Religious zealots protest Golden Compass
p2pnet news | Freedom:- We’re a home-schooling family and one of the bedtime books our daughter, Emma, and I have just finished is The Golden Compass based on Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, a trilogy first published in 1995.
We live in a small village on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, and by chance, were in Victoria on the weekend and a sneak preview of the movie was showing.
It opens officially tomorrow.
We rarely go to the lamescream cinemas. Who needs sticky floors, people with huge tubs of popcorn crunching all around you, big hair and baseball hats, etc, etc? If and when we go to the movies, we go to our local movie-house in nearby Duncan which is always well looked after, has cheap matinees and isn’t run by MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) Nazis.
However, we liked the book so much that this time around, we decided to pay through the nose and risk it and it fact, it wasn’t too bad. The audience was decent and no one was being a pain.
Terrific computer animation and if you were looking for an adventure fantasy and haven’t already read the book, the flick wasn’t too bad either. However, we’ve read the book and for us, the movie was a big (and expensive) disappointment.
The Church (in capitals) drives the action in the book but it had been all-but taken out of movie, rendering it a pale shadow of Pullman’s Golden Compass.
I should at this point mention that my wife, Liz, is a Catholic and our daughter, Emma, was baptised in the Catholic Church. I believe there’s a power greater than myself, but I don’t subscribe to any formal religion.
Back to the Golden Compass, in Pullman’s world, everyone has an alter ego called a daemon (NOT demon) in animal form.
In children, it can change shape and species at will. In adults, the form is locked in.
Evil is represented by the Church, aka the Magisterium, which kidnaps orphans, and the star of the trilogy and movie is Lyra who’s determined to get to the bottom of the kidnappings and save her abducted friend in the process.
The Church is, in other words, a key presence, but in a bid to pander to religious zealots, it’s been taken out of taken out of the movie in what could almost be an analogy of what happens in the book itself. In other words, the spirit has been surgically removed: people who’ve read it and who’ve have also seen the movie will know what I mean.
The Catholic school board in Ontario even went so far as soon order Northern Lights book taken off library shelves.
But according to mainstream media reports, religious fanatics have been upset what little ‘religious’ content remains in the film.
And Mohammed isn’t mentioned even once.
Pete Vere is a Canon lawyer (bloody lawyers interfere everywhere, don’t they?) and as the Wikipedia sums it up, “Canon law is the term used for the internal ecclesiastical law which governs various churches, most notably the Roman Catholic Church …”
With Sandra Miesel, Vere is also co-author of the forthcoming Pied Piper of Atheism: Philip Pullman and Children’s Fantasy and the book’s web site states:
And the Globe and Mail has him stating, “People say, ‘You’re trying to censor.’ No, I’m not trying to censor, I’m trying to point out to parents what’s in here.”
And, the story goes on, “other Catholics interpret The Golden Compass and two other books that comprise a trilogy as a denunciation of organized religion dominated by a distant, imposter God, which they say does not condemn modern religion.”
But, “That’s his image of religion that he’s doing away with and frankly, we can all do away with that image of church and religion because that’s not the church in Christianity that we believe in today,” says Sister Rose Pacatte, director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Culver City, California, in the story. “That God that he kills off, he’s doing us a favour.”
In the Anglican church, “the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has said the series should be used in religious education because learning about other spiritual perspectives nurtures a more mature faith,” says the Globe and Mail.
IMHO, it’s all about freedom of speech and freedom of expression which, again IMHO, the most important and most basic of all human rights.
As I say here (in the lyrics to the one and only song I’ve ever written 
):
Freedom of speech ain’t a God-given right
Your freedom of speech can vanish in the night
‘Cause if you let ‘em,
They’ll steal it away from you.
Then they’ll have you where they want you and they’re never gonna let you go.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
Also See:
Globe and Mail – Is The Golden Compass pointing away from God?, December 6, 2007
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December 6th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I’m an ardant believer in the Bible. However, I remain neutral about this film because first of all, I have not seen it, and second, because organized religion is one of the biggest scams in history. Most of the prophets in the Bible were killed by religious “authorities” or their government lackeys. In fact, I would go on to say that the organized religious establishments are for the most part the atheist movement’s best friends. If one were to read the Bible (both Messianic and pre-Messianic scriptures), one would only find that there is only one Tabernacle (later, Temple) that was sanction by the Creator (YHWH) Himself.
ALL of the others were manmade institutions. Most of these institutions ignore or argue against any scripture which threaten the doctrines that they teach. In fact, most of these institutions even try to do away with the ONLY sign Messiah gave that proved His legitimacy and substitute the teaching of a “Good Friday” Crucifixion and Easter Sunday resurrection. This teaching DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS Biblical indications that He died on a late Wednesday afternoon and was arisen on a late Saturday afternoon. Most children who go to Sunday school wonder how this adds up to three days and three nights. It does not. Even Christmas and Easter holidays were stolen by religious institutions from earlier Pagans. In fact, most religious establishments (here in the P.S.A.) are established as 501c3 ORGANIZATIONS. In other words, they are a form of (supposedly non-profit) businesses.
If one truly wants to get together with fellow believers, and learn about the Bible and from each other, the best way to do this is in each others’ homes. In fact, this is one of the very few ways congregations can get together and exercise their religious freedoms without interference from the government and court systems. It is also the ONLY way where people can freely discuss in open their views without being shushed by some pastor, rabbi, imam, priest, or other religious “authority.” If religious authorities want to remove the speck from the creator of this movie, then they must first pluck the plank from their own eye!
December 7th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
IMHO, it’s all about freedom of speech and freedom of expression which, again IMHO, the most important and most basic of all human rights.
Unless, it appears, a person is critical of Pullman’s books and message. In that case, they are conveniently labeled a “zealot” and a “religious fanatic.” How exactly do name calling and ad hominem attacks adequately substitute for civilized debate and mature, critical thought?
December 14th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
In response to Jon Newton’s comments, I have not and will not read anti-God materials with the purpose of being entertained. I do not have to read the book or see the film to know the purpose or intent when the author, himself, says his purpose is to “hook” children on the books and film and turn them away from the belief in God.
Also, don’t blog on the golden compass website and criticize the movie and expect them to put it on the blog. I pointed out to them they were advertising their video game and on TV and claiming it was from the “block buster movie, the golden compass”. What’s wrong with that? That was on the 27th of November and the golden compass did not come out until the 7th of December, so at the time the golden compass was nada, nothing, zilch in the theaters. Guess the “truth seeking” golden compass wasn’t pointing at that commercial.