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What does the Bible say about... His Dark Materials: The Pullman Trilogy

His dark agenda

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT... HIS DARK MATERIALS: THE PULLMAN TRILOGY
The Damaris Group (Connect Bible Studies, Scripture Union). A4 stapled. £3.00. ISBN 1 85999 714 7
(Connect Bible Studies are print versions of an innovative Internet project.)

Twenty years ago a man named Dave Hargrave wrote: 'You have to blow a hole through that video shell the kids are enclosed in. They are little zombies. They don't know what pain is. They have never seen a friend taken out in a body bag. They've got to understand that what they do has consequences. The world is sex, it is violence. It's going to destroy most of these kids when they leave TV land.'

Hargrave was the author of the Arduin Grimoire, a fantasy role-playing game accessory that provided useful suggestions on how players might incorporate dismemberments, genitals skewered on spears and a variety of other horrors into their game play. The book was available in most serious game shops of the time.
The Grimoire raised a cocktail of issues for Christians concerned with young people. Hargrave had some kind of a moral agenda, as the quote makes clear, and his violence was not strictly gratuitous. On the other hand, a myriad of subtexts ran through his book, and a certain moral ambiguity - at that time, anybody publishing a widely read role-playing text was going to make a lot of money. But who was Dave Hargrave anyway, to be shouldering the responsibility of blowing away the innocence of a generation? And did he have anything to put in its place?

Mindstretching

I was reminded of Mr. Hargrave recently when reading the Damaris Group's excellent study guide to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman is a seriously gifted writer whose work became widely known round about the time that Harry Potter was dominating the publishing world. He has been compared to Tolkien, and there is no doubt he is Literature in a way that J.K. Rowling is not. He has been showered with plaudits: after being shortlisted for the Booker Prize he went on to take the 2002 Whitbread Prize. He makes few concessions to the young people for whom he primarily writes: typically, the concept of 'daemons' (no, not that kind - it's an elaborate metaphor for the soul) is introduced without explanation on page one and the reader is expected to work it out from the text. Excellent mind-stretching stuff.

I won't summarise the trilogy (which is set in a fascinating parallel universe, one of modern fiction's great inventions), for two reasons: one, if you have any concern for children you really ought to read the books for yourselves, and two, the Damaris Group provides excellent synopses and I want you all to go out and buy their book when you have finished reading this column. Suffice it to say that it is a gripping story marred by a falling-off in volume three where Pullman, in my opinion, tends to rest somewhat on his laurels.

What is most interesting is Pullman's avowed agenda in these books. In the light of the accusations that have been hurled at J.K. Rowling, it is sobering to consider, for example, an interview Pullman gave in the 2001 'Devout Sceptics' series on Radio 4. He was explicit that he had cast the church as the villain in his story. 'Look at history', he said. Evangelicals (he tends to call them fundamentalists) are 'full of hell fire and damnation'. For Pullman, God is a tyrant who makes people die before they can have happiness. He dislikes C.S. Lewis very strongly, not least for Narnia - 'one of the ugliest manifestations of Christianity we have ever seen'; Susan, he argues, is excluded from heaven merely for growing up.

Disgraceful

The Damaris Group's slender study guide is timely because the neglect of Pullman by the Christian community has been, to be frank, disgraceful. There are Christians on the lecture circuit making a full-time living from denouncing Harry Potter, but when speaking on Potter at a major London Christian venue 12 months ago I heard Pullman mentioned only once, briefly, in the questions afterwards. What the Damaris Group has done is to provide a straightforward guide to Pullman's thesis, with helpful study questions and clear identification of key issues for Christians. It is fair and courteous to Pullman, and has enough advice on group study to help anybody get a discussion group going. Highly recommended, especially at its modest price.

Let me leave you with a question. J.K. Rowling is a reputed church-attender who read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to her daughter at bed time, and has written a world best-seller based centrally on the struggle between good and evil and the redemptive power of love.

Philip Pullman is a Narnia-hater who has written a world-not-quite-so-best seller belittling God and attempting to destroy children's belief in a good and effective deity, arguing that the church is an evil and corrupt force in history. Which of the two, do you think, is the one that modern Christians have spent thousands of pounds and dollars in opposing? Which of the two is the subject of more than a handful of critical pages from Christian writers? Which of them have Christian parents been urged most passionately not to let their children read?

You got it.
Really, the mind boggles.
David Porter