C. S. Lewis’s “Prince Caspian” is, in his words, about the loss of the true religion and its restoration. Narnia has forgotten Aslan, most of the animals have stopped talking, and a rigid, freedom-denying materialism rules. The Pevensey children and a motley crew of “Old Narnians” are charged with restoring the old ways.

Thus, “Prince Caspian” is about our times and the challenge of re-evangelizing Western culture. That’s what my book, The Soul of Prince Caspian: Exploring Spiritual Truth in the Land of Narnia, is about.

The movie, though, which I finally saw yesterday, all but leaves out the book’s culture war themes! It is filled up with battle scenes of tedious havoc (who knows that allusion?), but leaves out completely Caspian’s backstory and the major symbolic episodes. Missing is Lewis’s treatment of the Telmarines’ atheism (”there is no such thing as lions!”), his devastating critique of progressive education, the exploration of walking by faith and not by sight, the Bacchus figure making the important point that Christian cultural influence should lead not to controlling others but to freedom, etc., etc.

I am not too bothered with cinematic additions to a book adaptation when it’s necessary to tell a written story through visual means. Sometimes an addition can even bring out and heighten something in the original story (as the movie does with its handling of bringing back the White Witch; also its depiction of Reepicheep and his fellow mice). But next time, let’s have a director who understands what the book MEANS! (I suggest Ralph Winter.)

Congratulations to Barack Obama for apparently beating the Clinton machine and apparently becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. But here is a question: You are promising to usher in a national unity, post-partisan regime. So what bone are you going to throw to conservatives? How are you in any way different from just a regular liberal?

I asked this of an Obama supporter that I am related to, and he said, after thinking for awhile, “Well, he isn’t going to demonize you so much.” Uh, that would be nice, but is there anything else? “His foreign policy,” the point being that traditional conservatives are not so interventionist and nation-building as the Bush administration has been and that Obama would return to that more conservative model.

Can anyone else offer a picture of what a post-partisan administration might look like? Or is this mere rhetoric or, more dangerously, the promise of a cult of personality in which the nation is unified by its devotion to a charismatic leader?

As for “American Idol” and its big showdown between the two left standing, I think David Cook is the superior talent, but David Archuleta did out-perform him last night and should be proclaimed the winner tonight.

I appreciate Archuleta for this: Although he sang the execrable John Lennon song “Imagine,” he left out the atheist verse (”Imagine no religion. . . Above us only sky”).