MBS Newsletter
From "The Tarnished Compass", an article by Anne Robertson published in the Winter 2008 edition of Comment, an MBS publication:
"During the holiday season, a number of churches and pastors were asking for help in responding to the film The Golden Compass, based on the children's book of the same name by Philip Pullman, a self-proclaimed athiest. In the film, the evil empire is called "The Magesterium," but in the book it is called, unambiguously, "The Church," with Pope John Calvin at the helm in Geneva . . . Pullman portrays the Church as an organization that suppresses freedom of thought, word, and deed . . .
. . . Pullman's Church has been conflated with the State authorities, resulting in an oppressive and fascist theocracy. It seems to me that there could hardly be a more apt springboard for talking about many of the issues surrounding church and state that currently fill the airwaves. It also provides a confessional opportunity for the Church to admit that in too many times and places the Church has behaved exactly as Pullman describes."