"Rant"

[cerebe]

I got wondering about "The Golden Compass" again after seeing another preview for it and hearing that my high school was sending emails to parents advising them to restrict their children from seeing it.  So after some google-ing (and wikipedia-ing) I've come up with a few conclusions.

• The author is an Athiest.  Fact, and he has been mis-quoted as

Comments

[kittiann]

Honestly, I'm not at all surprised at the reaction this is getting. For pete's sake - the Harry Potter series, a fairly innocent set of books with pretty standard moral values, was burned by a ton of Christian groups. How much more are they going to hate this series where the church is bashed, war is waged on Heaven, and an ex-nun encourages two teenagers to experiment with each other?

I've read the books, and they are pretty blatantly anti-Christian. However, I don't think the movies will delve too far into theological issues; true to Hollywood, they'll remain standard fantasy fare. If I was a Christian, I don't think I'd have any qualms about letting my kid go see the movies. Honestly, though, I might not let them read the books 'til they were older - there's some pretty deep implications in there that Christian parents will, understandably, not want their kids to be exposed to.

Basically - I think all this anti-Golden Compass hype is bogus, but I'm not surprised. The books and the movies are going to wind up being two completely seperate things with seperate messages; and, honestly, if your kid isn't mature enough to deal with the issues/questions these books would bring up, then they're probably not mature enough to pick up on the anti-Church implications.