The Golden Compass: Anti-Christian?

Is the Trilogy, His Dark Materials, a Cut Toward Christianity or an Outward Rebellion Toward Religion in General?

Christians around the world breathed a huge sigh of relief when the Harry Potter series finally finished it's last movie. This was because of the strong belief that these movies were geared to influence children toward witchcraft and promote the occult. They thought the worst was over, but perhaps the worst is yet to come. British author, Phillip Pullman has written a trilogy called His Dark Materials which is geared toward children. It sounds fairly innocent to most of us, but that's not the way that Christian's see it.

The first book in the trilogy, titled The Golden Compass was recently made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman and is set to debut on December 7th. The movies specifically target children. The title alone seems very inconspicuous, but the storyline of the trilogy itself is what has everyone so upset.

In the trilogy, a 12 year old girl, Lyra starts out on a journey to find answers after her friend is kidnapped. She travels to a parallel universe where everyone's soul is manifested in an animation or altar-ego in animal form. These are called "daemon".

In the story, a malicious governing body called, "the church" (which is renamed, the Magisterium for the purpose of the movie) is known to kidnap kids for the purpose of experimentation. Lyra finds help in The Golden Compass which reveals a coded answer to any question which she asks it. At the end of the trilogy, Lyra gets to the bottom of the mystery of the missing children and finally, she and some others rebel and kill a character called, "God", specifically YAHWEH.

The first issue that Christians are struggling with is that the "villan" in the story is the church and God- YAHWEH. For those of you who know your Bible, YAHWEH is the abbreviated version of the name that Moses wrote down when God told him His name. This seems like an obvious attempt to blashpheme the name of a Holy God.

Furthermore, they feel that renaming the church, The Magisterium is an attempt to "dumb down" the intended religious punches so that parents will bring their children to see the movie and the children will be drawn in, thus causing them to want to have the books as Christmas gifts.