I shouldn't be surprised

that someone has complained to local school authorities about The Golden Compass. I loved the book when I read it and was frankly surprised there was so little talk about it's wonderfully provocative take on science and religion. The public was clearly smitten with the less challenging (and, one suspects, better funded) Harry Potter series. I am surprised that publically funded Catholic school boards across the GTA are now pulling the His Dark Materials trilogy off library shelves.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2007/11/23/golden-compass.html

Apparently the furor is not over the books themselves but over author Philip Pullman's admission in several recent interviews that he is an atheist. Isn't it amazing how threatening the mere intimation of an idea is to some people? The Mail describes him as "the most dangerous author in Britain". Here's what The Devil's Right Hand told reporter Susan Roberts in a recent interveiw when she asked him about Heaven:

Roberts: The book ends with Lyra, the trilogy’s heroine, having a vision of a Republic of Heaven. What are the key values in the Republic, rather than the Kingdom, of Heaven?

Pullman: Firstly, a sense that this world where we live is our home. Our home is not somewhere else. There is no elsewhere. This is a physical universe and we are physical beings made of material stuff. This is where we live.

Secondly, a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a real and important story, a sense of being connected to other people, to people who are not here any more, to those who have gone before us. And a sense of being connected to the universe itself.

All those things were promised and summed up in the phrase, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’. But if the Kingdom is dead, we still need those things. We can’t live without those things because it’s too bleak, it’s too bare and we don’t need to. We can find a way of creating them for ourselves if we think in terms of a Republic of Heaven.

This is not a Kingdom but a Republic, in which we are all free and equal citizens, with – and this is the important thing – responsibilities. With the responsibility to make this place into a Republic of Heaven for everyone. Not to live in it in a state of perpetual self-indulgence, but to work hard to make this place as good as we possibly can.

Now, not even the Catholic Herald can find anything to argue with in that.

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It's nice to know not everyone in the religious world is urging us to boycott the film based on the series when it's released next month. In his 2004 review of the Pullman trilogy for the Guardian newspaper, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams praised the books and recommended them to young readers:

"This extraordinary theatrical adventure sets a creative religious agenda in a way hard to parallel in recent literature and performance," he wrote.

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His Dark Materials kicks Harry Potter's ass. Go out and get yourself a copy!