His Dark Materials: The Corruption and Hypocrisy of Organised Religion

In Lyra’s world, the Holy Church has absolute power over almost all aspects of people’s lives. In particular, the Magisterium holds power over science, research and discoveries. Discoveries that do not align with the Holy Churches doctrines are censored and suppressed, declared as heretical.

Scholars could risk excommunication, even death by pursuing what the Magisterium deems heretical research. In that world, physics is called ‘experimental theology’ highlighting a close connection between the church and the study of what makes up the world and universe.

The Golden Compass movie had a lot of issues, but one of the most glaring for me was removing pretty much all of the religious aspects of the story. In the television show, they removed anything that referred to Christianity for the same sort of reason. But the books are a clear critique of organised religion and how corrupt and hypocritical it can become. So let’s talk about it.

For clarity, I am an atheist but I was raised as a Christian and thus I am pretty familiar with a lot of the teachings and how it all works. I was involved in religious organisations like the Girl Guides growing up. I don’t believe in the Christian God in any way, but I am not suggesting that people who do believe are wrong to hold such beliefs. I understand how important faith is to some people and do not disparage that. I do despise those ‘Christians’ who cherry pick and deliberately misinterpret the Bible to push their own agenda.

That out of the way, let’s get into it.

The Holy Church

The Holy Church in Lyra’s world is based on Christianity and enforced very strictly. Unsurprisingly, for this reason it is almost entirely men who hold positions of power within the organisation. Marissa Coulter is a woman who managed to climb to a leadership role despite her gender.

That said, the General Oblation Board she led was a semi-private institution hidden away in the North, near Svalbard. This gave the Church plausible deniability, they could claim her work was unsanctioned if need be. Particularly important when they were kidnapping children for their experiments.

The research at Bolvangar was into the nature of Dust and how it changed at puberty, the onset of adulthood and the point at which one’s daemon settled. The Church declared Dust to be evidence of the ‘Original Sin.’ Evidence of the sin all humanity is saddled with at birth because of what happened with Eve in the Garden of Eden.

The very fact that the Church holds so much power in this world is a criticism of the way organised religion can prescribe people’s behaviour and set rules and laws based on their interpretation of the Bible. That they allow research and evidence they approve of, and censor what they don’t approve of.

So they are cherry picking what evidence suits them and condemning anything that sounds like free-thinking or any proof of anything outside of the Churches purview. It is not about criticising having beliefs or practicing your faith. It is about using your beliefs to control what other people think, say or do. If something is against your religion, that does not mean that I can’t do it.

It is also a criticism of restricting scientific discovery and research based on one interpretation or perspective. A real world example being the Creation vs Evolution debate. Evolution is a scientific theory – this means it is objectively proven with evidence. People don’t seem to know the definition of a scientific theory, it is not an unproven idea, but a proven one. Hypothesis is for the unproven ones. It is different from the definition of ‘theory’ most people seem to know.

Creation is, of course, the story in the Bible of how God made everything. We have definitive proof that evolution is true. People may want to believe in creation and intelligent design, and they are more than welcome to do so. But nobody seems to consider the possibility that evolution is the intelligent design plan God laid down. Evidence for evolution is all around us, even in your own body right now. You can ignore the evidence if you choose to, but that doesn’t make it go away.

Pre-Emptive Penance

The Consistorial Court of Discipline is one of the most powerful parts of the Magisterium. It was established by the last Pope – John Calvin, and it is based in Geneva. Their function is to deal with heresy and non-believers. Enforcing the Churches will and laws, in essence.

Father Luis Gomez was the youngest of the twelve members of the CCD and he was sent to assassinate Lyra before she could play the role of Eve. He failed and was killed by the angel Balthamos, ironically. The angel used the last of his strength to eliminate this man.

Father Gomez found himself in the world of the mulefa and saw the tualapi. The large bird-like creatures who attacked the mulefa. He used fear to control the creatures. This fits with this version of the Church, and even some real world sects. Controlling people through fear, fear of hell, fear of purgatory, fear of the rapture. Fear of God’s wrath. You know what I mean.

Father Gomez, before leaving on his assassination mission, took part in a new concept conceived by the CCD. Pre-emptive penance. This involves doing intense penance in advance for a sin not yet committed instead of after sinning and asking for forgiveness.

The idea that one could build up enough ‘credit’ to be able to commit a sin and already be absolved of it. Thus freeing the sinner of any guilt. In this case, murder. Which is one of the Ten Commandments: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’

This whole concept is wild. The whole point of confession and penance is that you should be trying not to sin and making up for falling into temptation. It is claimed that Rasputin believed that one had to sin in order to attain divine grace for confessing, so sinning more would allow him to attain more divine grace. This isn’t confirmed but it might just have been a way to justify sinning as much as he wanted to.

So by the logic of ‘pre-emptive penance’ you could just build up enough penance, do enough self-flagellation to do whatever the hell you wanted, no matter how evil. Apologising before you’ve done anything wrong and then when you do the thing, you’ve already apologised so it’s somehow fine.

