Follow-up on the Golden Compass

We live in a world where a teacher is arrested and jailed for allowing her Moslem students name a teddy bear after an important leader of the faith. Yet, when we respectfully critique the work, and perhaps even warn against viewing or reading the works, of a man who expressly states his goal is to 'kill God in the minds of children', the Christian is painted as a nitwit and fool. If sounding a warning bell is wrong, we could find ourselves headed for a new age of martyrdom. Perhaps atheism is not as free from religious persecutions as Pulman would suggest. Faith in God and growing in a relationship with God is a fundamental part of what it means to be human. To deny that or to teach the little ones anything else is to deny our very nature. To proclaim that is not the stand of a 'nitwit', militant, or even 'fundamentalist' - it is the understanding of a person deeply in touch with God's will for us.