- he prays for rain on the Mardi Gras (a Gay Pride / Rights march) each year
- he and his wife (who was a Parliamentary members also) came to parliament in pyjamas one night (it was a late sitting, apparently)
- he called Eminem the new Hitler

What annoys me about all the hype that HP is evil / leading people to Satanism etc. is that the same people aren't protesting (or are they?) against "Bewitched" and "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" - is there any difference?

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- he and his wife (who was a Parliamentary members also) came to parliament in pyjamas one night (it was a late sitting, apparently)

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It was a late sitting, but that wasn't the reason Nile was in his PJ's.

He'd come from hospital to vote against a bill that would make it illegal for people to be vilified on the basis of their sexual preference.

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Originally posted by Admiral Holder:
is that the same people aren't protesting (or are they?) against "Bewitched"

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Originally posted by Siegfried:
in the universe of that show, witches were pretty much supposed to be a separate race

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Pretty impressive stuff that some fundamentalists use to back up their ideas - like satire!

Ho-hum

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Originally posted by Poet_of_Gold:
I agree with those who say that Harry Potter is dangerous. Bewitched also was a dangerous film, and I hated to see Sabrina coming on the television, produced by a company whose founder was the very icon of wholesome family entertainment. I prayed the influence of the show would be stopped. I prayed kids would not take the "candy" of watching fun special effects in exchange for their very minds and souls.

It grieves me that many Christian parents went out and bought the Harry Potter books for their children. I'm afraid we have forgotten to be discriminating in our tastes, and have succumbed to the easy way of raising children, i.e. buy them whatever makes them "happy" and keeps them quiet so we have less work to do in their upbringing. This is in essence giving someone else the control of the child's mind, be it the author of a book, video game, or movie.

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Originally posted by JoyfulNoise and his Parrot, O'Kief:
Dear Poet-of-Gold;
Do you also obect to Narnia? This also has whichcraft etc in it.
L&GB
Dominic

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The danger lies in parents over-reacting to it. If a book is vested with so much power, then it will become powerful. If it is just treated as words on a page, to be taken or left, then fine.

If we're getting worried about reading material, why are we encouraging kids to read a book that encourages slavery, has great kings with many wives, concubines and consorting with witches, has graphic scenes of suffering, children hearing voices, and stories of battles between earth and heaven, and some jumped up little angel trying to get the better of God.

ok, dpeagleca60, i'll ask you, then.

Summarising - a soft drug will lead to a harder drug in a dangerous cycle of descent. Or a 'soft' occult book (HP) will lead to a 'hard' occult book.

Yep, quite possible. But its dependant on the actions of the people reading these books, and in the case of children, parental supervision should be able to control it?

However in the same way we are wary of drinking too much (well sometimes!), smoking a lot etc anything in excess can be dangerous. In the same way me in my fantasy world of books can become dangerous if you fail to able to tell the difference between a story and reality.

Period. We do untold harm to ourselves and our children (and literature in general) by trying to make fiction agree with our idea of 'fact'. The whole point of fiction is that it didn't happen, and, in the case of HP, can't happen. Good fiction (and despite my own lack of interest, I've found no evidence to suggest that HP is anything else) is there to present and represent the narratives of the human condition.

And it's fun too.

You get idiots like the recent wave of British writers who seemed to think that everything that happened in a fiction had to be completely 'realist' - or, worse, you get hamfisted morons like Frank Peretti or the two guys who wrote the Left Behind books who impose their own (well dodgy) doctrine on their fiction because they don't see fiction as symbolic narrative. They see it as polemic.

Fiction is not, should never be a sermon in disguise. It can, of course, be used to teach, and can conceal a moral - but ultimately, its purpose is not to represent what is, but rather to reflect it, hence the use of fiction to describe the impossible.

Did I say impossible? Yup.

Impossible perfectly describes HP in every respect - magic wands, dragons, three headed dogs, enchanted chess sets, boarding schools which are nice places to attend - all these things are the stuff of fantasy (especially the last one )*.

And let's face it, the magic in HP, or in Sabrina the Teenage Witch for that matter (a talking cat!) doesn't bear any resemblance whatsoever to real magic in any way whatsoever.

Christ himself was certainly not above using fictions, including impossible fictions, to get across a point - see the story of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar, for example. Everybody there would have been well aware that Lazarus and the rich man's afterlife scene was wholly made up - but they got the point.

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Originally posted by Arietty:
1) If people want to bang on about dangerous books, why don't they start with Dennis Wheatley? (The Devil Rides Out etc). Far more likely IMO to send people looking for covens etc.

2) Nicole - form an orderly queue.

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Steady, girls. I'm taken.

Of course, Wheatley's the same as Potter, really - goodies and baddies and stuff.

both my kids had to read Farenheit 451 in high school, and i'm glad they did. i haven't read Potter because i'm not really drawn to the genre, but i'm certainly not afraid of its influence...the 6 o'clock news is probably more harmful to kids.

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Originally posted by Weslian:
I found Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy powerful and challenging stuff...
But I don't find this dangerous, or want to ban it. If Christians can't ride these challenges, and respond to them without wanting to burn books, and stifle argument, then we just prove to those who want to oppose us, how narrow we are and how weak are our arguments.

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Anyway... as I was saying, it annoys me a LOT that Christian people purporting to care about the welfare of kids spend so much time on crap like this when the real problems facing young people get ignored.

