Wrestling with Religion: Pullman, Pratchett, and the Uses of Story

Abstract

While children's and young adult fantasy literature is often concerned with "first things," with the struggle between good and evil, or with the fate of the cosmos, still it is rarely overtly religious in the sense of direct engagement with "faith, religion and church(es)" (Ghesquière 307). Perhaps it is children's literature's vexed relationship with didacticism that keeps fantasy writers for children from engaging directly with religious language and concepts, or perhaps it is the setting in an alternate world that enables an allegorizing impulse rather than direct engagement. In either case, despite a tradition of fables, parables, and allegorical treatments of Christianity that ranges from George MacDonald and Charles Kingsley through C. S. Lewis to Madeleine L'Engle, children's fantasy has typically cloaked its religious allegiances. 1 The central exception to this generalization is, of course, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Published between 1995 and 2000, the trilogy famously stirred religious debate by casting as villains the representatives of a quasi-medieval theocracy, "the Church," and by explicitly linking that Church to Christianity in our world. 2 Pullman's antagonism toward religion, especially religious fundamentalism, is well known, and there is little need to rehearse it here. What strikes me as more interesting is the way in which contemporary fantasies for children such as Pullman's trilogy have directly engaged with religion, and what that suggests for a readership which has been characterized as "spiritual, but not religious" 3-a readership, in other words, for whom many of the details of Pullman's depiction of the Church seem just as fantastic as the concept of the daemon or the existence of sentient armored bears. (I have yet to meet a young reader for whom the alternate-historical revelation of John Calvin's papacy is meaningful, for example.) In his trilogy, Pullman explores Elisabeth Rose Gruner is associate professor of English at the University of Richmond, where she also coordinates the first-year seminar program. Her research on children's literature has appeared in The Lion and the Unicorn and Children's Literature, as well as in two recent edited collections. Her current research is on contemporary fantasy for children and young adults, especially as it relates to gender, religion, and education.

The Good Liberal and the Scoundrel Author

“…And whilst the reception of Pullman's work is by no means consistently uncritical, his work is feted by an impressive spectrum of academic and cultural commentators from Margaret and Mike Rustin, and Nick Tucker, to Christopher Hitchens (Rustin 2003a;Rustin 2003b;Rustin 2003c;Tucker 2007;Hitchens 2002). It is for his seemingly contradictory position on the question of organized religion that Pullman attracts most criticism: Andrew Stuttaford (2002) is frustrated by the quest-like nature of the narrative of His Dark Materials, and points out the extent to which the author relies on Christian motifs and themes, despite his avowed atheism; this is an argument developed by Elisabeth Gruner (2011), who suggests that Pullman invests in the very myths he seeks to undermine. This may explain the seemingly paradoxical view of former Archbishop Rowan Williams, who has suggested that Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy should be taught in all schools.…”