My Take on Philip Pullman's Compass series:
I read Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" series August-October 2006. I picked it up mainly because I liked the artwork on the first book. It wasn't until I hit the 3rd book that I read anything about the anti-religious over tones that were going around about it.
Thing is that I "liked" the books and I am religious, Christian. I believe in God, I read the bible, and I attend church weekly. And I STILL liked the books. And I will still be teaching my kids about God. I have to concede that I do "see" what many people are raving about. I do see the connections that many people point out about Philip Pullman's beliefs and what he "wrote" and what it all means. Blah Blah Blah. But in the end it all came down to being a fantastical story.
Thing is that I read the books and it didn't change how I felt about God and religion. No one can change your mind or your beliefs: 1. if you don't let them, and 2. without your consent. I read the books and clearly looked at them as a "FANTASY" story. It isn't real and it is just a story. Yes, in the fantastic world of the "compass," the main church of the fantasy world is corrupt and evil and does many terrible things. If a church in the real world did the same things, I would be pretty appalled too. (Wait, didn't something called the "crusades" happen where many things were done in the name of God that were pretty awful?) Was Pullman saying something about the church in the real world? Maybe. But since it is obviously a "fantasy" world and has no credibility in reality, how can someone read this and think "Oh my gosh! The Church is evil!!" (I know of many things that church going people have done over the span of years, dip into human history you'll find many instances, but it hasn't caused me to write off religion and God because of their misdeeds or bad decision making in the name of God.) And yes, the God of Pullman's world is a sad, lazy, tyrannical, and manipulative God. But that isn't the God in our reality that I believe in. If I believed in a view of God like Pullman's, I would not want anything to do with Him either. For whatever reason, we share a different view and opinion of what God is like. My view has helped me to nurture a relationship with God, Pullman's view has unfortunately given him reasons to question whether there is a God to begin with.
I think that I can understand Pullman's views and sympathize with him as a human being because I read his books. Does that not make me a better Christian? Does claiming to be Christian mean that we shut out understanding, that we close ourselves to knowledge (or a book) simply because we "fear" it could destroy something in us? What about learning tolerance? And again I repeat... No one can change your mind or your beliefs: 1. if you don't let them, and 2. without your consent.
What is so upsetting to discover a children's author doesn't believe in God?? There are MANY people in this world who don't believe in God for one reason or another. I have some very close friends who don't. And they know I do believe in God. But we respect each other regardless. And I trust these people with my children. Why? Because I am the parent of my children and just because we don't share that core belief doesn't mean that we don't respect each other or have a lack of moral similarities. What it all boils down to, we are just different. And everyone is entitled to be different.
Another very important point to all of this is our responsibility as parents to be educated on the books that our children read. Obviously not every book that our children read are going to have the same values that we teach them in our homes. In fact, the more children's books I read the more I realize this tends to be true. But the same can be said of sending them off to school in the public education system. Not every fellow peer out there shares the same beliefs either. And let's not forget the teachers, the adults that they are learning from. So why are we so alarmed about a book, or the author's beliefs, when our children are always in the thick of being around an environment filled with opposing views and beliefs, some of which are anti-religious? Do we lack so much confidence in our home values and what we teach our children in the home that we expect them to leave everything that they come from at the door as they leave? I guess if you aren't doing your job, teaching and guiding them, you definitely have something to be worried about.
It is up to us to educate ourselves and to educate our children. It is up to us to guide them through how they can leave through our doors in the morning and return to our homes in the evening believing in the same beliefs they left with. It is up to us to parent. That is the responsibility we signed up for when we chose to have the children we have. Or else we risk loosing them to the world that they live in daily. We risk loosing them to the peer group that they attach themselves to. We have to show them through our example, our persistence, and age appropriate teaching of the values and beliefs we hold personally. We have to listen to them, and guide them through correct thinking, taking the care to create a relationship that encourages open discussion in a atmosphere where they can express their beliefs and not be attacked for having them. Instead guided, as a teacher would guide a student and not bully them into a concept. And we have to be consistently teaching them so they don't forget what we would like them to stand for. Ideals that make the world a better place, a more forgiving, tolerant, and open minded place. And most of all, we want them to be happy adults someday too, so we teach them to think for themselves, so they can govern themselves.
