In the infomercial Wednesday, Michelle Obama told how Barack read all of the Harry Potter books to his daughter. I wonder if they realized that they'd meandered into a culture war mine field.
The Harry Potter books were extemely controversial in evangelical circles when they came out. Many attacked them for glamorizing or encouraging witchcraft. There's still a few days left for McCain to cut a new ad about Obama being Soft on Witches. Since Sarah Palin was blessed by an anti-witchcraft pastor, the McCain-Palin ticket can justifiably lay claim to being more anti-Witch than Obama. ("Barack Obama is willing to sit down with Voldemort without preconditions...")
But I wasn't sure if the anti-Potter sentiment was still strong so I asked our Christianity editor, Patton Dodd, whose brilliant new blog "Text Messages" represents well the thinking of the new generation of evangelical leaders. His verdict: evangelicals over 40 will hate that Obama digs Harry, and those under 40 will like/love it. On balance, he generalized, "I'd say moderate evangelicals are Potter fans."
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The evangelicals who dislike Harry Potter have grown up with stories of Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and a host of other fairy tales, all of which deal with witches and spells and good triumphing over evil (and you'll notice that every Harry Potter story also ends with good triumphing over evil). The problem is that these stories have been so sanitized, or washed in bleach, by Walt Disney that the real stories are almost unrecognizable.
Evangelicals have nothing else to worry about but what books Obama reads to his daughter? They must lead very boring lives!
The Harry Potter books are ... just books. How are they any different than the stories from the Christian Bible? It is full of a lot of "magic" but the folks that read the Bible call the "magic" miracles. It also has it's share of sex & violence....guys hanging on crosses, adultry, wars, live sacrafices, brother killing brother, 40 days of rain with everybody who was "bad" drowning, people being swallowed by a whale, (Jonah), etc. How is that any different than Harry Potter?
Any Christian who is anti the Harry Potter books has obviously never read them (are you listening, Laura Mallory?) These books promote a strong Christian message, especially in the last book (Deathly Hallows) where Harry, expected to be a warrior leading his troops to victory, instead sacrifices himself so that others can live, goes temporarily to a limbo called King's Cross, and chooses to return to his people to defeat evil. Sound familiar?
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