When I was in fifth grade, I read C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. I had a teacher who raved about them and assigned The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as class reading, and since I hated to leave anything unread, I also polished off the rest of the series.

I didn't like them.

I didn't get the religious allegory at all—it wasn't until I was in high school that someone mentioned it to me, and then suddenly all was clear—but it was the peculiar stuffed-shirt elitism that put me off, what with all these odd characters that were treated with hushed and unquestioning reverence by a bunch of annoying prigs. Lacking the religious connection, too, the story made little sense; a lion tortured and dying and coming back to life? What the heck? It simply wasn't a very good story.

Now we have this new Disney movie of the books coming out. I'll probably see it; I'm sure the religious in my little town will be demanding that our theater show it, and I'm pretty religious about seeing every movie shown there (small town theaters are a treasure, and I just like the ambience, even if the movie stinks). Neil Saunders passed along this Guardian review, 'Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion', and now I may also have to see it just because it'll feed my distaste.

There's at least one bit of Britain I envy.

Disney may come to regret this alliance with Christians, at least on this side of the Atlantic. For all the enthusiasm of the churches, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ bombed in Britain and warehouses are stuffed with unsold DVDs of that stomach-churner. There are too few practising Christians in the empty pews of this most secular nation to pack cinemas. So there has been a queasy ambivalence about how to sell the Narnia film here. Its director, Andrew Adamson (of Shrek fame), says the movie's Christian themes are "open to the audience to interpret". One soundtrack album of the film has been released with religious music, the other with secular pop.

I think The Passion of the Christ did very well here in Morris—it was held over for weeks, to my annoyance. Since we only have one theater with one screen, it meant better movies were displaced for far too long.

Oh, but this review goes on in a way I find positively heartwarming. Here's a sample:

Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.

Even though I read the books while I was still a little regular church-goer, maybe the reason I never caught on to the religious symbolism was that it was the gilded version of Christianity—the Christianity of the self-satisfied, the wealthy, the grasping; the kind of Christianity that sequesters itself in crystal cathedrals and is represented by televangelists who demand that the poor sacrifice more and more and more to their ministries. I couldn't identify with that.

I could easily discard such a Supreme Overlord of Self-Righteousness, though. I do remember feeling this in a vague way that I could not express:

Children are supposed to fall in love with the hypnotic Aslan, though he is not a character: he is pure, raw, awesome power. He is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is no one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can. We need no holy guide books, only a very human moral compass. Everyone needs ghosts, spirits, marvels and poetic imaginings, but we can do well without an Aslan.

Now I wonder if the Chronicles of Narnia was an early seed that contributed to my later abandonment of all matters religious. The review mentions that Lewis wanted the books to "make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life", yet all they instilled in me was a mild distaste that made it easier to reject Christianity. Maybe the new Narnia movie will also help some of today's children cast off the shackles of sanctimonious superstition.

More likely, though, they'll just see it and say, "eh," as I did after reading those tedious books.