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.
Ouch. One major clunker there in an otherwise fine article.
Having been involved in a situation in my own family where a child who was raised with love and respect in a Christian home committed suicide in a horrible way, I don't buy for a second the notion that its always the parent's fault when a "seed goes bad."
Sidebar: I do NOT recommend being the first person to find a suicide. I will remember what I saw, straight from one of Poe's works, in my mind until the day I die; there's no possible way to prepare for it. My hat goes off to EMS workers and police officers for that reason; they have to see that sort of horror all the time.
Sentient human beings make their own choices, sometimes good, sometimes bad. And sometimes, (expletive deleted) happens.
Now, having gotten that out of the way, I suspect that most of the anti-Potter grumbling we're hearing from certain individuals and groups is based on plain ol' jealousy and a desperate hunger for the same sort of positive publicity that a fictional character is receiving. While criticism of content, message, mechanics, etc. of Rowling's work are perfectly valid and even welcomed, the unending sour grapes carping we hear grows tiresome. Don't like it? Then don't read it.
Look closely and you'll see palm trees in the background of what is supposed to be Southampton during the opening of Titanic.
Seriously, the article is very accurate in its depiction of Harry Potter. So are you. I've read stuff by real witches and this isn't it.
Harry Potter is also a brilliant series. It's popularity isn't the result of hype. I devour the books because I enjoy reading them. I don't care how popular they are, but their popularity isn't just because of the hype. I think these books will stand with the Lord of the Rings series as classics. Rowling better keep herself healthy. I want to know how the series ends, and at the rate she's working, that may take another six or seven years. I also want her to stay away from George Lucas. Note to Ms. Rowling, at the first mention of Ewoks, we revolt!
Which pretty well guarantees that the 6th one will sell too...;-)
And she needs to get cracking on writing it.
My vote for quote of the day.
I have completely enjoyed all the Potter books, and am currently enthralled
by the latest.. the only ill effect suffered so far has been a slight
case of not enough sleep due to reading too long.
I resemble that remark.
Harry Potter stole my weekend, he did.
Evil little rotter... ;-)
Then I would appreciate the same understanding from them. I don't appreciate being told that I am going to hell because I read the "Harry Potter" series, "The Lord of the Ring", or play "Dungeons and Dragons" or "Chivalry and Sorcery". I have done the last three for 30+ years and I have yet to have had the urge to sacrifice children or cast magic of any sort. It's entertainment ... as old as "Morte de Arthur", "Beowulf", and Mozart's "The Magic Flute".
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