You probably got the emails telling you to avoid this awful atheistic movie. I know I did. Lots of them.
Some Christians called for a boycott of the movie and many others sent long winded messages to everyone in their address books to warn them of the danger of seeing this piece of cinema.
The Golden Compass is based on the book Northern Lights by Philip Pullman.
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., the ninth president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has been fairly strong in his condemnation of Pullman and his projects.
Philip Pullman has an agenda – an agenda about as subtle as an army tank. His agenda is nothing less than to expose what he believes is the tyranny of the Christian faith and the Christian church. His hatred of the biblical storyline is clear. He is an atheist whose most important literary project is intended to offer a moral narrative that will reverse the biblical account of the fall and provide a liberating mythology for a new secular age.
So, is the movie really that bad? Will it cause us all to abandon belief?
Pullman is an atheist and his books certainly leave no doubt that he is not a fan of Christianity but apparently the film doesn’t quite pack the same kind of punch as his books.
One of the segments on my morning radio programme at 98.5 Sonshine FM is a fortnightly look at what’s on at the movies.
Aaron Kamp has been reviewing movies for some time and he posts his reviews at Cinemaniac. Every couple of weeks we look at what’s in the cinemas and what’s new on DVD.
Aaron headed off to the movies last night to see what all the fuss is about. He came away believing that it’s not the atheistic storyline that will keep people away from the cinemas, it’s the fact that movie’s simply not that good.
He agrees that the philosophy behind the books has been watered down and says that the kind of Christianity that it wars against doesn’t really exist anyway. Pullman has built his own idea of what faith is about and then proceeded to pull it down.
Aaron’s main concern with children seeing the movie is not it’s anti-God message, as that’s not really demonstrated through the film, but the message of distrusting and disobeying authority.
If you’d like to hear what Aaron had to say you can click the audio player at the bottom of this post to listen to our conversation.
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