The sum of all fears: organized religion
According to Dominionist and Absolutist Xtians, do you know what occupies even a lower step in Hell than Neo-Paganism? ATHEISM, that's what! I guess those who protest Harry Potter, claiming it's the Communist Manifesto of Wicca, have found an even more dreadful target. Move over J.K. Rowling, make room for our friend Phillip Pullman:
...If there is a piece of art, a TV show, a column, a book, a movie, a blog, a movement, a wine bottle or sexual position that somehow deeply threatens the various ultraconservative sects of Christian-blasted America to the point where their pale, dour representatives demand boycotts and distribute angry pamphlets to try to stop people from experiencing said hunk of culture because of how negatively it portrays their seething, condemnatory God, well, it's time to break out the Champagne. Or buy that book. Or get very, very naked. Or all of the above...
What great advice. Mark Morford's opinion in the SFGate hits even more perfect stride when he identifies the target of Pullman's "The Golden Compass":
...The nefarious thing the books aim to kill is religious authority. It's about the destruction of dogma....the God of organized religion...the false deity that promotes numb groupthink, inhibits growth and abhors the feminine divine (perhaps the books' most beautiful, inspiring theme), the same paranoid, dreadful God that votes for George W. Bush because he will smite the icky gays and protect us from vile pagans and Buddhists and Muslims and feminists and frumpy genius atheist British writers. If humanity is to flourish, to get over its addiction to war and guilt and fear, this is the false God that should - that must - die...
OK, I'm sold. I feel like such a jerk that I have not read Pullman's work.
No comments:
Post a Comment