I remember not to many years ago, when J.K. Rowling's books about "Harry Potter" were under fire because according to many religious sources the books encouraged witchcraft. And some people went as far to buy the books only to turn around and burn them. Saying that it was one less book that will corrupt a child. Well, that was really smart. You just gave them more money to publish more books and not only replace what you just burned but support their careers and ideals. Doh!
Lets be careful Christians of the world that we aren't sending the wrong signal that we are out to control the minds of others. That we stand for burning books, or destroying the freedom to think or feel or the freedom to write a simple story that in reality harms no one. Agency is a God given right. Lets be careful to not follow in the foot steps of Hitler, who burned books to destroy ideas, beliefs, and anything that opposed his warped thinking in a violent manner. What's wrong with simply deciding to NOT buy a book or NOT watch a movie? Instead of associating the wonderful aspects of religion with an evil person, lets choose to react out of understanding and not out of fear!
I LOVED J.K. Rowling's "harry potter" books. Am I turned to witchcraft because of it?? No. Geesh! What kind of a mindless fan do you think I am?! The keyword being "mindless?" I am a fan but it doesn't mean that I'm going to mindlessly follow some trumped up idea that J.K. Rowling is secretly got an agenda that includes subliminally persuading me to like witches and witchcraft. And if I say the words Alohomora and Avada Kedavra something magically immoral is going to happen? No, words can't unlock doors or cause a person to instantly die. By the way, those who are Wicca, or call themselves witches, don't practice some fantasical ripoff of Rowling's books. Nor do they call non-magical people "muggles." Their beliefs go back centuries, and Rowling definitely didn't reveal their religious practices in any of her books. In fact there is something very Wiccan based that we as a nation participate in every year, it's called Halloween! And do people boycott the practice of dressing up just because the holiday has Wiccan roots? I don't hear any religious fanatics speaking up about it every fall.
Will I be going to "the Golden Compass" movie on opening weekend. Probably not. But it isn't because I don't want to. I'd like to see the story on the big screen, but I'm a mother of two children both younger than 5. Sometimes it is hard to get a babysitter and with the prices of movie tickets, I might as well save myself the effort and the money and wait for the movie to come out in the rental houses. Will I forbid my children when they are old enough to read Pullman or Rowling? Heck no! Because I'm fairly certain that they will learn to love reading books because I read books. I'm pretty sure that I parent and guide them well enough that they can read books like that without losing their personal belief system or idenities. And I will definitely be able to open a conversation which they can participate in about those books, if they read them at all. (Kinda like a book club discussion about what we like and dislike about the book.) But this all depends because hey, I want my children by then to like or dislike their own interests. Maybe fantasy won't be their genre.
Lastly my advice, before you go knocking a creative and unique story, maybe you should just break down and read it yourself instead of taking one persons opinion of it to heart. You may be pleasantly surprised that it isn't as bad as the critics say and you may in fact like it. *gasp* And if you really want to know about the beliefs of an author, in this day and age you can very well go and ask the author on his or her website or read it in their blog or FAQ, rather than hear it by word of mouth in some interview taken out of context. Or some newspaper's warped spin on what the author is really like. The more I check up on what really is said and in what interview, the more I see that my fear of something has been played on by a manipulative report. The age old advice "don't believe everything you hear" or read, still rings true today!
Pullman's Website
Taken from the author's website FAQ, HIS words:
His Dark Materials seems to be against organised religion. Do you believe in God?
I don't know whether there's a God or not. Nobody does, no matter what they say. I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away.
Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.
Your books deal with many of life's big questions? God, the church, good and evil, love? and you are not afraid to challenge your young readers. Is that a conscious aim when you sit down in front of a blank sheet of paper? Do you think children's writing has a duty to pose difficult questions?
No. The only duty it has is best expressed in the words of Dr Johnson: "The only aim of writing is to help the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it."
You have run into criticism from certain religious groups who regard you as subversive, with the Catholic Herald describing your work as 'worthy of the bonfire.' Do such emotional responses concern or upset you or does it please you to generate strong reactions?
