Frank Allnut's The Force of Star Wars

This is one for north Americans who were there in 77 or thereabouts.

This evangelical book had a Christian interpretation of the film and sold well at the time (published late 77). I'm interested in anyone who read it, either at the time or later, Christian or otherwise, and their memories. Was it a valuable link between your faith and the film? Or did you regard it as crass and opportunistic evangelising? I really am interested in anyone who engaged with this book at the time (I didn't. I'm in England and only learnt of its existence last year). But, please, let's stick to the book and not turn this thread into another general one on SW and Christianity.

 

It's Allnutt (double T). Have you read it? (I haven't). If not it's available on Amazon.

Edit - it's also available in the Amazon UK Marketplace.

 

Oh, typing too fast- yes, Allnut. I have read it, the original edition. I only heard about it last year and wondered if it might be difficult to get hold of since it was ecades ago and never released in the UK, but I went on ebay and there was one on there. The seller only lived 15 miles up the road from me.

 

It definitely sits on my book shelf of original OT books, and I read it a long time ago.

Allnutt drew comparisons between Christian characters and what he believed to be their counterparts in ANH. Essentially he used the opportunity to introduce certain Christian characters by comparing these to the ones in ANH.

Now, Lucas freely admitted that he was influenced by the works of comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell and in particular the monomyth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero's_journey

But Campbell also felt that the story of the Christ had its roots in the monomyth, so expectedly or inevitably there are parallels that are hard or difficult to ignore.