No Faith in This Force

Orson Scott Card writes well in his article on Belief Net: No Faith in This Force

Memo to would-be Jedis: in the new movie, the knights are elitist, dictatorial, and unconvinced that good is an absolute.
. . .
As a religion, the Force is just the sort of thing you’d expect a liberal-minded teenage kid to invent. There’s no God and there are no rules other than a vague insistence on unselfishness and oath-keeping. Power comes from the sum of all life in the universe, and it is manichaean, not Christian — evil is simply another way of using the Force. Only not as nice.
. . .
So instead of looking at the storyline of Episode III as a conflict between good and evil, you could read it as a conflict between the entrenched aristocracy trying to preserve their monopoly on power, and an ambitious upstart, who is determined to break that monopoly and take control for himself. The only reason we don’t see it that way is because the other side is so much more evil. But the body count left behind by Jedi knights is — or should be — disturbing.

In other words, despite whatever political message Lucas might or might not have intended, the Jedi are the smug orthodoxy, always congratulating themselves on their rectitude. No wonder the whole senate seems thrilled when the new Emperor announces the fall of the Jedi. They don’t know yet how evil the Emperor will be, but they know they don’t mind having the meddlesome Jedi out of the way.

As good as Oron Scott Card’s review of the message of Star Wars, what brought my attention to it was Jim Nicholson’s post at Boar’s Head Tavern: Confessions of a StarWars agnostic

BTW, Orson Scott Card’s dissection of the Jedi rings extremely true, BTW. For those who might know, can I ask if what I call Card’s “exceedingly evangelical-protestant-sounding Mormonism” that shows up in his essays is (a) a fluke of his personal beliefs, (b) representative of how the thinking Mormon laity understand their faith, or (c) part of the vast Mormon conspiracy to sound like Baptists until they get enough political power to legislate funny underwear in public schools?