Harry Potter is unsafe for Christians Pope Opposes Harry Potter Novels Signed Letters from Cardinal Ratzinger Now Online
Book Teaser: ‘Harry Potter and the Paganization of Culture’ by Michael O’Brien
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- CBN.com: What led you to write this book RICHARD ABANES
- CBN.com: You discuss in the book how fantasy can be used for teaching. What is it about fantasy that you find valuable ABANES
- CBN.com: How can parents tell the difference and evaluate whether a book is a good type of fantasy or a bad type of fantasy ABANES
- CBN.com: You mentioned Philip Pullman and the series of books that he has written. When did children’s fiction become so dark Is this a new trend ABANES
- CBN.com: In your book you discuss the authors of these three different series, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling. How are these authors different ABANES
- CBN.com: What is your advice to parents about this How should they approach the Harry Potter series ABANES
- CBN.com: Do you think that a lot of parents are unaware at how easy it is to get books on witchcraft and spells, many of which are located right next to the Harry Potter books at bookstores
- CBN.com: What do you hope to see accomplished through this book ABANES
- "Harry Potter Sparks Rise in Satanism in Children"
Book Teaser: ‘Harry Potter and the Paganization of Culture’ by Michael O’Brien https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/book-teaser-harry-potter-and-the-paganization-of-culture-by-michael-obrien Reviewed by John-Henry Westen, June 17, 2010 Master story-teller and artist Michael O’Brien – the man to whom CNN went when they needed comment on Harry Potter - has penned the definitive work assessing the Potter phenomenon. This book is essential reading for all parents whose children have read or are considering reading the wildly popular offerings by J.K. Rowling and similar works such as Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. Although an analytical work, the reader will be captivated from the must-read preface. O’Brien’s earlier work, “A Landscape with Dragons,” delineated authentic Christian fantasy literature from its counterfeits. Now, in “Harry Potter and the Paganization of Culture,” he fascinatingly contrasts Potter-world with C.S. Lewis’s Narnia and Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” and the character of Harry Potter with Frodo Baggins. O’Brien’s analysis will enable parents whose children have consumed Potter to comprehend the problematic messages which have been fed their children and give them the points and arguments which can serve as the antidote. The book goes beyond Potter, however, to address other bestselling series such as “Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer and Phillip Pullman’s “The Golden Compass.” In addition to these and other fantasy books, O’Brien reviews the films which they have spawned. In all, the author’s new book teaches Christians how to discern harmless fantasy literature and film from that which is destructive to heart, mind and soul.
In 2007, Rowling said she always viewed Albus Dumbledore, the wizarding school's wise, gifted headmaster, as gay. Dumbledore is a Gandalf-like character and mentor to the series' protagonist.
"He wasn't always the sage," according to Rowling, "We’ll see him at that formative period of his life." She said there will be "lots to unpack" in Dumbledore's youthful friendship with one of his contemporaries, who later turns evil. Rowling suggested the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will feature the same-sex relationship in more depth. "I can't tell you everything I would like to say because this is obviously a five-part story so there’s lots to unpack in that relationship," she said. Rowling is the screenwriter of the latest movie productions in the Harry Potter franchise. The fan group Harry Potter Alliance is well-known for its gay advocacy. Rowling frequently speaks out on behalf of liberal causes. She strongly opposed Brexit. Critics of Harry Potter, such as the late Vatican exorcist Father Gabriel Amorth and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, say the series' subversive themes can negatively predispose children to curiosity about the occult.
Church authorities in Thrace are determined to take the magic out of Harry Potter, as the latest film featuring the fictional teenage English magician opened in the area. In a statement yesterday, the Orthodox see of Didymoteicho quoted international Potter-bashers to argue that H.K. Rowling’s books encourage children to visit Satanist websites, while their hero has ersatz Christ-like attributes. “(The books and films) acquaint people with evil, wizardry, the occult and demonology,” the announcement said. “It is beyond doubt that Harry was made to resemble a young savior. Upon his birth people try to kill him, he is forever subjected to injustice but always supernaturally manages to prevail and save others. Let us reflect, who else... is held to be the unjustly treated God?” Greece has no tradition of children’s books about sorcery and magic, a long-established genre in English literature.
