Philip Pullman creates a darker Christ in new assault on the church
26 March 2010 | Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/26/philip-pullman-jesus-gospelsAt a climactic point in the story, Jesus condemns the idea of a church, saying it would cause the devil to "rub his hands with glee" and predicting that "from time to time, to distract the people from their miseries … the governors of this
church will declare that such-and-such a nation or such-and-such a people is evil and ought to be destroyed … and they'll raise their standard over the smoking ruins of what was once a fair and prosperous land and declare that God's kingdom is so much the larger and more magnificent as a result".
"He is really speaking for me in that section," said Pullman. He added: "Of course I don't condemn speculative thinking, or organising people to help them
do good, or setting up
hospitals or giving
hospitality to travelling strangers or
educating people. But we have seen very recently how
some aspects of all this can go wrong. People can abuse power.
"
The greatest excuse in the world is that 'God told me to do it': hence the Crusades. Once you are appealing to an authority that can't be checked, you are doing something dangerous." ...
"I also read Acts and the Epistles and I was intrigued to see how much more
Paul was occupied by Christ than by Jesus. I found this very interesting, and wanted to tell a story emphasising the
separate qualities of Jesus and Christ, so I decided to make them into two characters."
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