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<\/a>When The Golden Compass hits theaters this month, many will be introduced to the works of Philip Pullman, a writer who detests C.S. Lewis\u2019s fantasy world.<\/i><\/p>\nThe story begins with a girl hiding in a wardrobe. It continues with a series of adventures in which the girl passes through gateways into other worlds, meeting witches, figures from ancient mythology, and talking animals along the way. Ultimately, it takes her into the afterlife and to an apocalyptic battle between supernatural powers.<\/p>\n
Philip Pullman\u2019s trilogy, His Dark Materials<\/a><\/i>, has some striking parallels to C.S. Lewis\u2019s The Chronicles of Narnia<\/a><\/i>. Between protective beasts, snowy landscapes, and references to a prophecy only the girl may be able to fulfill, the ads for The Golden Compass<\/a><\/i> \u2014 the first installment of Pullman\u2019s series coming to the big screen on December 7 \u2014 look made to attract fans of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe<\/i>. New Line Cinema has also gone out of its way to link the new film to J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s The Lord of the Rings<\/a><\/i>, which the studio also adapted.<\/p>\n But His Dark Materials<\/i> presents a strikingly different kind of tale from the ones told by Lewis and Tolkien; on a certain level, it even opposes them. Pullman, writing in The Guardian<\/i> on the occasion of Lewis\u2019s centenary in 1998, said the Narnia books are \u201cone of the most ugly and poisonous things I have ever read,\u201d with \u201cno shortage of \u0085 nauseating drivel.\u201d Peter Hitchens, writing in The Spectator<\/i> in 2003, named Pullman \u201cthe Anti-Lewis.\u201d<\/p>\n While Lewis and Tolkien wrote stories imbued with Christian imagery, Pullman\u2019s trilogy \u2014 which has sold millions of copies and won numerous literary awards, including the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Prize \u2014 depicts the death of God and the creation of a \u201cRepublic of Heaven\u201d that has no need for a King. And while Lewis and Tolkien kept the Christian elements fairly subtle \u2014 even the Narnia books have no explicit references to Jesus \u2014 a key scene in Pullman\u2019s trilogy shows a former nun telling two children that she left the Christian faith because it\u2019s \u201ca very powerful and convincing mistake, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n Pullman\u2019s story begins in a parallel universe similar to our own, yet different in key respects. The heroine, Lyra Belacqua, is an 11-year-old girl from Oxford who goes looking for a friend, one of many children abducted by scientists working for the church. Along the way, Lyra is assisted by gypsies, witches, and an armored bear. As The Golden Compass<\/i> reaches its climax, Lyra watches in horror as her father, Lord Asriel, kills a child using a technique that releases so much energy, it opens a portal into another world.<\/p>\n The death of God<\/b><\/p>\n Some Christians have expressed concern that if The Golden Compass<\/i> is successful, it will lead to films based on the other two Dark Materials books, The Subtle Knife<\/i> and The Amber Spyglass<\/i> \u2014 both of which traffic much more explicitly in the death-of-God theme.<\/p>\n In these books, Lyra discovers that Lord Asriel is mounting a war against God, and she meets a boy from our own world named Will, who acquires a knife that can cut through anything, including the barrier between universes. The knife even has a prophetic name, \u00c6sah\u00e6ttr<\/i>, which means \u201cgod-destroyer.\u201d By the end of the trilogy, God is dead, and Will and Lyra have reenacted the Fall in the Garden of Eden \u2014 but in doing so, they save the universe rather than destroy it.<\/p>\n In Pullman\u2019s story, the God of the Bible is not really the Creator, but simply the first angel who emerged out of what Pullman calls \u201cDust.\u201d When other angels emerged, he lied and said he had created them \u2014 and he went on to set up churches in multiple universes, to assert his control over them. But now this angel, who is called \u201cthe Authority,\u201d is old and weak and faces a rebellion by angels and humans alike.<\/p>\n Writer-director Chris Weitz, a self-described \u201clapsed-Catholic crypto-Buddhist,\u201d said in one interview that the film will not refer to \u201cthe church.\u201d But the movie\u2019s official website<\/a> indicates that the cruel scientist Mrs. Coulter works for a villainous \u201cdogma\u201d-enforcing entity known as \u201cthe Magisterium,\u201d a Latin term that, in the real world, signifies the Catholic church\u2019s teaching authority.<\/p>\n Nicole Kidman, who plays Mrs. Coulter, told Entertainment Weekly<\/i><\/a> the film \u201chas been watered down a little,\u201d adding, \u201cI was raised Catholic [and] I wouldn\u2019t be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic.\u201d<\/p>\n Then again: \u201cIf the first film was a film in isolation, I would say it\u2019s no big deal,\u201d says Tony Watkins, managing editor of the U.K.-based website www.culturewatch.org<\/i> and author of Dark Matter<\/i> (Damaris\/IVP), a book that analyzes the trilogy from a Christian framework. \u201cBut it isn\u2019t in isolation, and it is part of a bigger picture.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Watkins, while disagreeing with Pullman\u2019s worldview, says he appreciates the way Pullman raises important religious questions, especially in secularized Great Britain, where the books have already been dramatized on radio and in live theater.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile I don\u2019t want to encourage out-and-out attacks on the gospel, obviously, truth can stand for itself if it is given a fair hearing,\u201d says Watkins. \u201cAnd one thing that this story does is it gets the [Christian] story into the public sphere. [In the U.K.], that has often been a bit of a challenge. But when there\u2019s some clear opposition, that\u2019s often when the Christian voice gets heard.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018A transcendent spiritualism\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n Several observers argue that the books of atheist and materialist Pullman point in a more spiritual direction.<\/p>\n One of the trilogy\u2019s main narrative devices is the \u201cdaemon.\u201d In The Golden Compass<\/i>\u2019s universe, every human being is accompanied by an animal that reflects that person\u2019s soul. The daemons of young children constantly change shape, from one animal to another, because the children have not yet settled into their adult personalities.<\/p>\n Watkins writes that the relationship between humans and their daemons \u2014 \u201cunited yet distinct\u201d \u2014 ironically models the Trinity. And in Shedding Light on His Dark Materials<\/i> (Tyndale), Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware argue that this device underscores, however unintentionally, the Christian belief that \u201cpersonality and relationship\u201d stand at the center of the universe.<\/p>\n \u201cOur intention from the beginning was to say, well, here\u2019s a guy who on the surface, overtly, is attacking Christianity and the church and the idea of God \u2014 and even saying that he wants to kill God,\u201d says Ware, \u201cyet we can see ways in which I think he pays homage to Christian truth, maybe without intending to or even knowing what he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Another central device in the trilogy is \u201cparticles of consciousness,\u201d or \u201cDust,\u201d which coalesces to form angels and human souls. In the final book, the spirits of the dead are freed from the afterlife; their particles disintegrate and are reabsorbed into the universe. Just as their physical bodies decompose when they die, so too do their spirits return to the earth.<\/p>\n \u201cPullman the writer is creating a world filled with the reality of a transcendent spiritualism, even though he rejects that cognitively,\u201d says Bruner. \u201cAnd that spiritualism is much more in line with Spinoza and New Age mysticism, or Eastern pantheism.\u201d<\/p>\n Some have gone even further and pointed to Dust as a sign that the trilogy is \u201ca Christian classic.\u201d In Killing the Imposter God<\/i> (Jossey-Bass), theologians Donna Freitas and Jason King argue that Dust is a better symbol for God than the traditional image of a man \u201cwho rules from the clouds.\u201d They say Dust acts within the novels as \u201ca divine force that desires, desperately so, to be in communication with its creation.\u201d<\/p>\n