The Real Deal on 'Golden Compass'

In the event you have not yet heard about the upcoming movie 'The Golden Compass', based on a trilogy of popular books ala 'The Chronicles of Narnia', here's a copy of a letter from an astute and articulate Christian young lady who has read all three of the books:

Betty
FYI, I have read all 3 books in this trilogy. I can confirm that they are decidedly anti-Christian. The key idea in these books something Pullman calls "dust". It is an invisible substance that clings mostly to adults and can only been seen by humans when photographed and then developed using special procedures. Dust is eventually explained to be roughly equivalent to"consciousness". The Church (think Church of England bureaucracy plus Catholic Church rituals) wants to eradicate dust from existence (because, of course, religion suppresses individual thought).

In the first book, we see the Church experimenting on children to try to prevent them from accumulating dust once they reach puberty. The heroine is captured and almost killed by the Church in one such experiment. At the end, the heroine's father sets off on a journey to destroy God. So in "The Golden Compass" readers are primed to dislike the Church - and there is no mistaking that the key offender is the *Christian* Church.

In the second book there is a new enemy - the Specters - that essentially sucks the soul out of adults. They are attracted to the dust and so they don't attack children. This book shows the reader what people would be like without dust - soulless automatons. Since the Church wants to destroy dust, the implication is that soulless automatons are what the Church would prefer humans to be. The hero and heroine come into possession of a knife that can cut through anything (yes, this includes God). And the ex-nun that the Scopes article talks about finds an Eden-like world, un-corrupted by any type of religion.

The final book is where the "pro"tangonists kill "God". Pullman's God is not the creator. He evolved just like everything else. However, when he conquered the multiverse where the books are set many, many thousands of years ago, he convinced lesser beings (read: humans) that he did create them and then set up all the rules and restrictions to keep people in line. Then when he got tired of ruling everything, he handed it all over to his younger regent Metatron. God and his angels all have ephemeral("spiritual", if you will) bodies. They are made of light and not much else. The other characters are able to determine that they are physically stronger than God and his angels because they have a body that is solid. This is indicative of the victory of flesh over spirit.

At the time of the third book, God is an ancient decrepit being, living in a glass box to keep the wind from blowing his particles apart. The box breaks and he dissolves. Metatron gets pulled down into a bottomless pit. Dust is saved and everyone is happy.

I agree that a movie of the first book could get a lot of people interested in reading the rest of the series. When I finished reading it, I was intrigued with the way the story was going. Although I realized the author had no love for the religion, I didn't feel it was overly threatening to Christianity. I think this is because:

1) The first book is set in what we would consider probably 19th century England. We all know that the Christian church has done some terrible things in the name of God in the past centuries. Setting in it the"past" makes it seem safer because it doesn't remind you of today.

2) The identity of "dust" has not yet fully been determined at the end of the first book. All the reader knows is that the Church believes it is evidence of "original sin" and wants to find a way to eliminate the sinful nature of man.

3) The heroine's father is not a particularly likable character. Although he sets off to kill God at the end of the first book, he essentially dares someone to come and stop him. I was hoping someone would. The second and third books toss any pretense aside. They make it clear that the Christian God is the enemy and He must be destroyed. If you know any Christian families planning to see this movie, please make sure they know what it is about before going.

Beth