“The Golden Compass”, Lacking a Moral One
The movie, “The Golden Compass”, is essentially a moral compass that points south instead of north. As mentioned here before, author Philip Pullman, from who’s books “His Dark Materials” the movie comes from, is distinctly anti-religious. As such, the movie, while it is marketed to the same crowd as The Chronicles of Narnia, seeks to deconstruct religion in the eyes of the kids.
Not content with the subtleties of allegory, Pullman’s movie involved the church directly, and depicts it as willing to kidnap and experiment on children in trying to determine if a particular substance is actually Original Sin. He blurs the idea of a daemon as simply the human soul that manifests itself, in some of the universes in his story, as an animal that stays with the human. Ultimately, in the trilogy, the God figure is killed. Christians will immediately see the difference and the problem with one character’s goal of establishing a Republic of Heaven to rival God’s Kingdom of Heaven.
Even though it sounds like the anti-religious themes are being downplayed in the movie, the movie inevitably spurs book sales, which is where the real issues are. I would ask Christians not to put this movie on their holiday schedule. While the controversy will no doubt increase some ticket sales, I’m hoping that the dollars withheld by others will more than offset that.
(Information on this can be found at Wikipedia here and here. A review of the books from a Christian who really wanted to like it can be found at Journeyman. The original press release by the Catholic League can be found here.)
Technorati Tags: Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass, Christianity, The Catholic League
Filed under: Atheism • Christianity • Movies • Religion
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Well, I’m a Christian. I will take my children to see it and encourage them to read the books, having done so myself. Then I will encourage them to discuss it with me, and how they feel about it.
And if they want to reject my faith after all that, well, more power to them.
Guess it all depends on whether you want your children to make a decision based on an accurate portrayal of your faith, or be turned against it by lies. If they reject it based on the Golden Compass, I do hope you’ll not be quite so encouraging as your comment suggests.