Expecto stultum
July is Harry Potter month, what with the release of the last book and the fifth film. What publicity will this near simultaneous launch generate, and what mad self-proclaimed “Christian” responses will emerge foam-frothed from the mouth of fundamentalists?
An early June taster can be found here, where
“There’s plenty of real occultism embedded in Rowling’s fantasy works,” [Steve] Wohlberg contends, “and in spite of naïve popular opinion, Pottermania is aiding Wicca’s growth.
An excellent response is posted by the Internet Monk,
As it happens, I am heavily involved in outreach to Wiccans and occultists, and I’d like to address some misconceptions.
1) I’ve never met a Wiccan who was not a convert from Christianity (although converts from Judaism do exist).
2) I’ve never met a former Christian/current Wiccan who converted because of Harry Potter.
Read it all, because it has a great deal of food for thought in it. (HT to Elizaphanian for this link)
When one of my parishioners (who explained that he hadn’t read the books, but he’d read a book about the books) claimed that they used real spells, I could only ask him which medieval grimoire contained that wonderful spell for making chewing gum fly out of a keyhole: “Waddiwasi.”
Harry Potter’s coming, and it’s time to put the mental back into fundamentalist
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Have you, as a clergy member, ever met someone who converted to Christianity on the basis of powerful literature, such as the stories of C. S. Lewis, or the writings of Dante or Milton? It seems such stories are not unknown. (Herman Hesse, and the great Asian writers similarly are often associated with conversion to various forms of Buddhism or Hinduism or Theosophy.) It does seem that literary converts exist — although, perhaps, on the basis of better written books than Ms. Rowling’s.
(PS: Cute trick now getting your security word to be Hogsmead.)
July 3rd, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Honestly, no, I haven’t. Though I have met some for whom such literature was influential in a process. In my own story, Julian of Norwich, whom I was studying in English Lit, was such an influential piece of writing.
(PS The security word was a coincidence!)