Shrek and Disestablishment

I don’t normally do film reviews, but Shrek has been on telly again recently.

I love Shrek. It’s great having kids as an excuse to repeatedly view it.

Shrek tells us a huge amount about misjudging people based on first impressions and prejudices, based on half-heard and misconstrued conversations, about tolerance, about the layers of personality, about walling oneself in.

And all of this is wrapped up in a fabulously good yarn, a great fairytale. There will come a time in the future when people don’t realise that this is a relatively new creation and not a genuine fairytale passed down from our ancestors. It has all of the makings of a classic that will not fade and be forgotten.

The only force against this is the number of references to popular culture, television programmes and songs, which may become dated. And yet although in general I hate detest and despise musicals in the strongest language, it is largely the songs that make me like it. The peaceful music while Shrek eats his tea, Fiona’s song that bursts the bird…fantastic. But greatest of all is the application of “I believe”. My kids think I am mad, as join in loudly, mixing the songs theme of belief in love with my own belief in Christ.

My only misgiving about the film is a very subtle nuance at the end. Fiona’s marriage to the evil dictator was in what is clearly a depiction of a Christian church, lead by a priest in a bishop’s mitre. But her marriage to Shrek takes place in the woods. And so the image of a pagan nature-wedding is subtly promoted over a Christian wedding. And the paganism is very subtly presented as being the right way, in contrast to the heavy handed dry state church.

This is so subtle and nuanced that I am probably the only person in the world to think his way.

Perhaps it is a consequence of the association of Church and state. If the state is evil, so is the church. If you rebel against the state, you rebel against the church.

Christ said “My Kingdom is not of this world”.

I don’t want a US style separation of Church and State, each blind to the other. Neither do I want church where a potentially Muslim prime minister appoints the bishops, and where a bunch of pagan, Jewish, Muslim, agnostic and atheist and even some actively anti-Christian MPs approves the prayer book. There has to be a middle way, where the church is independant of secular authorities, but where there is dialogue between them.