CT's Review of The Golden Compass

Christianity Today's Peter Chattaway just posted his review and it is a good one. The important section for us, at least as we try and understand this movie from a Christian world view, is pretty interesting:

"And so we come to the film's treatment of religion. Serafina says the coming war—which, in the second and third books, is revealed to be a war against the Judeo-Christian God—will bring an end to "destiny" and establish a new era of "free will." What that means exactly is not spelled out, not in this movie, but we can get a sense of it from the fact that nearly all of this film's villains work for the church-like Magisterium, which spends much of its time "telling people what to do."

He Continues:

"The filmmakers have been at pains lately to say that they toned down the book's anti-religious content, and that may be true to the extent that the movie never uses words like "church" or "God." But the word "magisterium" does refer, in the real world, to the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and the film is still peppered with religiously significant words like "oblation" and "heresy," as well as a cryptic reference to "our ancestors" who "disobeyed the Authority"—that is, to Adam and Eve and their disobedience against God in the Garden of Eden."

As you know, I am comfortable watching some movies that others are not as long as I do so actively and not passively. This is one of them. (Make sure to read "The Family Corner" at the end of the article or check out Kids-in-Mind. As far as I can tell, this is not a movie for kids.) Much of the Christian community has serious reservations about this movie. I understand why and have those same reservations. The film's atheistic bent is obviously not a message we should esteem. But my reservations do not go so deep that I would avoid seeing it. In fact, this is a perfect film for Christians to engage and use to talk about Jesus. Your Christian friends may avoid this film, but those who do not believe surely won't.

Check out Jeffery Overstreet's great article on why we should not fear The Golden Compass.