The Golden Compass and
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eading the widely successful trilogy, His Dark Materials, by acclaimed author Philip Pullman, was a great triumph for me. I’d spent two years or so needling my parents into letting me get the books, which I’d never quite gotten them to do. This was largely due to the fact that the author is a staunch atheist who incorporates some heavily antiChristian themes into his books. But when I heard the news that a movie was coming out, I doubled my efforts—everyone knows that the movie is always cooler than the book. So I asked my parents, expecting a “no” and many groans and complaints and gnashing of teeth. But instead, I got a “yes”—if my mother and I both read the books and agreed that they were compatible with our Lutheran faith. I was ecstatic.
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In retrospect, I probably should have smelled a trap. So I set about reading the books and tackled them in the span of less than a week. I was very surprised. First off, the writing was absolutely superb—first-rate, top-notch, whatever. Gone was the flowery and monotonous style of most big-name fantasy authors. Here was a man who proved himself capable of providing vivid scenes of the beautiful world he created with as few words as humanly possible. This book series is rife with armored battle-bears, flying witch clans, and Texas aeronauts in gigantic hot air balloons. It had plenty of action, with momentous battles and several brutal hand-to-hand fights that took my breath away. Yet it could also be touchingly sweet or hauntingly powerful. Philip Pullman is a truly gifted storyteller. But alas, that pesky thing called “theme” got in the way again. What good is literature if it has no message behind it, or worse, the wrong message? Anything can be arranged to look nice. The whole point of writing a book is to get a moral across. I discovered that this series, while not a masterpiece like some critics have hailed it, is certainly very good, but it has several huge flaws and extremely misleading viewpoints. The plot of the books is that a young girl’s father, Lord Asriel, is leading a massive rebellion against the Authority (another name for God, Who is even called Yahweh in the books). The girl, Lyra, must go on a personal journey and help her father succeed by doing various tasks, be they journeying into the Land of the Dead or summoning the witch clans up against God. Yes, this book series is extremely anti-Christian. Priests are portrayed as drunks and murderers, and the Sacraments are mocked by several of the “heroic” characters. No character affiliated with the Church is shown in a positive light. Philip Pullman has even publicly stated that if there is a God, and if He is as the Christians say He