I'm delighted to have brought such excitement into what must be very dull lives.
Thing is that I "liked" the books and I am religious, Christian. I believe in God, I read the bible, and I attend church weekly. And I STILL liked the books. And I will still be teaching my kids about God. I have to concede that I do "see" what many people are raving about. I do see the connections that many people point out about Philip Pullman's beliefs and what he "wrote" and what it all means. Blah Blah Blah. But in the end it all came down to being a fantastical story.
Thing is that I read the books and it didn't change how I felt about God and religion. No one can change your mind or your beliefs: 1. if you don't let them, and 2. without your consent. I read the books and clearly looked at them as a "FANTASY" story. It isn't real and it is just a story. Yes, in the fantastic world of the "compass," the main church of the fantasy world is corrupt and evil and does many terrible things. If a church in the real world did the same things, I would be pretty appalled too. (Wait, didn't something called the "crusades" happen where many things were done in the name of God that were pretty awful?) Was Pullman saying something about the church in the real world? Maybe. But since it is obviously a "fantasy" world and has no credibility in reality, how can someone read this and think "Oh my gosh! The Church is evil!!" (I know of many things that church going people have done over the span of years, dip into human history you'll find many instances, but it hasn't caused me to write off religion and God because of their misdeeds or bad decision making in the name of God.) And yes, the God of Pullman's world is a sad, lazy, tyrannical, and manipulative God. But that isn't the God in our reality that I believe in. If I believed in a view of God like Pullman's, I would not want anything to do with Him either. For whatever reason, we share a different view and opinion of what God is like. My view has helped me to nurture a relationship with God, Pullman's view has unfortunately given him reasons to question whether there is a God to begin with.
I think that I can understand Pullman's views and sympathize with him as a human being because I read his books. Does that not make me a better Christian? Does claiming to be Christian mean that we shut out understanding, that we close ourselves to knowledge (or a book) simply because we "fear" it could destroy something in us? What about learning tolerance? And again I repeat... No one can change your mind or your beliefs: 1. if you don't let them, and 2. without your consent.
What is so upsetting to discover a children's author doesn't believe in God?? There are MANY people in this world who don't believe in God for one reason or another. I have some very close friends who don't. And they know I do believe in God. But we respect each other regardless. And I trust these people with my children. Why? Because I am the parent of my children and just because we don't share that core belief doesn't mean that we don't respect each other or have a lack of moral similarities. What it all boils down to, we are just different. And everyone is entitled to be different.
Another very important point to all of this is our responsibility as parents to be educated on the books that our children read. Obviously not every book that our children read are going to have the same values that we teach them in our homes. In fact, the more children's books I read the more I realize this tends to be true. But the same can be said of sending them off to school in the public education system. Not every fellow peer out there shares the same beliefs either. And let's not forget the teachers, the adults that they are learning from. So why are we so alarmed about a book, or the author's beliefs, when our children are always in the thick of being around an environment filled with opposing views and beliefs, some of which are anti-religious? Do we lack so much confidence in our home values and what we teach our children in the home that we expect them to leave everything that they come from at the door as they leave? I guess if you aren't doing your job, teaching and guiding them, you definitely have something to be worried about.
It is up to us to educate ourselves and to educate our children. It is up to us to guide them through how they can leave through our doors in the morning and return to our homes in the evening believing in the same beliefs they left with. It is up to us to parent. That is the responsibility we signed up for when we chose to have the children we have. Or else we risk loosing them to the world that they live in daily. We risk loosing them to the peer group that they attach themselves to. We have to show them through our example, our persistence, and age appropriate teaching of the values and beliefs we hold personally. We have to listen to them, and guide them through correct thinking, taking the care to create a relationship that encourages open discussion in a atmosphere where they can express their beliefs and not be attacked for having them. Instead guided, as a teacher would guide a student and not bully them into a concept. And we have to be consistently teaching them so they don't forget what we would like them to stand for. Ideals that make the world a better place, a more forgiving, tolerant, and open minded place. And most of all, we want them to be happy adults someday too, so we teach them to think for themselves, so they can govern themselves.
