Controversy

Well, fourteen was The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. I know this is a highly controversial book, with Christians boycotting the movie as an anti-Christian statement. I wanted to know what the truth was, so I read the book. I'm a little confused, as I found no bias against God at all. However, there is a strong voice against the organized church, or the bureaucracy of the church. It brought to mind a former brother-in-law, who had actually trained for the priesthood at one point, but was so soured by the machinations and politics of the church that he left the church and was a self-professed atheist. Years of contact with our family and my mother's gentle witness of faith brought him to a point where he conceded that there was something to believing in Christ as a personal relationship, but he never to my knowledge went any farther. His daughter became a Christian and serves in ministry.
In the book, each human has a daemon, which is the visible soul of the human. The church, in the person of the evil Mrs. Coulter, is involved in an experiment to sever the connection between the human and it's soul...the conscience, perhaps. Without this bond, or conscience, the human becomes dull and biddable, ready to obey any demand or order from the church. It blinds their eyes to the nature of what they are doing, whether it is good or evil.