The plot sounds familiar: movie takes on religion, angers some faction of believers.
But the furor surrounding “The Golden Compass,” a $180-million fantasy epic coming to theaters next Friday, is more complex than that.
Based on the first volume in the award-winning trilogy “His Dark Materials” by religious skeptic Philip Pullman, the movie already has been condemned by conservative Roman Catholics and evangelicals. They say it will hook children into Pullman’s books and a dark, individualistic world where all religion is evil.
But at least one liberal scholar has called the trilogy a “theological masterpiece,” and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops rates the film “intelligent and well-crafted entertainment.”
Meanwhile, some secularists complain the movie from New Line Cinemas waters down Pullman’s religious critique. They feel sold out by the author, who has described himself as both an atheist and agnostic.
I suppose that no genuine assessment or critique of the film is possible for one who hasn’t seen it. But if the guy has openly stated that he’s out to undermine the basis of Christian belief, is there any reason to expect that his film is not selling atheism to kids?
Our college minister warned against it yesterday, calling it an ‘anti-Narnia’.
We have been warned about it in our church. It seems to me it is essentially trying to re-package Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter (yes I know some people have problems with HP as well, but I don’t find the HP films or books objectionable, although granted I haven’t read the last one yet). The fact that people have spirit guides which are “daemons” ought to be the first clue.
A good example of what Satan does best, which is to create convincing counterfeits.
This is not a new debate. Archbishop Williams and Mr. Pullman had a well-publicized [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/03/17/bodark17.xml]discussion of the issue[/url] in 2004. Williams concluded that Pullman was attacking a straw man, the notion that Christians have surrendered their freedom to the mythical notion of a being of essentially the same nature as themselves (although enormously more powerful, of course).
Re #3: The daemons aren’t “spirit guides.” They are externally visible souls in a universe alternate to ours (where we carry our own daemons internally and invisibly). The interesting thing is that an avowedly atheist author is about the only writer of young-adult fiction around who is seriously dealing with issues like the soul and immortality, the problem of evil, and the power of self-sacrificial love. His answers are non-Christian and problematic, but Pullman is decidedly asking some of the right questions.
Pullman has been pretty explicit that he wrote the Dark Materials trilogy as a rebuttal to Narnia — which he despises.
Does anyone mind if I spoil details of the books? If so, you should stop reading now……….
OK. So as best I recall the first book, it’s not particularly anti-Christian although the “church” is corrupt. But in the second book, all the good guys decide that they have to undertake a war against God, and do so with the help of some rebellious angels.
However, when the big reveal comes in the third book, it turns out that God isn’t… well, God; “God” in this book is an angel who took over heaven ages ago. Pullman seems to be unaware of it, but his “God” is actually not a bad match for the orthodox image of Satan.
There is a plot whereby the main characters have to re-enact the Fall, although by this point Pullman’s plot had become somewhat incoherent so it wasn’t clear to me why, precisely, this had to be done in order to save the universe.
My sense by the end was that Dale in #4 is right: the Christianity that Pullman is railing against is not very much like actual Christianity at all.
As far as the books themselves, I have to say that I really enjoyed the first two and a half books of the trilogy, which were wonderfully inventive and fun. The last half of the third book, however, goes off the rails and the ending of the whole story makes no sense in terms of what has been established before. All IMO, of course.
Personally, I’m looking forward to the movie; and I am just fascinated to see how they’ll handle the next two.
I read all three books without knowing anything about them. I loved the first book, but after I finished the second one, I already figured out this guy had to be an athiest that really did not like God nor Christianity. My suspicions were confirmed in the third book in which Mr. Pullman was practically hitting you on the head with his biases. You have heaven really being hell, God is an old, senile angel. The “good” angels are really the fallen ones, there is a gay angel couple, souls are released from Heaven that is Hell and then disburse into nothingness and return to star stuff. I could go on, but the message is really blantant anti-church and pro-atheism.
After finishing the books, I googled the author, and he, in his own words, stated he set out to write an anti-Narnia book.
This is not a case of the “church lady” getting upset over that bad Harry Potter teaching satanism. This authors goal was to do exactly what he did – write a compelling children’s book that would suck kids in and promote atheistic views. I will not be seeing the movie, and I really would like to know how they are going to film the last two books w/o either changing the stories, or having parents refuse to take their kids to see the last one with the blatant atheism.
This has been a teachable moment, since I was able to discuss with my fifth grade son why we won’t see the movie, and why I won’t let him read the books until he is much older.
