MODERN-DAY CHRISTIANITY, in its noxious embrace of egalitarianism, is at war with hierarchy. To the liberal Christian, hierarchy in human relationships is evil. We are one undistinguished mass of humanity, with none naturally given to lead. 

In the recent issue of Touchstone magazine, Steven D. Boyer examines the film remakes of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. He contends the films undermine Lewis’s orthodox vision of a hierarchical world. Boyer writes:

So hierarchy, by its nature, is fundamentally good. And Lewis follows the overwhelming majority of the Christian tradition by going further, by believing that the goodness of hierarchically ordered relationships extends all through the world that God has made. Relationships of all kinds are ordered, Lewis thinks, with an appropriate kind of giving and an appropriate kind of receiving. When that order is respected, real joy and freedom are the result.

Now we don’t have space here to pursue this idea very far, but the point is absolutely crucial: in Lewis’s mind, hierarchy is the source of freedom. This means that, as odd as it sounds to most of us, hierarchical order is something that we all ought not to hate or to fear, but to delight in.

To be sure, hierarchy has been abused, and Lewis is well aware that, in a fallen world, we need equality as a protection against that abuse. But it is one thing to protect ourselves from the abuse of hierarchy, and it is another to reject outright the thing that is abused—and it is this latter error that the modern world has fallen into. Finding that hierarchy has been abused, we have rejected hierarchy in principle.

But this is a dreadful mistake. It is like discovering that some of our food has been poisoned and therefore resolving never to eat again. Worse still, if Lewis is right, this rejection of hierarchy is nothing less than a rejection of a fully Christian way of seeing the world.

                                                                         — Comments —

Bruce writes:

I saw the new Dawn Treader movie this weekend and I thought it was superb: funny, detailed, thoughtful, very moving towards the end. Certainly the best of the Narnia series so far, and better than any of the Harry Potter movies (so far). (And, throughout, accepting of proper hierarchy!).

Of course Lewis did indeed emphasise that hierarchy was vital, but this folowing statement from Steve D Boyer seems incorrect: “Lewis is well aware that, in a fallen world, we need equality as a protection against that abuse.”

I have read a great deal of Lewis and I cannot recall him ever defending equality – although Lewis wrote so much that I am happy to accept correction.

What Lewis did defend, wrongly – in my opinion, was the need for democracy in a fallen world.

Tolkien by contrast regarded democracy as inferior to monarchy:  I am not a ‘democrat’ only because ‘humility’ and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the effort to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power — and then we get and are getting slavery (Letter no. 186 from selected letters, April, 1956).

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