Meryl Streep as Aslan in 'The Magician's Nephew' sparks Christian backlash: 'Creative vandalism'

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Friday, September 18, 2026

Confirmation that actress Meryl Streep will voice Aslan in the upcoming Netflix adaptation of C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew has prompted backlash from some who claim it's an affront to the classic Christian allegory.

"I wanted someone who was profound but not pretentious, who had gravitas but not morose self-seriousness. Someone who could communicate depth and pathos as well as joy and delight," director Greta Gerwig told Empire of Streep's casting as the Christ-like lion who sacrificed himself to save a sinner in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

"I wanted someone who was older than 70, so there was a wisdom of experience, but who also had the capacity of fresh wonder, like a child. And also to be one of the greatest actors to ever do it. That list is not a long one," added Gerwig, who also directed Barbie and whose first installment in the multi-film Narnia series is slated for release next February.

Though written later, The Magician's Nephew is chronologically the first of the Narnia books and tells the story of Aslan creating the world of Narnia and an evil witch gaining access to it through the prideful incompetence of an occult dabbler.

The reaction from Christians on social media to news of Aslan's new gender was overwhelmingly negative, with some mocking the character as "Translan" and predicting the film will be another ideological attack from Hollywood against Jesus Christ that will flop.

Lutheran commentator and podcaster Liam McCollum said that Lewis "would’ve hated Gerwig’s deconstruction and subversion of Aslan." He noted the irony that Lewis wrote about an Aslan impostor in the last book of the Narnia series.

"[Lewis] literally wrote about a similar moral affront — in Narnia. In The Last Battle, King Tirian expresses fear about a counterfeit Aslan: 'Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun,'" he wrote.

"You can guarantee Gerwig’s 'Aslan' will represent the present cultural milieu and Current Thing and will be a secular message about gender equity or something. Gerwig is likely summoning her own feminist god in Aslan's place instead of representing the Christian worldview," he added.

L. David Fairchild, pastor of Cross and Crown in Waxahachie, Texas, called Streep's casting "astonishingly arrogant."

"Giving Aslan a female voice isn't daring or profound or some brilliant act of creative genius. It's an act of creative vandalism pretending to be artistic sophistication. It's more ideological slop produced by the machine that's given us plenty already," he said.

"Gerwig was handed one of the most beloved works of Christian fiction in 20th century, and decided that even the central figure needed her brilliant editorial correction. Her arrogance has turned a potentially great movie into her ideological vanity project, and it will cost the studio," he added.

"In case there's ANY confusion, CS Lewis literally intended Aslan to be the incarnation of Christ inside the world of Narnia," said political commentator Isabel Brown. "When Lucy and Edmund learn they cannot return to Narnia again, Aslan comforts them by saying they'll know him again in their own world: 'There I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name.'"

"Aslan is more than an allegory for Christ, he *is* how the creatures of Narnia experience Christ in their world just as we experience Jesus Christ as an incarnate MAN in ours. To cast Meryl Streep as Aslan in Greta Gerwig's Narnia is a slap in the face to the genius of Lewis, but also a deliberate mockery of Christianity that is 100% intentional. So deeply disappointing," she added.

Lewis was outspoken during his life that Aslan was not a mere allegory for Christ, but rather Christ as He would incarnate in a world like Narnia. When a mother wrote to him because she was concerned that her son, Laurence, had come to love Aslan more than Jesus, the author comforted her by noting he "can't really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that's what he is doing."

"For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before," Lewis wrote.

Gerwig, who grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, has also said that she envisions her adaptation of The Magician's Nephew to be "a rock opera," claiming, "David Bowie saved my life. Paul McCartney saved my life. David Gilmour saved my life. Pete Townshend saved my life. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant ... Narnia is literally a world made out of music. It is a world sung to life by Aslan."