Dale Rye #5 –
“. . . about the only writer of young-adult fiction around who is seriously dealing with issues like the soul and immortality, the problem of evil, and the power of self-sacrificial love.”
I seem to remember this other British writer has this series of books about the power of sacrificial love, evil, death, etc. . . . ends the 7th book of the series with a scene that deals directly with immortality, etc. . . . I also seem to recall she’s been modestly successful, maybe even slightly higher profile than Pullman.
Perhaps she doesn’t count as “young-adult,” but then again my 7-year-old was given [i]The Golden Compass[/i] at her last birthday party. Or perhaps you think Pullman is “seriously dealing” with those things and she isn’t?
Based on the author’s stated intent, my family will not be “contributing to his ministry” by buying his books or seeing his movie. It doesn’t matter that at least one of the stories is generally thought to be very entertaining and he is unlikely to adversely impact our faith. What he’s selling is not what we’re buying.
Dale Rye (#5), I’d like to agree with you, and I do in part, but Pullman’s not really “asking questions”. I really like his stories much of the time – he has some interesting turns and he has a pretty good narrative voice – but he’s also pretty dogmatic. He raises a lot of the issues you mention, but rarely in a voice that counts as a query.
Here’s why I agree with you, though: if a lot of people are going to see this movie and read his books, then I want to be in on the conversation with them. Pullman’s a dogmatic atheist, and not a very interesting one; but some of the people who read his books and see his movie are likely to really be asking the questions. I read the books because I wanted to be prepared to discuss the books with my kids, their friends, and others who are paying perhaps more attention to the books than to what the Gospel tells us about who we are and what the world is like.
By the way, Matt Dickerson has an interesting chapter on Pullman, written by a Christian scholar, in his book _From Homer to Harry Potter_.
Dale Rye (#4) – thanks for the link! Just read it and was pleased to do so. I think I probably need to back off a little from my earlier position; maybe it’s only because he was with the ABC, but this is the most generous I’ve seen Pullman towards religion. If only his books read as well (i.e. as undogmatic) as the dialogue you link us to reads.
Actually, Dale, other writers ARE tackling these questions. That’s one reason I liked the fiction of Madeline L’Engle. she asked these questions and usually in a real life setting (The Austin Family series, for example).
As someone previously mentioned, C. S. Lewis was asking. Tim LaHaye is asking these questions. I see lots of ‘inspirational fiction’ books come across my cataloging desk, most geared towards adults, but they are out there. Most not very well written, but they are there.
As literature, the books out do Harry Potter by leaps and bounds. I don’t think Pullman knows much about theology, nor is his critique of Narnia or of Christianity comprehensive. But the religion he rails against isn’t my own faith at least. I think the person who said it is a tempest in a teapot is right. Besides, it’s Christians who turn people into atheists. Not atheists.
It’s a novel.
Re #8: Thanks for calling me on my rhetorical excess. However, I can remember being a pretty lonely voice about Harry Potter’s fundamentally Christian worldview a few Rowling books back. (The woman is in the Church of Scotland, for pete’s sake; I once wrote an essay on how the series reflects the Five Points of Calvinism.)
As someone points out above, if you read Pullman upside down, with The Authority as the fallen angel Satan rather than God (and with the heroine and hero as godly rebels against the kingdoms of this world), it becomes much better theology. As Abp. Williams has said, there is even something in the trilogy (namely “Dust,” the dark materials of the title) that has a great deal in common with the divine Dazzling Darkness encountered by Christians in the orthodox mystical tradition… certainly much more so than Pullman’s straw-man Authority.
The Archbishop once suggested that the His Dark Materials trilogy should be mandated reading in church schools because it forces us to think about the great questions of Christianity without suggesting that the Christian answers are self-evident to every intelligent person. Unless a child is going to live their entire life within a Christian ghetto, they are better off figuring out early on how to react both defensively and offensively to non-Christian worldviews.
This link is to a fairly detailed critique, one I found helpful, given a bit of reservation we had about things we’d heard. Seems to me that if the point is to expose the false god so that the true God is revealed, it is theologically sound and somewhat remeniscent of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters – it’s not so much anti-Narnia, but hell being anti-God/antiChrist.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2007/11/25/god_in_the_dust?p1=email_to_a_friend
The Donna Freitas article in the Boston Globe demonstrates clearly that this movie is about selling “The Spirit Is Doing a New Thing” heresy, the same “theology” that has rotted out the soul of the Episcopal Church:
[blockquote] Most Christians are taught to imagine God through the first and second parts of the Trinity, through the Father (God) and the Son (Jesus). Pullman’s vision of God is much closer to the third part of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit. Dust is the Holy Spirit.
