The Archbishop of Canterbury has surprised observers by describing as "vastly encouraging" the sight of large school parties watching Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials at the National Theatre. His Dark Materials is immensely dark; a charge through worlds of good and evil in which children suffer loneliness and betrayal, and love and courage are relentlessly challenged by death, separation and deceit. More complex than The Lord of the Rings and harsher than Harry Potter, the Pullman trilogy also confronts religion: in a clash between the forces of Heaven and Earth, the dead are freed while a withdrawn and decrepit God-like figure known as The Authority is killed. The bright side? Life is here, on Earth, and there is no point waiting for a better one.
A message hardly designed to appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury. What next? Will the Church of England embrace the humanism of Blake, the atheism of Shelley? In fact, in a speech at 10 Downing Street, Rowan Williams reached out his arms to both these characters, as well as to Pullman, Dostoevsky and Camus, claiming that teaching about religion should also include teaching about its critics: "Clarifying objections", he proclaimed, "is one way of clarifying what is being claimed."
The Archbishop sees a confident Church which embraces, rather than fearing, its enemies. "Turning the other cheek" was, the New Testament teaches us, intended as a sign of defiance, not submission. By standing up to a slap, rather than cringeing, a pauper demanded to be treated as a human equal rather than as an animal. Engage, not cower. Not a bad message for the Church of England - especially as some of its churches cower before the god of popular culture by spending £20,000 sending atheists to see Mel Gibson's film about the last few hours of Jesus Christ to the Crucifixion in the hope that it might convert them.
The secular has long purloined imagery from the spiritual: images of the crucifix, and manifestations of good and evil, the angels, Heaven and Hell abound in literature. Pullman's Metatron, the regent in whom power resides, was once an angel. It is significant that atheists appear to have their own need - cultural, if not theological - for God. So it is only right that religion should consider whether there are lessons to be learnt from the secular.
Such considerations have their limits. The Archbishop should resist the temptation to be trendy. His Dark Materials is one matter, His Shallow Materials would be another. The Church is ultimately about salvation, not deconstruction. If everything is deemed to be potentially meaningful, Dr Williams will have a message that is meaningless.
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