As to the serious point of this thread. I had friends in my University CU that almost seemed to be trying to out do each other in their misunderstanding and fear of the modern media. So they would only go and see the most un-challenging PG movies, avoid the news (I'll never forget one saying during coverage of the Balkan's War - "why don't they just build some churches in Sarejevo") and not read anything other than the bible. In the end this led to a lot of ignorance and further gave the impression to none Christians at the Uni that the local God-botheres were insane and completely out of touch.

I remember one of them once commentated negatively on my choice of music when I had the stereo on while reading the bible. Although a little NWOBHM was likely to currupt my mind.

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Originally posted by Akeldama:
I know this might seem like over exageration, but believe me, if you were at Lancaster Uni from 1993-1996 you'd have been shocked by some of the CU grandees.[/QB]

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Well sure, if they were real people with souls and not just characters in a crime drama. I can see it now.....

Bob DeNiro: So what if you do got me boxed in?
Al Pacino: Well you could come to my church housegroup on wednesday
Bob: That'd be really nice, thankyou

On top of that - going back briefly to the top of this thread - what ever happened to our idea that children are actually able to discriminate between right and wrong and between fact, fictin and fantasy? I feel that sometimes children have a better grasp on reality and 'real' life than adults ever have because we have somehow lost the ability to free renage our imaginations and expand our boundaries beyond the comfortable, safe (for us) and familiar)

Or is that me just haveing a strop at the end of a rather busy day???

But it's not just kids. Holyywood is constantly turning out incredibly porked version of history and I'm sad to say far too many people actually believe this stuff. For example we've had Braveheart (no sign of Wallace as the middle-class landowner here), The Messenger - Joan of Arc (which i liked as a movie but it was something of a character assination on poor Joan), The Patriot (why doesn't Mel like us Brits???? ). This week sees the release of Behind Enemy Lines. Europe is still picking up the pieces of the Balkan Wars and already we have a gung-ho videogame of a movie about it. I'm hoping Ridley Scott has at least approached Black Hawk Down sensibly, it was after all, a shocking tragedy and there's no reason to turn it into an excuse for flagwaving.

But first an apology for my incomplete post above. I was about to agree with Akeldama on the terrible state some people, especially at Uni CU's, get themselves into, when I was called away from the PC and clicked the wrong thing. Whoops, sorry.

However, I can now reveal that I was also at Lancaster Uni (between 95 and 97) and can vouch for the behaviour of some it's members. I lasted a mere one and half meetings before giving up whimpering. I did however have a friend who kept going (she felt she had to) and was often surprised by the comments people could come out with.

I have had several long (and now very tediuos) discussions with people about Harry Potter and find that most people have let others make their minds up for them and are very suspicous of anyone with a different veiw. It can be very difficult.

Although on the whole good/bad fiction thing I was recently told that science fiction is generally fine, it's just fantasy (or especially anything that refers to 'magic') is bad. Has anyone else come across this attitude? Can anyone come up with a plausable explanation for it?

Anyway, in reply to your last question. I've experience of people who only read books they take literaly, whether that's the Bible, commentary's, Christian life books, etc.

Now when they see something like JFK they believe everything that happens on screen. Because they are used to believing stuff, whether in books or movies. Now when it comes to fantasy books with magic and witchcraft they may read these things and believe them then worry everyone else is as equelly unable to cope with the concept of fiction.

Why fantasy more than sci-fi. Firstly I think it is a misunderstanding of the genre. For those who haven't read such books there is often the belief these books tend to be full of people summoning demons and casting spells, with the spells written out in longhand for prospective young wizards to try out at home. This is of course not the norm. From the works of Fantasy I've read in the last few years, and certainly the higher quality works such as those by Tad Williams or Robin Hobb, the nature of magic is never fully explained. In fact it is rarely of the eye-of-newt variety at all. I've never read any fantasy where the magic is of a nature similar to spells and rituals you might find in one of Alastair Crowley's books (fyi a famous....erm...wizard, or satanist, magus, or plain nutcake, whatever you fancy ). Magic in fantasy (and in Lord of Rings Certainly - the Hobbits are disappointed to discover) is often about different abilities folks have and of nature, not black masses and cauldrons full of demonic concoctions.

Role playing has often suffered the same criticisms. Some Christian campaigners let it be known that the spells in the first Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying set actually worked, a boon for the game's maker, but of service to no-one except those who thing we are nutters.

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Some Christian campaigners let it be known that the spells in the first Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying set actually worked

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(I know someone who claimed her brother had this. Seriously.)

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Only slowly did the truth dawn on me - they didn't like the stuff......

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It always amazes me that so many people dislike SF and Fantasy so vehemently. There's obviously something about the very concept that really rubs some people up the wrong way (my mother!), and conversely really enthuses other (sane ) people. Which is strange but OK by me.

What gets me is when some Christians justify their own problem with SF&F by deciding that God doesn't like it.

But then, that's nothing new.

Excuse me while I go and deal with this plank I seem to have discovered... *sigh*

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Originally posted by Karl:
I was always amazed at how it was that someone who spent hours each week playing RPGs was 'addicted', but no concerns were raised over people who spent that much time playing sports.

It's all about perception.

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Perception, my arse.

Sport is good for you, makes you healthier, better looking, and generally more fun to be around.

I listen to crap old rock music, have grown my hair out and have a beard and I've never been into role-playing.

I find it odd that roleplaying is always portrayed as a very male thing. Many of the people I know who still play are women. Or perhaps thats just my friends.

Toria