With the release of the newest Harry Potter film this week, and the upcoming final book in the series just days away, the debate about Harry Potter is heating up again. Some parents have called for the books to be banned, while others – including some Christians – have embraced the fantasy series. In fact, many fans of the series have argued that the books are actually Christian novels that are valuable for children to read. Author Richard Abanes says this couldn’t be further from the truth. In his book, Harry Potter, Narnia, and the Lord of the Rings: What You Need to Know About Fantasy Books and Movies, he discusses why the J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is vastly different from the Christian-based works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Richard about his book. Read the interview below. CBN.com: What led you to write this book? RICHARD ABANES: Well, this Harry Potter controversy, I thought was going to be dying down, but over the years it has continued to be talked about and there are many individual opinions on it. With the new book coming out, I felt that I needed to address these issues again since my last book, Harry Potter and the Bible. There has continued to be these myths about Harry Potter that it is not harmful at all, that it is absolutely wonderful. I felt like that needed to be addressed because there is a movement within Christianity now, within the Christian church, of a small group of people who are trying to say that the Harry Potter books are actually a Christian series just like the The Chronicles of Narnia series and the Lord of the Rings series. I felt this needed to be addressed because it is not an accurate picture of what the Harry Potter books are. CBN.com: You discuss in the book how fantasy can be used for teaching. What is it about fantasy that you find valuable? ABANES: I love fantasy. I’m a big fantasy fan and science fiction fan. Fantasy is a wonderful way to communicate truths to children. There are various concepts that are biblically sound, that you can put in terms that they can understand -- issues like integrity, honesty, bravery, courage, forgiveness -- and you find these things in books like The Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings. And that is why you have to be careful about fantasy as well. Even though it is great, fantasy can, like anything that is powerful, be used in a way that is detrimental to kids. That is when you have fantasy that talks about values that are not biblically sound -- disobedience, lack of respect for things, sort of a moral relativism -- and these are things that come across in fantasies like the Philip Pullman books, and the Harry Potter books. And in Philip Pullman, which many children are reading, we have very anti-Christian views being expressed, so that can be dangerous as well. CBN.com: How can parents tell the difference and evaluate whether a book is a good type of fantasy or a bad type of fantasy? ABANES: First, you have to know your kid. You have to know what the maturity level of your child is and how they are going to be affected by fantasy. If they tend to emulate things a lot, copy things they see on television or in books, then you know that they are very prone to that kind of influence, and you have to be very careful. One of the things you want to look at is what is the overall message that is coming forth from a book or from a movie? What are the characters doing in the movie or in the book? You can have bad characters doing bad things in any kind of fantasy, that is fine, but how does the story portray that bad behavior? Is it exalting it? Is it making it look fun? Or is it showing how that is not good? That’s one of the main ways you can do that. And when it comes to spiritual issues, how closely does something like things of the occult appear in a book that is very similar to what you find in the real world? CBN.com: You mentioned Philip Pullman and the series of books that he has written. When did children’s fiction become so dark? Is this a new trend? ABANES: It is. It is a very new trend for children’s fiction to be dark, to be sinister, to be anti-Christian, to be filled with occult imagery. That is something that actually started when there was a changeover in Hollywood from the classic portrayal of demons, witches, and things like that in a negative light. You started getting movies around the late 1980s and early 1990s that were starting to portray witchcraft, the occult, and the paranormal in a positive way. And that started piquing an interest of the community and of kids. You know, Hollywood targets children a lot because there is a lot of money to be made there. So that started this trend toward the popularity of that. Then you get the television shows, like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Charmed,” that presented these types of things in a very positive, fun, stimulating, exciting way, and that has caused this interest. Then there are books like the R.L. Stine books that have contributed greatly to this horror genre for children. That’s how that started. CBN.com: In your book you discuss two types of magic found in these fantasy stories. What is the difference between the magic readers will find in The Chronicles of Narnia or the Lord of the Rings and the “magick” found in Harry Potter? ABANES: One of the easiest ways to know whether a fantasy book or film has real world magick in it is to just ask a simple question: “Can my child find information