'Spun Candy' anyone?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

I'm not sure the Church Pullman depicts in HDM bears any relation to the real Church at all. He has effectively created a twisted caricature of the Church which retains only the negative aspects & pretends the positive aspects never existed. Where are the Saints, the Mystics, the poets & artists? He fetes Milton & Blake while at the same time apparently 'ignoring' the positive aspects of Christianity which was central to their thinking. The Church (& it is the Christian Chrurch - well specifically the Catholic church - which he is attacking) is presented as cruel, ignorant & effectively 'Satanic' - which is odd in a way - by rejecting the existence of objective Evil in the form of the devil he has to turn 'God' into the devil. Effectively the death of 'God' in HDM is equivalent to the fall of Sauron in LotR (& one could compare the seperation of Will & Lyra with the seperation of Sam & Frodo in LotR).

Actually, the Church depicted by Pullman is not really Catholic, its some extreme form of Calvinism where Calvin simply deposes the Papacy and replaces it with something more extreme. The Catholic Church was not the only Church with an extreme dogma in those times. Calvin had his own Inquisition and a Consistory (Consistorial Court in HDM) and set up a rigid hierarchy similar to that seen in HDM.

As I've said, HDM depicts a world where its as though the Reformation never happened, well, that's probably not entirely right, as not all traditions descending from the Reformation were necessarily Liberal and infused with Reason. And indeed, Pullman does include a lot of aspects of extremes of religions such as mentioning harm done to children in the name of religion (like the recent controversy of African families sedning children have 'demons' cast out by being beaten to death), and he also criticises the idea of 'confession' being a way of buying your way out of sin in the world of Lyra, which is indeed a criticism of Catholicism.

EDIT: and I have to add, that when I say Reformation, I have always got in mind specifically Anglicanism and the English Reformation, as its the one I know about. Possibly this is the Reformation Pullman also mentally refers to as his Grandfather was an Anglican Minister, and some notable Anglicans, including The Archbishop of Canterbury, have lauded HDM with high praise as it actually focusses on the misuse of dogma, not on Christianity being bad in itself. As I've said, Jesus isn't in HDM, there is no war against him.