Harry Potter and "the Death of God" - by Michael D. O'Brien

LifeSiteNews.com ^ | August 20, 2007 | Michael O'Brien

[Steelerfan]

Ok, I am discussing fabrics and clothes.

Time to get myself back on a football thread, ASAP.

[Constantine XIII]

This launches my ROFLcopters.

[Constantine XIII]

Are you an editor on LifeSiteNews or something? You only ever post from there and rarely reply, it seems.

Pimping ur site here isn’t very good manners.

[Antoninus]

Bookmarking for later—after I’m finished Book VII...

[Tax-chick]

Niceta seeya!

[Billthedrill]

False

No, really. Back in the '60's I remember a set of books that were fabulously popular entitled The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. Who's ever hear of them since?

Oh. Yeah. Well, OK then. Never mind...

[Reddy]

bump

[saveliberty]

Thanks for the ping, rK!

American Spectator has been going back and forth with euthanasia and Harry Potter, religion and Harry Potter etc.

Haddon

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11874

Reader Response (rejecting his notion)

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11886

Haddon responds
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11893

Reader response
http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11895

Epic and religion
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11917

[LadyNavyVet]

I didn’t realize that. Thanks for setting me straight. I really don’t understand what the fuss is about, then. I had a neighbor who was all spun up about HP. One day she was going on and on about how Harry was evil and I said to her, “You do realize that Harry Potter isn’t real, don’t you?” I honestly wasn’t sure, because she was talking about him like he was going to materialize in the room and cast a spell on her. She never brought up the subject again.

Maybe the whole furor is because Rowling didn’t loudly proclaim her Christianity in the early days? Or maybe she hasn’t written Christian apologetics, or jumped through the approved hoops demonstrating her faith?

I have always believed that the angst over HP was mostly a Christian fad in the vein of “lets’ all hate Harry so as not to be thought unpious.”

[Charlespg]

That is why the defenders of Potterworld exhibit such adamancy, frequently outrage, against critics. According to their perceptions, the critics of Potterworld are the enemies of freedom and identity.

No its because the inbred self righteous Idiots( cue duleing banjos) who write this drivel have never read the books or have no imagination in their pathetic lives..

[Ben Chad]

So much naval gazing.

[Corin Stormhands]

...or jumped through the approved hoops demonstrating her faith?

bingo

[grellis]

ntsa self-pingeroo

[saveliberty]

LOL

[HiTech RedNeck]

A fad, maybe. It certainly speaks to the kind of aspirations that fallen man has restricted himself to by his fallenness.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Tolkien and Lewis worked Christian parallels into their stories, making each one into a kind of Christian parable. This is different from what Rowling has done, which is to make out a quite private universe of good and evil with no particular connection to anything else other than to make people feel good. That kind of quest has been a pursuit of fallen mankind since Adam and Eve, and human nature keeps it from succeeding. Man needs a Savior not a bunch of feelgood stories.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The proof of the pudding would be if Potter was edifying Christians or Christians-to-be in the same way that Lewis and Tolkien did. Is this happening? Are people who are now believers in Jesus Christ for their eternal salvation saying, like Lewis himself did about his cheap edition of MacDonald's Phantastes (see Lewis' Surprised By Joy), that their imaginations were baptized towards Christ by Potter, and they don't put any credence in any of the anti biblical literals of Potter? There's a fine line between using a fantasy story to illustrate the truths of the bible, and using that story to steal away people's allegiances that are due to the Lord for the sake of mammon. The very glitz of Potterism makes it understandably suspect.

[LadyNavyVet]

According to the link in post 53, Rowling is a professed Christian and her books have Christian parallels.

But leaving that aside, it seems to me that you’re saying all writing should be Christian allegory or it’s invalid. I disagree. Human beings need entertainment and have been passing down stories purely for the sake of pleasure since the dawn of history.

Humanity needs a Savior, and humanity has one. With few exceptions in this era of mass communication, Jesus is available to all who seek Him. But not every book, every movie, every everything produced by a Christian need be about Jesus. Even Jesus turned water into wine and partied with sinners. Sometimes fun for fun’s sake is okay, too.

[GiovannaNicoletta]

"Which seems to offend the religious right...

That's funny. I've heard that same phrase come out of the mouths of God-hating leftists a million times. It's really odd that a Christian would disparage other Christians by referring to those Christians with the same worn-out term of contempt used by people who hate Christians.

Hmmmmm.

[r9etb]

That's funny. I've heard that same phrase come out of the mouths of God-hating leftists a million times. It's really odd that a Christian would disparage other Christians by referring to those Christians with the same worn-out term of contempt used by people who hate Christians.

Well just look at the article above. One imagines that this and similarly priggish representatives of the "religious right" are exactly the type of person Rowling was talking about.

Gotta tell ya, GN ... I'm a pretty conservative Christian myself, and I've come to really want a lot of distance between me and "the relgious right," who increasingly seem to focus (loudly) on ephemeral stuff, while missing the point of what Jesus talked about.