I am a Harry Potter fan. Love the books. Love them. A co-worker of mine is a very devout Christian (Southern Baptist I think) and he and his wife home school their 3 children. They decided on home schooling to ensure that their children learned correct values and the like. Very, very nice people.
The other day I asked him if he or his children had read Harry Potter. He was very adamant in stating that they are evil, occult and lead children to Satan. I have been doing some research (driven by his comments) and have even spoken with some internet ‘friends’ who are Wiccan – I cannot see any connection. He admitted to never having read the books, but I was very surprised by the emotion he had behind his answer. Very surprised.
I know there are verses in the Bible that speak of witchcraft and the like (i.e. Duet 18:10-14). I have been a member my entire life and know very little about this ‘occult’. Is it really something to be ‘worried’ about? Why does the Church not address it?? Harry Potter – good or evil?
I plan to keep reading it and can’t wait for the final book to come out. Just thought I would see what y’all thought.
Thanks!
Guest Poster Amy
June 2, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Amy, in my experience Mormons don’t have any problem with Harry Potter nor other books like it. I believe someone at A Motley Vision, which is a blog that discusses Mormon Literature and such, once said that LDS people seem more comfortable with, even drawn to, fantasy and sci/fi than other denominations.
The person who recommended HP to me is one of my mom’s long-time church friends. She even hosted (and sometimes taught) seminary at her house.
June 3, 2007 at 1:27 am
We loved Harry Potter.
My son keeps saying he wishes there were real magic and I remind him that in Harry Potter magic is a science and a lot of work to learn.
Our real world operates under different rules. We have counterparts to some the “magical” things in real life, but they are so common we don’t recognize them. Want to control light with the flick of a wrist, flip the switch, the light comes and goes at a whim. Want to see what is happening right now in remote places, turn on the TV or surf the net, time travel, open a book and relive the past. Hear words that were spoken by the dead watch an old movie, read a journal….the examples are endless, you just need the right mind set. (this would be why I am known to run around in a plastic tiara and tell my children that the house is our castle.)
However, I think this is an important not let occult things influence real life decisions, I think is dangerous to allow oneself to be influenced by horoscopes, fortune tellers, card readers and the like. I don’t think they have any real power other then what we allow them to wield.
As for Duet 18:10-14 in verse 15 it says “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;”
No to listening to the counsel of witches and to divination, yes to prophets, we can’t pick and choose the verse to suite our fancy.🙂
June 3, 2007 at 7:57 pm
I read Harry Potter at the request of our school librarian who is a very strong Baptist. She had heard all the talk and was very concerned about having it in the library, but she had read it and did not see how the actual book matched what people in the evangelical world were saying. I read it and loved it. It assured the librarian that I didn’t see any harm in it. I continued to read the series. I read volume 2 and I was reading volume 3 when an amazing thing happened. I have a daughter with a learning disability in reading. We had worked very hard helping her learn to read, but we knew that if she didn’t make the breakthrough of learning to love reading, she would always struggle and it could be a lifelong handicap. We had tried hard to get her interested in a book. It was always a real chore for her to read. Then one day I was driving her to the dentist (a drive of about 45 minutes). I had the third Harry Potter book in the car. I asked her if she would read it to me as I drove. She read for awhile and then said, “Mom, I think I would like to read this book”. I was excited and I told her that we would get her the first book to start with. She didn’t just read it–she ate it up. She dived right into the next and then the next. When she finished reading that one (the fourth wasn’t out yet), she was so sad because she thought that those were the only good books in the world. We were very happy to introduce her to many other great books. She began to read everything she could get her hands on. She had made the leap. She read now for enjoyment, and not because she had to. She went on to graduate from high school with honors. The first special education student at our school to do so. She has completed 2 years of college and is maintaining above a 3.5 gpa. I don’t know if she would have ever become such a great reader, if not for Harry Potter. For us Harry Potter is magic.
June 4, 2007 at 3:06 pm
(1) What a wonderful story, Lynn Lee!
(2) When I managed an LDS bookstore, we held a midnight Harry Potter release party. Not only did LDS customers have a great time, but several local non-LDS (who never would have stepped foot in our store before) came for the party. It ended up quite a good experience for all.
(3) Like any group, there are some LDS who are…ahem…more peculiar than your average “peculiar people.” I am personally familiar with a case where a young LDS teen sexually abused his sister. Another member of the same ward (a home-schooler, btw) proclaimed to all that this was the consequence of those parents allowing their children to read the Harry Potter books, and that this family clearly belonged to a coven of witches, etc. Both families subsequently left the state, so fortunately, this didn’t result in long-term divisions between ward members.
June 11, 2007 at 2:47 am
Amy — You’re running into a traditional strain of “folk belief” — I have found this “Harry Potter = Satanism” thing to be rather common in Evangelical Christian circles. One big givaway is that your friends hadn’t even read the book — so where are they getting their information? Word of mouth, person to person within a fairly-well-defined folk group, “diffusion” — the stuff of folklore.
By the way — my guess is that Snape was in love with Lilly Potter, and when he realized that the information he gave Voldemorte (Trelawney’s prophesy) led to Lilly’s death, he went to Dumbledore and was trully repentant. Voldy can’t understand love, and Dumby recognized this as sincere repentance. So put me in that group of people who think Snape is really on the side of the OOTP. Can’t wait for Book 7 to find out if I’m right.
June 21, 2007 at 1:33 am
You might want to take a look at the book, “Finding God in Harry Potter” by John Granger, a devout Evangelical Christian, literature teacher and father of seven home-schooled children. He presents a pretty good case for J.K. Rowling being closer to C.S. Lewis than Satan.
He has the (remains of) a website at http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com. Before a crash earlier in the year it had some exerpts from the book.
June 29, 2007 at 10:50 pm
I’ve also heard the ‘HP = Satanic’ theory bandied around in this country too by Evangelical denoms, and it kind of makes me laugh. It’s a bandwagon. I bet you all the tea in China that they DO let their kids read (or watch) Snow White (big ol’ witchy stepmother in that one eh?), Cinderella (Fairy Godmother with wand and everything), or Jack and the Beanstalk (magic beans, magic beans). Not to mention the plethora of other stories that involve magic. Would they object to the Chronicles of Narnia series? Probably not…and yet in The Magician’s Nephew we have BAD magician and BAD witch versus good. Surely that’s the whole message of Harry Potter, but set in a modern context.
And most people I talk to who spout the anti-HP tripe have never read one word of any of the books either. Funny that…
June 29, 2007 at 10:51 pm
PS. I’ll be at the store at midnight here to pick up the last book in (what is it…?) 22 days (or something like that).
HA!
November 29, 2007 at 4:53 am
Hi.
Good design, who make it?