in a library or bookstore that will enable them to replicate what they are seeing in the film or the book?” If you go to The Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings what you see in, story magic and imagination, it is not real. You can’t replicate it. But if you go to something like Harry Potter, you can find references to astrology, clairvoyance, and numerology. It takes seconds to go into a bookstore or library and get books on that and start investigating it, researching it, and doing it. In fact, that’s why real Wiccans, real witches, and real occultists are using the popularity of Harry Potter to lure kids toward real world occultism. They actually have advertisements for their own books that use Harry Potter as their appeal. CBN.com: There are some people who say children will not be drawn to the occult just because Harry Potter practices magick and spells, but you’ve found some research that suggests otherwise. What have you found? ABANES: Right, even J.K. Rowling has said, “Well I’ve never met anyone who has come up to me and said they want to be a witch now.” But people are forgetting a very commonly known fact that children like to copy what they see. Children like to copy what they think is cool. We already have examples of kids going out and buying white owls because that is Harry’s owl in the movie. We’ve seen boarding school registrations sky-rocketing in England because Harry goes to a boarding school. So we have numerous examples of this copycat behavior. And the obvious question is, where is that going to stop? Isn’t it possible that kids out there are also copying and wanting to redo the stuff they are seeing in the films or reading in the books? And we have examples of that too. That’s all I’m saying, is be careful and don’t think that your children might not copy what they are seeing and might not want to emulate their hero and the things he is doing. Obviously, I’m not talking about flying on a broomstick, or making a pineapple dance across a table. People often hear what I say and they think, “That is so stupid of you.” But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about real stuff that real kids can really copy, and that’s what the problem is. CBN.com: In your book you discuss the authors of these three different series, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling. How are these authors different? ABANES: Tolkien and Lewis, of course, were devout Christians. J.K. Rowling does not seem to be. In fact, we have no statements from her at all that would indicate that she has made a profession for Christ, that she defines God the same way that Christians define God, or that she views Jesus Christ in the same way. There is nothing. We also have moral relativism in her books, meaning if it feels good do it, as opposed to a biblical kind of morality that is throughout the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings. We see issues in those two series such as forgiveness, repentance, sacrifice, and these types of things. We might see some symbolism in the Harry Potter books that might be able to be interpreted -- if you pushed it -- in some sort of Christian way, but these same symbols also have occult and pagan meanings to them. Within the framework and the context of Harry Potter we see that this is probably what she is dealing with. There is this whole movement within Christianity where people are trying to say that the Harry Potter books are Christian novels. And that is just untrue. You can’t interpret it that way. That is not the context of the story. That’s not what Rowling is in her real life and what she is trying to put across. And what is interesting is that these people who are saying that the Harry Potter books are Christian, are interpreting all these symbols in a Christian way, but in the exact opposite way that J.K. Rowling has herself explained. So they are contradicting the author herself, which is sort of silly. CBN.com: What is your advice to parents about this? How should they approach the Harry Potter series? ABANES: I would say first of all, I am not for book banning or book burning. I want to be really clear about that. I believe that parents need to simply have the right information before them, good solid facts about what is and what is not in the books, and then look to their kids and think about the child’s maturity level, whether the child tends to copy what they see, the age of the child, and then also how rooted and grounded that child may be in their faith. Once they get up into late teens and early adults, it is not really an issue anymore. I’m mostly concerned about kids who are as young as five and six years old who are being read these books and up into the early adolescent years. So I guess the simple answer would be that they need to know their kids and get involved and not just think here is a nice thick book that I can throw at them and have them read it for the next few hours. They need to be involved. CBN.com: Do you think that a lot of parents are unaware at how easy it is to get books on witchcraft and spells, many of which are located right next to the Harry Potter books at bookstores? ABANES: Absolutely. I don’t think parents understand first of all what is in Harry Potter. Secondly, I don’t think parents understand how closely what is in Harry Potter mirrors what is in the real world, and then how the real world books are being sold right up next to the Harry Potter books. There is this crossover where the Wiccans know