modern crusades and the story

Posted on November 20, 2007  by Rebecca Matheson
Filed Under Culture, Emerging Questions

I’m not a great fan of the whole ‘pass the email petition along’ but I was especially disturbed when I received one about the author Phillip Pullman (of the controversial series: His Dark Materials) and the soon to be released movie of The Golden Compass. Pullman is controversial in his anti-C.S Lews, anti-Christian/Religious themes. What disgusted me, was not that these books were now ‘a bit more public’, but that emails like this are sent with ‘all the information needed’ for an individual to create a certain opinion.

People’s naivety is conducted into some kind of modern crusade. It becomes a propaganda of distrust of perhaps even hate, which doesn’t seem very Christ-like to me! I understand the concern, but I think there are limits as to how far we can jump moral our hobby horse and ride it.

We claw at the few often minor imperfections in light of our often ridiculous ‘Christian’ moral positions and forget to search fiction such as this (or Harry Potter) for it’s redemptive themes, it’s story and the why of the story. Why are things like this written? Why don’t we bravely engage the debate rather than sulk from the sidelines? Why don’t we tell the story we know.

Following on from this, but less related directly to crusades, I was reading an interview between Phillip Pullman and the Archbishop Rowan Williams. Williams says the following,

“You can’t communicate Christianity simply as a set of ideas. At some point you’re going to have to sit down and tell a story. And tell a story which, because it’s a story, is bound to have some loose ends, some awkwardnesses. As it is we have four versions of the story of Jesus in the New Testament, because of that sense that a story can always be retold. And that introduces a bit of this irony in the narrative, which is very important in reinforcing the sense that this is something mysterious. I think there is something in that fundamental characteristic of Christianity which helps to enable a particular kind of storytelling.”

His words ring brilliantly true after a discussion I had with a guy this week about why I believe in this Christianity stuff. Anything of worth that I said (and I said more that was not valuable than was) came from a personal narrative within God’s broader narrative and not the relaying of facts.

I would like to see an approach of beginning to understand Christianity coming from more of a narrative than set of ideas.

About Rebecca Matheson

Rebecca is a 21 year old communication design student who gets forced to post on amateurtheology.org as a condition of her marriage to Geoff. She leads a youth girls small group at Yarra Valley Vineyard and has been blogging about God stuff for almost 3 years.

Rebecca's site: http://allsaidanddone.com

Comments

3 Responses to “modern crusades and the story”

  1. Geoff Matheson on November 20th, 2007 2:46 pm

    Julie Clawson (who is quickly becoming one of my all time favourite bloggers) has articulated this point of view beautifully:

    “To me, as much as I loved The Golden Compass, it will forever be tainted by The Amber Spyglass. But I still want to see the movie. And then there are the Christians are calling for a boycott of the movie on the grounds of philosophical and theological differences with the author. Those differences are real, but I still don’t support the boycott. I understand situations where you protect your children from porn or violence in movies, but I really don’t get the impulse to keep your children ignorant and stupid by preventing their exposure to differing worldviews.”

    Unless we’re willing to genuinely listen to different perspectives on life to our own, it is nearly impossible to realistically expect people to want to listen to ours. Plus - the movie’s got Daniel Craig in it and I think he’s the best James Bond since Connery!

  2. kay on November 21st, 2007 1:04 pm

    I listened to the books on CD, read by Pullman itself. They were amazingly well written and told.

    I definitely like The Golden Compass the most and The Amber Spyglass the least. I wasn’t in love with how the series ended, but I didn’t hate it either.

    I remember thinking, as I was listening to the description of the God that is ranted against in the books, that it is the ‘demiurge’ that Pullman hates. It’s a strawman that he tears down.

    I also remember thinking (and blogging about) how the Golden Compass was one of the most ’spiritual’ books I had ever read.

    kay

  3. Paul on November 25th, 2007 3:43 am

    I remember reading in a yancy book the story of some theology professor who when a student would come and tell him that he/she didn’t believe in God would say “well tell me about the God you don’t believe in as I probably won’t believe in him either.”

    I agree with you - we can’t leave God as a set of facts and figures but as a narrative, a story that we experience, that as a community of faith goes back 4000 yrs.

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