Christian Liberals & Progressive People of Faith

and richly imagined.
Is Pullman killing God, or is he killing religious institutions?

The controversy surrounding that trilogy reminds me of the controversy about the 1990s British movie Priest. Religious conservatives heard that the plot involved a gay priest, and without knowing anything more, they picketed it and wrote LTEs condemning it.

When I actually saw it, the audience reaction was interesting. Anti-religious people saw it as an anti-religious film, while liberal religious people thought it was a thoughtful portrayal of struggling with the difference between the reality and the rules and even had a subplot that could be called "Let go and let God." A couple of years ago, I showed it to a group of friends from church, since reconciliation had been a theme in our parish, and they pointed out that it had a lot to say about reconciliation, too.

So I wonder if the Pullman books are a similar example of religious conservatives basing their opinion of a work on a summary of its most controversial part and denying themselves and their children an introduction into a wondrous fictional world.