Last week’s issue of The New Yorker had a fine article on Philip Pullman, whose superb trilogy, His Dark Materials, makes Narnia and Harry Potter look like, well, kids’ books by comparison. The article calls the trilogy “the first fantasy series founded upon the ideals of the Enlightenment rather than upon tribal and mythic yearnings for kings, gods, and supermen”. A thrilling plotline, inventively developed, complex and sympathetic characters, and a prose style that refuses to condescend to its adolescent audience all combine to make Pullman’s books a rich reading experience. And it’s an experience that’s carefully tailored to improve the moral education of its readers.
The New Yorker article covered a speech that Pullman made at the University of East Anglia on the subject of “Religion and Education”. Pullman’s speech contrasted morality as it’s preached by theistic religion—morality based on fear, focussed on sexuality, obsessed by God—with the lessons in behavior that are transmitted through stories with “morals”—lessons about acting decently, thoughtfully, independently, with kindness and courage.
In his speech, Pullman contended that the literary School of Morals is inherently ambiguous, dynamic, and democratic: a “conversation.” Opposed to this ideal is “theocracy,” which he defined as encompassing everything from Khomeini’s Iran to explicitly atheistic states such as Stalin’s Soviet Union. He listed some characteristics of such states—among them, “a scripture whose word is inerrant,” a priesthood whose authority “tends to concentrate in the hands of elderly men,” and ‚”a secret police force with the powers of an Inquisition.” Theocracies, he said, demonstrate “the tendency of human beings to gather power to themselves in the name of something that may not be questioned.”
This impulse toward theocracy, he announced at the end of his speech, “will defeat the School of Morals in the end.” He sounded oddly cheerful making this prediction; in his books, Pullman enjoys striking a tone of melancholy resolve. He continued, “But that doesn’t mean we should give up and surrender. . . . I think we should act as if. I think we should read books, and tell children stories, and take them to the theatre, and learn poems, and play music, as if it would make a difference. . . . We should act as if the universe were listening to us and responding. We should act as if life were going to win. . . . That’s what I think they do, in the School of Morals.”
Consider the marks of a theocracy as Pullman identifies them. And then consider the behavior of the anointed leader of our country and the elderly men who surround and advise him. His Dark Materials ends with a difficult journey through a cold dark land, and an achingly sorrowful sacrifice. Are we prepared to make such a sacrifice to save our enlightenment values from the theocracy that threatens to destroy them?