Clever 'Dark Materials' anti-Christian

By Peter T. Chattaway

• Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass, 1995; The Subtle Knife, 1997; The Amber Spyglass, 2000.

THE NEXT Harry Potter movie opens this month, and with it, we can expect to hear another round of impassioned debates on the merits of J.K. Rowling's stories and how we ought to respond to them.

But while some Christians raise a hue and cry over Rowling's young wizard, a very different juvenile fantasy series with an explicitly anti-Christian agenda seems to have slipped under their radar, even as it sells millions of copies and wins prestigious literary awards. It may even be coming soon to a theatre near you.

'His Dark Materials' is a highly creative and imaginative trilogy -- published between 1995 and 2000 and re-issued in a boxed set this fall -- written by British author Philip Pullman. Not quite fantasy yet not quite science fiction, not quite a children's book yet not entirely grown-up, Pullman's sophisticated storytelling defies easy categorization.

The first book, The Golden Compass, takes place in a parallel universe populated by people, witches, cliff-ghasts and talking bears, and it ends with one man sacrificing a child in order to open up a portal into other worlds.

As the story progresses through The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, characters from several worlds, including our own, join forces with rebel angels in a battle against the heavenly host; and along the way, God himself -- depicted as a pathetic, frail former angel -- dies almost by accident, and does so with a sigh of relief.

The series gets off to a strong start, with endearing characters, clever concepts and suspenseful writing, but by the third book, Pullman's anti-religious agenda has become all too clear -- and it gets in the way of his storytelling. Every single character who has some sort of connection to the church is a sinister villain of some kind, except for one ex-nun who spends several didactic pages telling the story's two main characters, a pre-adolescent boy and girl, how she came to reject her faith.

Unlike Rowling, who attends the Church of Scotland but has kept mum about the details of her faith, Pullman is quite frank about his own beliefs. In interviews, he has called the God of the Old Testament a "hideous old brute" and heaped scorn upon the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and this attitude ultimately poisons his books.

Although it gives in to preachiness and squanders the potential of the books that came before it, The Amber Spyglass has been praised by many critics, and has received the sort of highbrow honour that still eludes Rowling's books. Earlier this year, it became the first children's book to win the lucrative Whitbread Prize in England, and Pullman was named Author of the Year at this year's British Book Awards.

In addition, New Line Cinema -- the same studio that is currently producing The Lord of the Rings -- has snapped up the movie rights to Pullman's trilogy, and playwright Tom Stoppard, who won an Oscar for his work on Shakespeare in Love, is reportedly working on the screenplay.

Christians who have not yet read the books will probably want to respond to these films if and when they come out. But first we may need to demonstrate that we can engage with fantasy as informed and appreciative critics, without being driven by spiritual paranoia. The Harry Potter franchise is as good a place to establish our credentials as any.