If the assassination is justified, then it’s justified and would not be considered a sin so why would you need penance? You would only need to atone for something that would be considered wrong. So it follows then that they know killing Lyra is morally reprehensible and a sin. If it was what their God wanted, to prevent another ‘Fall’ then surely there would be no need to ask for God to forgive it either before or after the fact.

This really highlights the hypocrisy that we see in certain religious groups in the real world. People who do what they condemn others for doing. Religious extremism is prevalent in the modern world, and it’s not just one religion either. As much as some people believe it to be. The scandal with sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church in the last forty years says a lot.

Original Sin

This refers to the sin all children are supposedly born with because of what happened in the Garden of Eden and the sins committed against God. This is, of course, usually blamed on Eve giving into temptation by the Serpent and eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. She then tempted Adam to do the same. According to the scripture in Lyra’s world, the first human’s daemons settled and brought sin to the world.

In the main story of His Dark Materials, Lyra is prophesised to play the role of Eve and ‘fall’ again. What was this oh-so-terrible sin? Falling in love and growing up. Mary Malone played the ‘serpent’ by telling Lyra and Will stories of her first love. The sharing of fruit before the two young people share their first kiss echoes the story of Adam and Eve as well.

So what’s the issue? It’s often women who are blamed, called temptresses and causing men to sin or think about sinning. Original sin means that everyone is born with this sin marring our souls, shouldering the burden of another’s actions. We are expected to apologise and atone for what the first humans supposedly did. Which was to know the difference between good and evil.

Shouldn’t we have that knowledge? If we don’t know the difference between good and evil, our actions have no context for us to decide the morality of them. So it would be left up to God to know and decide this. So what eating from this tree did was give the knowledge of moral context to us. Thus giving us the ability to make a choice between doing something good and something evil. Giving us free will to choose and do what we want. Kind of a problem for an organisation that wants to control our lives in all aspects.

Through what happens with Lyra and Will and with Mary, the author is telling us he disagrees with this. That we should not feel guilty or be condemned for natural and normal human experiences. That we should not carry guilt for the sins of others. That we should be free to think, learn, experience and create without such restrictions. That we can choose to question things.

Lyra’s ‘fall’ is about her choosing love, choosing compassion and choosing to dedicate her life to growing up and learning. Understanding the true nature of Dust, which she sets out to do at the end of the first book, means understanding what it means to be ‘sapient’ or human. The mulefa have a wonderful relationship with dust and with the world they live in. Their symbiosis with the trees they make their wheels from that allows them to create more Dust.

In the end, Lyra chooses the selfless path, even though it means losing the one she loves. Even her parents, who have done some really reprehensible things, make the right choice in the end, sacrificing their lives to oblivion to bring down Metatron and protect Lyra. The important thing is that Lyra was free to make that choice for herself. They remember and observe a small ritual to honour and cherish their love for each other but they agree to go on and live full lives. Even permitting each other to find love again if they can. All for the sake of removing death’s hold on people and keeping the way out of the land of the dead open.

This is what the Magisterium and the Consistorial Court wanted to prevent. This goes against what they want because they do not want people thinking freely, questioning their teachings or seeking to understand more about the world. Because people might see that the Churches teachings are not in people’s best interests.

People should be free to form their own beliefs and decide how they want to practice their faith. People should also be free to make their own choices. Of course, with that freedom is the freedom to be wrong. Believing something alone, does not make it true. But learning and questioning is a natural thing that makes us human. Children are full of curiosity about the world, and this is why ‘because I said so’ doesn’t make sense to them. Answering their questions honestly, obviously in an age-appropriate way, helps them understand the world.

As I said, this isn’t a condemnation of all relgions and religious beliefs but it is a criticism of the hypocrisy present in some parts of religious organisation. Such as claiming that the Bible condemns homosexuality while priests are molesting young boys.

Or telling a woman she can’t get a necessary abortion because the foetus implanted in her fallopion tube has more rights to bodily autonomy than the living person who will die if the pregnancy isn’t terminated. Because it is against your beliefs. You don’t get to use your religion to tell other people what to do.

People are very quick to jump on the First Amendment rights of the US Constitution, preserving freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. The USA was basically founded on the freedom of religious expression, with many of the early immigrants traveling to avoid religious persecution at home.

It’s a wee bit more complicated in the UK due to some rules around the monarchy and the established Church of England. The reigning monarch cannot be Roman Catholic and until 2013 could not marry a Catholic. You can thank Henry VIII for that one.

It’s obviously a complex and sometimes emotive issue. Personally, I feel that you are welcome to act in accordance with your own beliefs and I am welcome to act in accordance with mine. But you do not get to tell me that I have to act according to your beliefs if I don’t share them. Sounds reasonable, yeah? I think so.

Thanks for reading. I hope you found this interesting. I welcome all comments and discussions as long as they are kept respectful. 

Emi the Cat Lady 💜