tools for Christian evangelism. The subject of Christianity in the novels has become the focal point of many books. (See Further Reading below.)
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