For Christians, then, perhaps the most important concept of all in the story is that divinity isn’t just a being, but a substance that loves us and animates us, yet has a mind of its own. In the books, Dust’s love for humans is unconditional, even though they often do things to hurt and deplete Dust’s influence and presence. Dust has many names in “His Dark Materials”: Wisdom, Consciousness, Spirit, Dark Matter.
Dust also has a distinctly female cast. When Pullman personifies Dust, and he does on occasion, he uses the pronoun she. Evoking the third person of the trinity as female is nothing new – in fact it’s biblical. Wisdom (Sophia in Greek) is the feminine aspect of the Holy Spirit. One finds God spoken of as she in both Proverbs and the Psalms (among other places). Framing the divine through Spirit-Sophia is nothing new either – this is a move made famous by the work of revered Catholic feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson, a professor at Fordham, in “She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse,” now a classic text among Christian feminist scholars.
God is not dead, then: A false God has died and the true God – a feminine divine – is revealed.
The universe of “His Dark Materials” is far from atheistic or anti-Christian, but to understand why, we must allow ourselves to open up to a theological vision that exceeds the narrow agenda set by some Catholics.
Pullman’s Dust certainly moves beyond orthodox Christian ideas about God. Dust is a “spirit” that transcends creation, but all living beings are made of Dust, so Dust is a part of creation. While Dust is indeed the divine fabric of the worlds of “His Dark Materials,” Dust is not all-powerful, all-knowing, and immutable. Dust is as dependent on creation for its sustenance as we are dependent on Dust for ours.
This view of Dust echoes many of the theological ideas that the Catholic Church finds threatening today. The most obvious thread is liberation theology, the Marxist and socially progressive rereading of the Gospels born among Catholic theologians in Latin America in the 1960s. Liberation theology teaches that Jesus is a political revolutionary who loves all that God has created and wants all creation to flourish on this earth, not just in heaven. Liberation theology also holds that believers should disregard doctrine that leads to oppression.
This is not an idea in favor with the current leadership of the church. In placing the common welfare above the dictates of church authorities, this movement has sparked a long running battle with the Catholic hierarchy. The Church has issued high-profile attacks on liberation theologians, both in official Vatican documents and, perhaps most famously, in the reprimands issued to the former Brazilian Franciscan priest Leonardo Boff by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican office led by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The cardinal is now Pope Benedict XVI.
Dust also reflects strains in feminist theology that reframe the divine as feminine and hold that Christians’ relationship with the divine is mutual, not hierarchical: We make ourselves vulnerable to God as God makes God’s self vulnerable to us. Many see this feminized God as a kind of heresy – a rejection literally embodied in the fact that women are forbidden to represent Jesus through the Catholic priesthood.
[/blockquote]
Everyone, this is the exact same sort of nonsense that most of us have been fighting in the church. We must worship Sophia, the New Spirit. The Son and the Father are just dead authoritarian white males, we need to follow the New Spirit, She who authorizes everything as long as it feels good, accepts everything, doesn’t require anything of us no matter what we do, who says we can continue in our sinful ways and she is perfectly happy as long as we are not being “oppressed.” She will triumph and one day we will all pray to Mother Jesus and live happily ever after without the need for confession, repentance or amendment of life, because “sin” is just an outdated tool of oppression.
This is the same sort of weak, false and flawed thinking that has destroyed the Episcopal Church. With people like this coming forward to defend this movie, who claim to be “Catholic theologians” when it is clear they are not even Christian, confirms that I will keep my family and anyone I know far away from this movie. It is preaching the False Gospel to the max.
Re #15: Thanks for the link. That is almost exactly how I read the books and their underlying world view; I suspect Abp. Williams sees them similarly. It is not a fully orthodox Christian theology (particularly without Christ!), but—despite Pullman’s protestations of atheism—it is much more of a theology than a non-theology. Any theology that sees its God as even remotely related to Pullman’s Authority is even farther from Christian orthodoxy than he is. The model for the books isn’t really Narnia, but [i]Paradise Lost[/i] and its view of “the fortunate fall” ([i]o felix culpa[/i], as the ancient Easter Vigil called it).
Has anyone else read Al Mohler’s blog on [url=http://albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=1065]”The Golden Compass”[/url]? I found it quite well written and researched, and free of the hyperbole (and paranoia) that marks some discussions on the movie.