Golden Compass anti-Christian?

Cafe Society
1

This is what I get for not keeping up with my fantasy reading.
The upcoming big-budget fantasy movie the Golden Compass, the first in a series (presumably they’re going to do the others), is apparently now being lambasted by Christian critics as deliberately anti-Christian. I saw this in Snopes and figured, “Ho Hum – another Christian group getting all roused up over fantasy again.”
Imagine my surprise when the folks at Snopes labeled this rumor TRUE – the author of the books apparently HAS stated that he was being anti- Christian in the books, and was sort of creating an anti-Narnia.

Is this true? Previous threads on the book and movie that I’ve looked at never touched on this, and I haven’t read the series. Do the Christian groups actually have a point this time? And why hasn’t this come up before now?

2

Interesting. I’d really like to see it now.

3

It hasn’t been a movie before. The first book isn’t really very Anti-Christian compared to the rest of the series though and I find it hard to believe they’d ever be able to make the third book into a movie without cutting out most of it. (You should read the books, they’re good stuff.)

As far as no threads mentioning this:

4

It’s not really evident at the start of the series, but by the end of the third book the anti-Christian message is pretty explicit. I’m baffled as to how the sequels will be handled if the first movie is a success.

5

If that would be your only reason, I wouldn’t bother. Rumor has it they’ve removed most of the stuff from the movie that portrays the Church/organized religion as bad guys.

Not quite sure how that’ll work out, plot-wise, but we’ll see.

6

I would say yes, it is reasonably anti-Christian. It’s more so in the third book than the first two, though.

However, in the books the Christian-analogous-stuff is actually bad. It’s changed enough that I would say it’s pretty unambigiously, if not evil, then certainly not very good for pretty much everyone. To an extent saying it’s anti-Christian is like saying the Lord of the Rings and Narnia are anti-athiest because it is a fictional world wherein knowing all you could and being an atheist would be silly. That said, the author draws clear parallels and has given his fictional-religion/world clear Christian trappings, and given his statements I don’t have much doubt he intended it to be associated with Christianity. Overall i’d say yes, it’s anti-Christian, but not to the extent the two emails on Snopes say it is. As far as selling athiesm goes, no, it doesn’t. At all. The Snopes letters people don’t seem to realise that if you have a book in which a God-analogue is killed, it would be pretty difficult to be an atheist. I mean, look, there’s the body. Anti-Christian yes, pro-atheism not at all.

OTOH, it’s also not part of a nefarious plot to indoctrinate kids. Or at least, if it is, they’ve left me out of the loop again. :wink:

7

My quick scan through previous threads didn’t turn up the anti-Christian theme, and none seemed obvious in the titles I saw. I was hoping someone would adress it, or point me toward any such threads.

This Wikipedia entry seems to support the Snopes article. It also makes it seem that the movie will offend both fans of the series and Christian groups. The producers feel it won’t affect ticket sales, except in raising awareness through publicity. It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.

I’ve long thought that we never had a decent adaptation of Mark Twain’s a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court because no one wanted to be accused of attacking the Catholic Church (as Twain did, in his book, which presents a case for locally-controlled protestant groups as opposed to a large hierarchical Church organization). And here somebody goes and gets critical of all Christian groups, although it’s very watered down in the movie.

8

It’s true that the villians in the series are associated with an alternate, unambiguously evil Christianity in an alternate universe. But the series also crosses over into the real world. In fact the “powerful and convincing mistake” quote specifically refers to the real Christianity, not the alternate Christianity of Lyra’s world.

9

looks at my own earlier post
Nope, no one pointed you toward those threads at all.

10

Wow. That’s like asking if Richard Simmons is guy.

I seriously doubt the movie will be nearly as anti-Christian as the books, though I’ve been wrong before (and I won’t be watching it anyway, based on Rhymer Entertainment Rules #3 (Never watch any movie based on a book you love) and 45 (Never watch any movie with Nicole Kidman any it).

11

I remember the real world part, but not that bit - it was a while since i’ve read them, though, so you’re probably right.

Like I said, it does clearly intend to refer to Christianity. But a character saying that is pretty much equivalent to a character saying “I believe in God”, and that in and of itself is not a horrible slander on Christianity nor would it mean indoctrination as that wouldn’t.

12

The third book in the series is very anti-Christian. Not in a suble allegorical way either. God even makes an appearance and is portrayed as evil and insane.

Unfortunately all the theology pretty much wrecks the series. The fascinating characters of the first two books get turned into bland props in Pullman’s jeremiad. I’ve never been so disappointed by the end of a trilogy.

