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Monday, December 03, 2007

"Every church is the same:":Boycotting Golden Compass, etc

"His criticisms of organized religion come across as anti-authoritarian and anti-ascetic rather than anti-doctrinal. (Jesus isn't mentioned...) His fundamental objection is to ideological tyranny and the rejection of this world in favor of an idealized afterlife.... (As one of the novel's characters puts it,) 'Every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.'"



Some valid points, right?

This is one reviewer's take (last paragraph here) on Phillp Pullman's "The Golden Compass."

Unless you are Luddite living under a cave in the Amazon (not a bad idea sometimes, eh, Chris?), you have already gotten the "FW:FW:FW:fw: fwfw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw...fw: fw......" emails about, and become aware of, the craziness and controversy swirling about the "Golden Compass" film...



As a public service, and an encouragement to consider boycotting the boycott (at least two Facebook groups are already dedicated to this noble task), our forum has handily places on one page links to several reasoned reviews, articles and suggestions for dealing with the film (not including the DaVinci Code-model of "Boycott This Evil Satanic Movie, and Thus Help It Sell More Tickets"). Those resources are at this link.

At least you can wrestlle with people who have actually seen the movie, and talked with the author (imagine!) etc

Also, a fascinating and relevant (to all things church and culture) quote below from the writer (from his email interview with Peter Chattaway)




Quote:
As for Narnia ... to note something that some commentators miss when lumping Lewis and Tolkien together, which is this: that Tolkien was a Catholic, for whom the basic issues of life were not in question, because the Church had all the answers. So nowhere in 'The Lord of the Rings' is there a moment's doubt about those big questions. No-one is in any doubt about what's good or bad; everyone knows where the good is, and what to do about the bad. Enormous as it is, TLOTR is consequently trivial. Narnia, on the other hand, is the work of a Protestant - and an Ulster Protestant at that, for whom the individual interaction with the Bible and with God was a matter of daily struggle and endless moral questioning. That's the Protestant tradition. So in Narnia the big questions are urgent and compelling and vital: is there a God? Who is it? How can I recognise him? What must I do to be good? I profoundly disagree with the answers that Lewis offers -...but Narnia is a work of serious religious engagement in a way that TLOTR could never be.


-Phillip Pullman, author of "The Golden Compass" in his email interview with Peter Chattaway

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