In the adolescent novel The Golden Compass, religion plays an important, if underlying, function. Philip Pullman uses religion as a backdrop, subtly placed into the setting, to influence the plot and characterization. In the novel, the Church controls many aspects of the characters’ lives. The narrator tells us that the Church has recently done away with the Papacy and since then, the Church has had control of every aspect of life. The Church controls the government, as seen with the gyptians. “We was breaking into the Ministry of Theology…that’s where all the orders was coming from” (Pullman, 145). The Church controls the land. When Lyra is hiding on the gyptian boat, the authorities on land search every town for her. . The Church must be able to command all of these forces in order to look for her.  Also, the reader is never given any indication of a political party being in power, only the Church.

The Church also controls the education systems, including JordanCollege. The Master “has to keep JordanCollege on the right side of the Church, or it won’t survive” (Pullman, 127). JordanCollege is caught between its own experimental theology and the strict theology of the Church. Without a strict balance being kept they might be silenced like Barnard and Stokes, renegade theologians who were punished for heresy.

 In conclusion, Pullman uses religion as a backdrop in a critique of the current world, where the Pope has real political power. The Church censors what books may be read in school. The Church in Lyra’s Oxford is all powerful, like the Church in reality might soon be.