13

I read an interview with Pullman; he pulled no punches in his disdain (even contempt) for the Chronicles of Narnia.

14

That’s not quite true:


“God” appears as a doddering old man/spirit, invalid and infirm, and his death is seen as a merciful event. The evil and insane person who appears is his regent, Metatron. Also, it’s fairly clear that we’re meant to believe that the God who appears, even at the height of his powers, was no creator deity, but rather the Demiurge.

Now that’s largely true, though I felt it was more that the third book was too confused and rushed. Pullman needed a Nan Talese, both to restrain his excesses and to get the series extended to four books.

15

I’d say the books are more generically anti-religion than specifically anti-Christian. The theology of the church in the books is pretty vague. It can really be any religion you want.It doesn’t single Christians out or anything (though I understand that the kind of morons who want to protest stuff like this have an emotional need to feel personally persecuted).

The books tell kids to think for themselves and not to be blindly obedient to religious authgority. It’s a good message. Bill Donohue’s comments are especially moronic. The books “promote atheism for kids?” So what? What’s wrong with promoting atheism for kids? How is that any worse than promoting Christianity for kids? It “undermines the basis for Christian beliefs?” Again, so what? Is there a law against undermining the basis for Christian beliefs? Doesn’t Narnia try to undermine atheism? Doesn’t the Passion movie try to undermine any religion that isn’t Christianity. I don’t unnderstand why assholes like Donohue think they have some kind of special right to free expression and that no one else should ever be allowed to disagree. Did atheists try to boycott the Narnia movie? Why can’t Donhue extend the same courtesy to atheists that atheists extended to Christians?

16

I agree with this. I don’t think there’s anything wrong or underhanded about Pullman putting an anti-Christian message into his books. My point is, people associated with the film are trying to defuse protest by saying that the evil church portrayed in the book is an alternate/different/twisted version of Christianity, not the real thing. And that’s partly true, but also misleading: the real-world Christianity also appears in the series and Pullman has plenty to say about it as well.

17

Pullman is a vocal atheist, but his energies are directed more at fundamentalism (in its “religious” and non-religious forms).

His principal beef is with “theocracies” - but he includes communism / fascism just as much as the Vatican or high-church Anglicanism.

So in that sense, because The Golden Compass (called “Northern Lights” in the UK) uses The Magisterium as a metaphor for any absolutist organisation, it can be said to be “anti-christian”, but I’d say it’s more anti-absolutist at its heart.

http://www.philip-pullman.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=113

18

The thing is, the anti-Christianism of the books just doesn’t make sense.

We these characters who are supposed to be Christian, but are protrayed as serving an evil god. Except, how does that refer back to real-life Christianity? Obviously the author doesn’t think the Christian God really exists, but is evil. Obviously, he believes, or should believe, that the evil men do in the name of Christianity isn’t done because Yahweh told these men to do evil…rather they do evil because they are evil people.

If there really were an evil Yahweh, and he really did command men to murder innocents in his name, and really did allow them to commit pennance for a future act of evil, then these humans aren’t evil, but rather slaves of an evil creature.

After reading the books, I got the impression that the author was something of a pantheist…that he believed in some sort of new-age spirituality, but that Christianity was a perversion of true spirituality. But in the real world, surely he realizes that it isn’t evil spirits who persuaded human beings to abandon what he considers true spirituality, we did that to ourselves. Yahweh isn’t the ultimate tyrant, the ultimate tyrant would then be some guy in a dress who lives in Rome and gives antispiritual orders in the name of a fictitious and/or misunderstood deity.

In our universe, there are people who claim to speak for a deity, but the deity just so happens to give orders that coincide with that human person’s worldy interests. This is because that person is a flawed, lying selfish human being. It isn’t because there’s actually a real deity who has a plan that their spokesman should live in a mansion and have sex with 13 year old girls and murder people who annoy him and have heaps of gold. That spokesman SAYS to the 13 year old girld that God wants her to have sex with him, but he’s, you know, lying. Of course, it’s not God that wants her to have sex with him, it’s him that wants her to have sex with him.

So this evil Christian god that rules through an evil Christian church just doesn’t make sense. God didn’t pervert Christian spirituality, we humans did

19

I’m might have made the distinction anti-Catholicism. That doesn’t imply from me that I don’t believe Catholics are Christian. But I thought it was more aimed at the Church - or really The Vatican.

Unlike many on the board I found the book tedious. I won’t see it not because of its message, but because I found the book dull.

20

Fair points.

I wouldn’t be suprised if some Christians were upset and to an extent I don’t think i’d be unsympathetic. But for people who think this is the “atheist side” put forth, or that Pullman is represenative… well, I hope they change their minds.