The Pullman Interview

Here’s an excellent interview with Philip Pullman conducted by Peter Chattaway, a film critic and self-proclaimed religion junkie. I found myself nodding in agreement at a number of points in the interview, particularly where Pullman expounds on his feelings towards those slippery customers: spirit, spiritual, and spirituality. I also found it interesting that Pullman places himself in the panpsychism camp – I’m firmly across the road waving the emergent phenomenon flag.

I see that Chattaway refers to a tiresome piece by Daniel Moloney in which he wrote (amongst other guff): "if the Christian myth actually is true, you would expect a gifted storyteller trying to tell a true story to arrive at many Christian conclusions about the nature of the world we see." Chattaway and Moloney both fall into the trap of seeming to believe that the Christian myth is all there is. They don’t seem to be aware that the same archetypes occur again and again in myth; not for nothing did Joseph Campbell title one of his books The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Pullman rightfully acknowledges that he is a child of his upbringing:

My answer to that would be that I was brought up in the Church of England, and whereas I’m an atheist, I’m certainly a Church of England atheist, and for the matter of that a 1662 Book of Common Prayer atheist. The Church of England is so deeply embedded in my personality and my way of thinking that to remove it would take a surgical operation so radical that I would probably not survive it. 

But that doesn’t prevent me from pointing out the arrogance that deforms some Christian commentary, and makes it a pleasure to beat it about the head. What on earth gives Christians to right to assume that love and self-sacrifice have to be called Christian virtues? They are virtues, full stop. If there is an exclusively religious sin (not exclusively Christian, but certainly clearly visible among some Christians) it is the claim that all virtue belongs to their sect, all vice to others. It is so clearly wrong, so clearly stupid, so clearly counter-productive, that it leads the unbiased observer to assume that you’re not allowed in the religious club unless you leave your intelligence at the door.

Go and read the rest – it’s worth it.