The Golden Compass

Nästa vecka har The Golden Compass premiär. Det handlar om en filmatisering av den första delen av en trilogi av Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials, och filmen har orsakat protester i vissa kristna kretsar i USA, för att den sägs driva en ateistisk agenda. Protestbrev har cirkulerats och organisationen Catholic League uppmanar till bojkott, då de menar att filmen "[is] selling atheism to kids". Andra är dock av en annan mening. Kim Fabricius på bloggen Faith and Theology menar att den Gud som angrips i filmen, och i böckerna, är den nidbild av Gud som den nya vågen av ateister, med Richard Dawkins (och hans efterföljare Sturmark) angriper. Fabricius skriver :

For the death of this God would actually do the church a great service. He is the god Pullman’s mentor and fellow iconoclast William Blake, whose 250th birthday we celebrated last Wednesday, called Old Nobodaddy, who bears as little relation to the God Jesus called Abba as the straw deity that the New Atheists so tediously torch. This god, who is finally defeated in the third book of the trilogy, is a bearded old fart “of terrifying decrepitude, of a face sunken in wrinkles, of trembling hands and a mumbling mouth and rheumy eyes.” He is the object more of ridicule than indignation (one thinks of the satire on idolatry in Isaiah 44).

Faith and Theology: Christians and The Golden Compass

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As Rowan Williams, a great fan of Pullman, has written: “What the story makes you see is that if you believe in a mortal God, who can win and lose his power, your religion will be saturated with anxiety – and so with violence. In a sense, you could say that a mortal God needs to be killed.”

Faith and Theology: Christians and The Golden Compass