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.
Aha! So that's why my Chapstick always smells like sulphur.
Thanks for clearing that up.
That's debatable. The point is that these books are correlated with a rise in interest in the occult, as the largest pagan organization in England attests.
In England, the Pagan Federation has been barraged with so many inquiries about Wicca, mostly from teenage girls, that the group has appointed a youth officer whose primary responsibility will be to respond to Harry Potter fans who want to know how to become witches.If you can't trust the Pagan Federation, who can you trust? 8-o“It is quite probably linked to things like Harry Potter, 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch' and 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'” Pagan Federation Media Officer Andy Norfolk told "This Is London," a British news Web site.
Wiccans and other pagans consider Harry Potter a good example for would-be witches ...
And do you avoid all the other litle Pagan rights, or do you join in celebrating them?
The Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs are part of the Pagan rights of Eastrus, Goddess of Fertility. Do you let the little kiddies worship her by hunting Easter Eggs?
Santa Claus is the old Northern European Winter Solistice Demi-urge. Do you let the kiddies worship the passing of Winter by giving and receiving presents?
Do you go along with the custom of eating Beans or Peas on New Years for "Good Luck"? It's good luck, cause the guy who got the black bean or the stone was the human sacrifice of the Winter Solistice and you weren't.
Do you have Holly and Mistletoe in your house at Christmas? A Druid way of Worship.
So9
The Pagan Federation, which represents druids and witches, says it has been "swamped" with calls following teenage programmes featuring good witches.Speaking to BBC News Online the Pagan Federation's Steve Paine, the high priest of a coven, said the hit US drama Buffy and the highly successful Harry Potter books were popular amongst practising witches.
"They are taken as fantasy entertainment. But they do encourage people to think about different forms of spirituality", he said.
The Pagan Federation, which deals with about 100 enquiries a month from youngsters who want to become witches, does not allow anyone under the age of 18 to become a member.
Most of the enquiries are from 14 to 18 year-olds, and are dealt with "reactively" by a specially-appointed youth officer, an Essex based schoolteacher [the icing on the cake].
There have been many rumored "rise in interest in the occult" from time to time, supposedly triggered by everything from the old "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" and "Dark Shadows" TV shows to heavy metal rock bands. It's mostly bunk, fueled by a certain amount of panic whipped up by those with an axe to grind. There are a few kids who are drawn to the Wiccan culture and stick with it, but they are few and their numbers don't seem to change very much over time (and frankly, better that than the Goths, who are often Satanists -- and the Wiccans are more afraid of Satanists than your average Christian, simply because they know more about them and what they do.)
As for how I know, I've known a Third Degree priestess in a Wiccan "grove" (not coven) for something like 25 years. (I think she is in grievous error, but she was an atheist before she was a Wiccan, so at least she's moving in the right direction.) Over the time she has been associated with her group (which is the largest in our area), the number of people interested in the Wiccan religion has remained fairly flat (and small). The group doesn't proselytize, and they don't allow minors to join unless their parents are already members. So I just don't see this as that imminent a threat.
Is it that the Wiccan's (Spelled teachers) are so good promoting the witch as a reality or is it that the Christain leaders are bad at addressing contempary issues?
Just watched it again, but still couldn't see it. Are you talking about the wide overhead shot? All I saw in the background there was matte painting.
Kreacher! Its you, inhabiting an FR thread.
;)
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