The Golden Compass

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-bk-miller2dec02,0,1352215.story?coll=la-books-headlines

"Earlier this fall, many Catholics began to receive e-mail messages warning of the "agenda" behind a "new Children's movie out in December called 'The Golden Compass.' " The film, these e-mails claimed, was intended to serve as bait for the novel on which it is based, the first in a fantasy trilogy collectively titled "His Dark Materials." Kids intrigued by the film, the e-mails went on, would be tempted to read the trilogy and might thereby fall into the ideological clutches of its author, Philip Pullman, who seeks nothing less than "to bash Christianity and promote atheism."

...

What's really astonishing, and telling, is how long it's taken America's religious fear-mongers to notice Pullman. He's never hidden his skepticism about God or his rejection of organized religion. A quick Internet search turns up a 2004 essay he wrote deploring "theocracies" for a newspaper in his native Britain, and his own Web site states that he thinks it "perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it." "His Dark Materials" features a sympathetic character, an ex-nun, who describes Christianity as "a very powerful and convincing mistake," while "The Amber Spyglass" concludes with the two child heroes participating in the dissolution of "the Authority," a senile, pretender God who has falsely passed himself off as the creator of the universe."

File under "Same Old Thing."

Back in the '80s in the US, in the early days of the politicalization of the religious right as we have come to know it, there were loads of much hyped kitty stories of Satan's in influence
in everything from movies to soft drinks to all sorts of other perfectly normal, everyday cultural traditions and trends. Media loved it. Nothing works better toward consolidating political power than fear. A lot of what went on in those days was first class LOL material.

But now it's the end of 2007. Give it a rest already.