By Michaela Gordoni
Movieguide® founder Dr. Ted Baehr is sharing why C.S. Lewis made Aslan male — he’s an allegory for Christ, who “was fully God and fully man.”
“Many years ago, during the late ’70s and early ’80s, I was head of the mainline religious organization, which owned the rights to The Chronicles of Narnia,” Baehr explained April 22. “In the 1950s, CS Lewis was invited over to do the Episcopal series, the Protestant Hour. And he came, he was so grateful, and he didn’t know the value of his work, The Chronicles of Narnia.”
“So he said you can have the rights to do a film, and when I was studying at a seminary in New York, they said, ‘We own these rights’… So they appointed me as the president of the Episcopal Radio TV. And I was there for the last few years of doing THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE .”
In 1979, THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE cartoon was made. Dr. Baehr and others wanted to keep Lewis’ intent apparent in the film.
“C.S. Lewis said very clearly [this] was an allegory about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and Aslan represented the Christ figure, and the people at Children’s Television Workshop did not understand the gospel story,” Dr. Baehr said.
“So instead of having him resurrected, they said, ‘What is this resurrected? Maybe we should pour some anointing oil on him, and that would revive him, or they could have the two girls in the Pevensie family fight, which C.S. Lewis would not do.”
The same situation is happening today. Greta Gerwig’s NARNIA movie with Netflix is confirmed to be in talks with Meryl Streep for her to play Aslan, per Deadline. This would change how the story displays the Gospel.
“I talked with Greta Gerwig about a year and a half ago,” Dr. Baehr said. “She said she loved this animated version that we did. It helped her to understand the Gospel, but then…they’re going to have Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan. But Aslan represents Jesus, and Jesus was fully God and fully man, not fully woman, but He was fully man.”
“So to change him with Meryl Streep’s voice, and I appreciate Meryl Streep’s acting — it’s terrific — would be just a travesty. I’m doing this little piece because I want to express my concern that Netflix sticks to the story, and Greta sticks to the story, because the story is the gospel story, and we shouldn’t change the gospel story because the gospel story is what saves us.”
After the 1979 movie aired, many people wrote, saying that the movie helped them understand the gospel.
Related: A Female Aslan? Why It’s a Threat to C.S. Lewis’ Legacy
“That’s what the Gospel story does. It transforms. And there have been many movies with Gospel stories since 1897.”
“Some of them [are] allegories LIKE THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE and THE KING OF KINGS, which just came out in 2025,” Dr. Baehr said. “And some of them direct stories of the Gospel. And none of them, of course, can capture the exact version of the Gospel that occurred, but they do come close to it.”
Commenters on fan site Narnia Web shared their disappointment at hearing the Aslan news.
“Unfortunately, this leads me to believe they don’t understand the story and why it’s so great,” one person wrote.
“I’ve been on the NarniaWeb news team for eight years,” one writer said. “I never thought that news about a Narnia movie would make me cry. Doesn’t it matter that people all over the world dearly love this character exactly the way he is?”
Movieguide® asks that, to preserve the gospel and Lewis’ greatest life work, you contact Netflix to ask if it would “please stick to the story that C.S. Lewis wrote.”
Lewis “was an apologist for the true gospel and it’ll help people to understand the gospel,” Dr. Baehr said, “and it also won’t alienate over 100 million people who would be very upset to see the gospel changed and to see the story of THE LION, THE WITCH IN THE WARDROBE changed by Netflix.”
Read Next: Netflix Casts Meryl Streep as Aslan? It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
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