I remember not to many years ago, when J.K. Rowling's books about "Harry Potter" were under fire because according to many religious sources the books encouraged witchcraft. And some people went as far to buy the books only to turn around and burn them. Saying that it was one less book that will corrupt a child. Well, that was really smart. You just gave them more money to publish more books and not only replace what you just burned but support their careers and ideals. Doh!
Lets be careful Christians of the world that we aren't sending the wrong signal that we are out to control the minds of others. That we stand for burning books, or destroying the freedom to think or feel or the freedom to write a simple story that in reality harms no one. Agency is a God given right. Lets be careful to not follow in the foot steps of Hitler, who burned books to destroy ideas, beliefs, and anything that opposed his warped thinking in a violent manner. What's wrong with simply deciding to NOT buy a book or NOT watch a movie? Instead of associating the wonderful aspects of religion with an evil person, lets choose to react out of understanding and not out of fear!
I LOVED J.K. Rowling's "harry potter" books. Am I turned to witchcraft because of it?? No. Geesh! What kind of a mindless fan do you think I am?! The keyword being "mindless?" I am a fan but it doesn't mean that I'm going to mindlessly follow some trumped up idea that J.K. Rowling is secretly got an agenda that includes subliminally persuading me to like witches and witchcraft. And if I say the words Alohomora and Avada Kedavra something magically immoral is going to happen? No, words can't unlock doors or cause a person to instantly die. By the way, those who are Wicca, or call themselves witches, don't practice some fantasical ripoff of Rowling's books. Nor do they call non-magical people "muggles." Their beliefs go back centuries, and Rowling definitely didn't reveal their religious practices in any of her books. In fact there is something very Wiccan based that we as a nation participate in every year, it's called Halloween! And do people boycott the practice of dressing up just because the holiday has Wiccan roots? I don't hear any religious fanatics speaking up about it every fall.
Will I be going to "the Golden Compass" movie on opening weekend. Probably not. But it isn't because I don't want to. I'd like to see the story on the big screen, but I'm a mother of two children both younger than 5. Sometimes it is hard to get a babysitter and with the prices of movie tickets, I might as well save myself the effort and the money and wait for the movie to come out in the rental houses. Will I forbid my children when they are old enough to read Pullman or Rowling? Heck no! Because I'm fairly certain that they will learn to love reading books because I read books. I'm pretty sure that I parent and guide them well enough that they can read books like that without losing their personal belief system or idenities. And I will definitely be able to open a conversation which they can participate in about those books, if they read them at all. (Kinda like a book club discussion about what we like and dislike about the book.) But this all depends because hey, I want my children by then to like or dislike their own interests. Maybe fantasy won't be their genre.
Lastly my advice, before you go knocking a creative and unique story, maybe you should just break down and read it yourself instead of taking one persons opinion of it to heart. You may be pleasantly surprised that it isn't as bad as the critics say and you may in fact like it. *gasp* And if you really want to know about the beliefs of an author, in this day and age you can very well go and ask the author on his or her website or read it in their blog or FAQ, rather than hear it by word of mouth in some interview taken out of context. Or some newspaper's warped spin on what the author is really like. The more I check up on what really is said and in what interview, the more I see that my fear of something has been played on by a manipulative report. The age old advice "don't believe everything you hear" or read, still rings true today!
Pullman's Website
Taken from the author's website FAQ, HIS words:
His Dark Materials seems to be against organised religion. Do you believe in God?
I don't know whether there's a God or not. Nobody does, no matter what they say. I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away.
Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.
Your books deal with many of life's big questions? God, the church, good and evil, love? and you are not afraid to challenge your young readers. Is that a conscious aim when you sit down in front of a blank sheet of paper? Do you think children's writing has a duty to pose difficult questions?
No. The only duty it has is best expressed in the words of Dr Johnson: "The only aim of writing is to help the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it."
You have run into criticism from certain religious groups who regard you as subversive, with the Catholic Herald describing your work as 'worthy of the bonfire.' Do such emotional responses concern or upset you or does it please you to generate strong reactions?
I'm delighted to have brought such excitement into what must be very dull lives.