Boo!
Scared yet?
Posted on 06/23/2003 7:13:28 AM PDT by Xenalyte
If provoking others to sneer is your thing, I've got the trick: Just walk into a room of Christians and say, "I love Harry Potter!" It works like magic.
Take the case of Beliefnet writer Anne Morse, who has taken it on the chin for her support of J.K. Rowling's series of children's novels centered on the muss-haired, bespectacled boy wizard.
"Dear Ms. Morse," one reader began, "You are the handmaiden of Satan, a succubus from the pit of Hell." I suppose few folks ever win points for timidity, but isn't this going too far?
The four Potter novels I've read have been very well written. The characters have deepened and grown considerably since book 1, making their continued stories of great interest. Rowling's humor works, and her sense of pace is nearly perfect. As the plots gain complexity from book to book, this is especially important. Rowling carried off the 700-plus pages of book 4 with hardly a bump – unless we're talking about "witchcraft."
Sure to trip up at least some Christian readers (Frank Sinatra did say it was "strictly taboo"), I put the term in scare-quotes because the kind of "witchcraft" you get in the Potter novels is like the stuff you get from the green lady with the warty nose in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.
My wife, a Wiccan before converting to Christianity, can well attest to the fact that flying broomsticks, wands, magic potions and the like are all, for lack of a better term, hocus-pocus. The use of these items in the Potter novels is pure fantasy and fancy.
Rowling ties some of the "magic" to the darker arts, sure, but that is only to create the necessary evil in the story. No conflict, no story. No bad guys, snore. In the end, the type of "magic" used in Harry Potter is no more diabolical than the so-called "magic" of the Tolkien or Lewis stories. (Note also a few other great Christian novelists who use "magic" to entertaining ends: Charles Williams, George MacDonald, Stephen R. Lawhead.)
What's more, Douglas Jones, senior editor of evangelical culture-and-thought magazine Credenda/Agenda, makes an insightful argument about the general shape of worldviews and the hat-tip that Potter – however unconsciously – makes toward Christianity, not against it:
One of the most overlooked features of modern stories like the Potter series is their implicit confession of the triumph of Christianity. This compliment to Christianity is not just the fact that the Potter stories are decidedly Christ-figure stories – an elect son, threatened at birth, who sacrifices His life for his friends and triumphs over evil in an underworld, even coming back from death for a feast. Those narrative categories are complimentary enough, but the deeper compliment is the story's use of a Christian psychology. In its generic sense, a psychology is just a worldview's characteristic way of interacting with life. There is a distinctive Christian psychology, a Hellenistic psychology, a modernist psychology, a postmodern psychology, a Wiccan psychology, and so on. The Potter characters could have been written with any of these. They could have acted like those resentful infant-adults of the Iliad; they could have had the psychology of ancient druids. But they don't. Instead, the Potter stories give us largely Christianized witches, witches who have fully absorbed Christian ethical categories: love, kindness, hope, loyalty, hierarchy, community, and more.
Young Potter and his friends learn the importance of bravery, self-sacrifice, duty and defending the weak. And the story portrays a striking moral divide.
Take just the first novel: The lie of the main antagonist, Voldemort, spoken through an enslaved professor from Potter's school, is that "There is no good or evil, there is only power, and those too weak to pursue it." Harry knows the truth and fights to the point of death to keep Voldemort from seizing the power he desires.
On a more minor scale, The Mirror of Erised ("Desire" backwards) teaches a lesson about covetousness, contentment and spending too much time wishing after things wanted instead of going out and actually doing.
Some have complained about Potter's disrespect for authority and how he is seemingly rewarded for breaking school rules. This is poppycock. Rowling puts Harry into situations that make for good storytelling: The rule says one thing, but not confronting the danger lurking around the corner is far worse than the consequences of breaking the rule. The dilemma creates the tension that motivates the character. Moral and ethical dilemmas are what make or break stories. In short, Harry isn't rewarded for breaking rules; he's rewarded for sacrificing himself, saving lives and fighting evil.
What about the danger that people will miss the obvious moral message and heroism and succumb instead to the supposed proselytizing for paganism? Jones has the blunt instrument: "Harry Potter can't be a threat. Wizardry doesn't really work. And if your kids are really tempted to join a coven, then it's not a giant leap to say that you've failed miserably as a parent."
This may be too general a statement, but I think it's generally true: The morality of the Harry Potter novels is impossible to miss; the immorality has to be blown out of proportion or imported entirely.
Perhaps instead of railing, my fellow Christians should start reading. The Potter novels certainly get many things wrong, but they get a lot of things right, and if we are discerning, we can learn from both.
So does the New Testament in regard to healers. "By their fruits..."
No. That would be a coincidence. The correspondence in enquiries from children regarding the practice of witchcraft made to the Pagan Federation and the simultaneous rise in popularity of the Harry Potter books represents a causal relationship.
The exorcist for the archdiocese of New York would disagree with you, and in this area, his opinion carries greater force.
For me, one is too many. For you, 100 is not enough.
What the hell, they're not your kids.
And if the Chief RC Exorcist in New York thinks they do, he's delusional.
I think if you are looking for moral authority you should pick and institution whose leaders don't diddle children.
Boo!
Scared yet?
First, I hope we can all finally agree that this book series encourages chldren to further "investigation" into "witchcraft," whatever that term means to TV-educated ten-year-olds.
Secondly, I generally concede your point. But that doesn't settle the issue. There are many children (especially from broken homes) who are desperate for control over their lives. For the spiritually ignorant (the majority of children these days?) sorcery can represent a means to achieving control and power. While some children might drift away from the occult when activities don't go as planned, other children might delve in more deeply.
I've heard several interviews with the exorcist for the archdiocese of NY. He states that playing with ouija boards, holding seances, and the like has opened the door to the occult for many children, paving the way for demonic obsession or oppression. It's not unreasonable to assume that Harry Potter can do the same thing, or at least serve to open the door to ouija boards, holding seances, etc.
I would say that HP is the least rated of any book in memory. I have never read a review of any Potter books. Nor is it heavily advertised. I haven't seen a television commercial or a magazine or newspaper ad for it. Most of the posters in bookstores are just to assure customers that the book will be available. As for the fad appeal, the first books in the series are still high on Amazon's bestseller list.
I buy books at garage sales. I can find any bestseller within a few months of its release, but I have never seen a used copy of a Potter book.
Then do a better job, and expect your church to be accountable to the laity for something every now and then.
Worried about occult influence over youth? Fine, then counter it by being an example of real people, and real men and women that troubled youth want to emulate. Select clergymen who look and act like men, and don't sound and act like Village People impersonators. Select bishops, cardinals and popes who demonstrate genuine leadership ability and management skills, punting those who are good only at forging political alliances. Insist that your hierarchy all the way to Rome be forthright and manly about problems, as opposed to acting like a hysterical bunch of old women when confronted with an accusation. Select nuns who don't sound like Hillary Clinton on a bad PMS day with political views to match. I'm not sure y'all have the stones to what is necessary to accomplish that, but nobody would like to see that happen more than I would.
Until you do manage to accomplish these things in your own organization, you really have nothing to say to secular culture.
I believe I would rather my child play with a Ouija board than be buggered by his parish priest in the sacristy after Mass. But that's just silly little ol' me.
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