One of the symptoms of the pervasive secularism of the times is the way religion and the clergy are depicted in children’s books.

One of the symptoms of the pervasive secularism of the times is the way religion and the clergy are depicted in children’s books. First there was Philip Pullman’s caricature in His Dark Materials of the Church as the “Magisterium” – conveniently relocated to Geneva, so as to get Calvinism in his sights too – which was the nearest thing I’ve come across to a modern take on the tropes of the Reformation, complete with a fanatical Hispanic clerical assassin. Now another author I much admire, Jonathan Stroud, has a new series in which religion constitutes the omnipotent villain of the piece, The Notorious Scarlett and Browne.

Here the two young heroes of the stories enjoy a Robin Hood existence, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, while keeping a bit aside for themselves. Browne has a useful superpower, in that he can read other people’s minds, which, you might say, gives him an unfair advantage over the competition were it not that there are others of his kind out there. Scarlett is the young Annie Oakley of her day. Their escapades have the redeeming element of wealth redistribution, with the institution they are robbing being something called the Faith Houses. This is the combination of every kind of organised religion from Christianity to Shintoism, thus removing the specific anti-popery, but it is authoritarian, grasping and merciless.

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