THE GOLDEN COMPASS
by Chuck Missler
http://www.khouse.org/ This past week the big screen adaptation of Philip Pullman's book The Golden Compass was released in theaters nationwide. The Golden Compass (which is titled The Northern Lights outside of the U.S.) is the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman's controversial novels have triggered widespread debate in the weeks leading up to the movie's release. The Catholic League has called for a boycott of the film and has published a detailed pamphlet warning parents about the contents of the books. Several Christian organizations, such as Focus on the Family, have also criticized the trilogy for its anti-God, anti-Christian content.
Pullman is an outspoken atheist, and his books portray religious leaders as tyrannical oppressors and the God of the Bible as a power-hungry pretender. In a Washington Post article published back in February of 2001, Pullman said that he was "trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief." Pullman is also often quoted as having said: "My books are about killing God."
His Dark Materials
The Golden Compass centers around the adventures of 11-year-old Lyra Belacqua. The story takes place in a parallel universe that is inhabited by humans, talking animals, witches, and other strange creatures. In Lyra's world every human has a "daemon" (pronounced dee-mon) that takes the form of an animal. However daemons are not pets, they are the physical manifestation of a person's soul (sort of like an alter ego). Lyra and her daemon, named Pantaliamon, share emotions and even physical pain. Pantaliamon, like all children's daemons, can transform into many different types of animals at will. However when children reach puberty their daemons "settle" into one form - adult daemons do not change. Furthermore, when a person dies, their daemon also dies.
In the course of the book we discover that Lyra is destined for great things. She also has a gift: the ability to interpret an alethiometer – a complicated devise that measures truth. (The alethiometer resembles a compass, which is where the book got its name.) When children start disappearing from the streets of London (among them Lyra's best friend Roger), Lyra undertakes a quest to the Far North to find them. With the help of her friends and the alethiometer Lyra is able to elude the Magisterium (the oppressive religious rulers) while she searches for the missing children.
The Mystery of Dust
Lyra must also save her father, Lord Asriel, who has been taken captive by the Magisterium and accused of heresy. Lord Asriel is investigating the origins of a mysterious elemental particle called "Dust" (also known as dark matter). Lyra is pursued in her quest by the cold and manipulative Mrs. Coulter, whose daemon is a golden monkey and who works for the Magisterium. Mrs. Coulter is also concerned with the origin and nature of Dust, which the church erroneously believes is original sin. The story contrasts the ideas of free-thinking scientists and scholars with those of the dogmatic religious zealots who control Lyra's universe.
In The Golden Compass, Pullman describes the religious authorities in saying: "…Ever since Pope John Calvin had moved the seat of the Papacy to Geneva and set up the Consistorial Court of Discipline, the Church's power over every aspect of life had been absolute. The Papacy itself had been abolished after Calvin's death, and a tangle of courts, colleges, and councils, collectively know as the Magisterium, had grown up in its place…" In the story Lyra discovers that the Magisterium is guilty of the worst sort of evil imaginable: stealing children's souls.
It turns out Mrs. Coulter and the Magisterium are the ones who have been kidnapping children and bringing them to the North. Motivated by its "obsession with original sin" the Church has been separating children from their daemons (essentially stealing their souls). These "severed children" are likened to an African "zombie" that "...has no will of its own; it will work day and night without ever running away or complaining. It looks like a corpse…" By separating children from their daemons before puberty, the Church hopes to prevent them from being contaminated by Dust (original sin). The humans who have been severed from their daemons (such as the doctors and nurses performing the procedures) are complacent, dim-witted, and lack imagination. Thus the Church's goal is presumably to turn children into zombies in order to control them and prevent them from becoming sinful or thinking for themselves.
Lyra and her companions are able to save most of the children, including her friend Roger. Lyra is also able to liberate her father. However Lord Asriel, it seems, has been driven mad by his own ambition. He is so consumed by his pursuit of power and his search for the origin of Dust, that he is willing to sacrifice Roger's life in order to create a bridge into a parallel universe. In the final pages of The Golden Compass a grieving Lyra decides to follow her father into the unknown in search of the truth. The end of the first book marks the beginning of Lyra's epic journey through various worlds (including ours) trying to solve the mystery of Dust.
The Golden Compass is said to be the least offensive of the three books. Indeed, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, the second and third books in the trilogy, dig even deeper in the philosophical and theological issues introduced in The Golden Compass.
[Side Note: It has been argued that many young readers will not understand the philosophical and theological issues - which is perhaps true. Indeed, even Lyra, the central character, initially gets bored and falls asleep whenever the adults start talking about religion and politics. However young readers are sure to be captivated by the concept of daemons – the remarkable talking animals that give their human counterparts unconditional love, constant companionship, protection, guidance and power. No doubt many young readers will wish they had a demon of their very own. In fact, to help promote the film New Line Cinema has added a feature to its website called "Meet Your Daemon" where fans of the movie can identify their own personal daemon.]
Killing God
In the final book Lord Asriel raises an army that includes "fallen" angels to challenge "The Authority" and defeat the "Kingdom of Heaven." The Authority is depicted as the first angel to be formed from the Dust. He claims to be God and is also called "The Almighty", "El", and "Adonai" (a Hebrew name for God used in the Bible). The Kingdom of Heaven is eventually defeated and The Authority dies at the hands of the two main characters (although his death is attributed more to his own frailties than anything else). Like the other characters who die in the novels, The Authority is absorbed into the mysterious Dust. Dust - it turns out - is defined as self-aware matter (a god-like force that permeates the "multiverse").
In an article titled "Sympathy for the Devil" Adam R. Holz, an associate editor for Focus on the Family, writes: "At the most basic level, His Dark Materials is an attempted refutation of the Christian faith: 'The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all,' says an influential character named Mary Malone, who then goes on to relate her own 'testimony' of why she abandoned her calling as a nun…Other messages woven into this story exalt witchcraft, evolution, divination, homosexuality and premarital sex. Accompanying them are smoking, drinking, occasional mild profanity and moments of visceral violence."