it, the occultists know, the practitioners of all these things know it, and they are using that curiosity that kids have for all of this stuff now through Harry Potter to attract readers to their real world how-to manuals. I think many parents just don’t get that. They don’t understand. CBN.com: What do you hope to see accomplished through this book? ABANES: My goal is to cancel out the extremist views on Harry Potter and fantasy in general. I want people to know that there are concerns and dangers with fantasy literature, that we need to be careful, but at the same time fantasy can be wonderful for kids and is needed for kids. If we can find a middle of the road balance, that is what is most important. We need to not just cut everything out but to take care to look at what is good fantasy and what is bad fantasy. That is why I give examples of both kinds and explain them so parents can make a good decision. "Harry Potter Sparks Rise in Satanism in Children" https://entertainment.theonion.com/harry-potter-books-spark-rise-in-satanism-among-childre-1819565664 Lock Haven, PA, July 26, 2000 Ashley Daniels is as close as you can get to your typical 9-year-old American girl. A third-grader at Lock Haven Elementary School, she loves rollerblading, her pet hamsters Benny and Oreo, Britney Spears, and, of course, Harry Potter. Having breezed through the most recent Potter opus in just four days, Ashley is among the millions of children who have made Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire the fastest-selling book in publishing history. And, like many of her school friends, Ashley was captivated enough by the strange occult doings at the Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry to pursue the Left-Hand Path, determined to become as adept at the black arts as Harry and his pals. "I used to believe in what they taught us at Sunday School," said Ashley, conjuring up an ancient spell to summon Cerebus, the three-headed hound of hell. "But the Harry Potter books showed me that magic is real, something I can learn and use right now, and that the Bible is nothing but boring lies." Ashley is hardly the only child rejecting God these days. Weeks after the release of Goblet, the fourth book in J.K. Rowling's blockbuster kid-lit series, interest in witchcraft continues to skyrocket among children. Across America, Satanic temples are filling to the rafters with youngsters clamoring for instruction in summoning and conjuring. Over protests from Christian Right leaders, who oppose the books for containing magic—and, by extension, Satanic religious beliefs—millions of children are willing their bodies and souls to Lucifer in unholy blood covenants. In 1995, it was estimated that some 100,000 Americans, mostly adults, were involved in devil-worship groups. Today, more than 14 million children alone belong to the Church of Satan, thanks largely to the unassuming boy wizard from 4 Privet Drive. "The Harry Potter books are cool, 'cause they teach you all about magic and how you can use it to control people and get revenge on your enemies," said Hartland, WI, 10-year-old Craig Nowell, a recent convert to the New Satanic Order Of The Black Circle. "I want to learn the Cruciatus Curse, to make my muggle science teacher suffer for giving me a D." "Hermione is my favorite, because she's smart and has a kitty," said 6-year-old Jessica Lehman of Easley, SC. "Jesus died because He was weak and stupid." But as wild as children are about Harry, no one is happier about the phenomenon than old-school Satanists, who were struggling to recruit new members prior to the publication of the first Potter book in 1997. "Harry is an absolute godsend to our cause," said High Priest Egan of the First Church Of Satan in Salem, MA. "An organization like ours thrives on new blood—no pun intended—and we've had more applicants than we can handle lately. And, of course, practically all of them are virgins, which is gravy." With membership in Satanic temples reaching critical mass in some areas, many children have been forced to start their own organizations to worship the Lord Of Lies. Houston 11-year-old Bradley Winters, who purchased Goblet Of Fire with his own allowance money at the stroke of midnight on July 8, organized his own club, Potterites To Destroy Jesus, with his neighborhood pals. An admission fee of $6.66 grants membership to any applicant willing to curse the name of God and have a lightning bolt carved into his or her forehead with an iron dagger. "The Harry Potter books are awesome!" Winters said. "When I grow up, I'm going to learn Necromancy and summon greater demons to Earth." It's more than just the kiddie set and Satanists, however, who are rejoicing over Harry's success. Educators nationwide are praising the books for getting children excited about reading. "It's almost impossible to find a book that can compete with those PlayStation games, but Harry Potter has done it," said Gulfport (MS) Middle School principal Frank Grieg. "I have this one student in the fifth grade who'd never read a book before in his life. Now he's read Sorcerer's Stone, Prisoner Of Azkaban, Chamber Of Secrets, Goblet Of Fire, The Seven Scrolls Of The Black Rose, The Necronomicon, The Satanic Bible, The Origin Of Species—you name it." Less pleased are Christian leaders, who see Pottermania as a serious threat to their way of life. "Children are very impressionable," said Dr. Andrea Collins of Focus On Faith, a Denver-based Christian think-tank and advocacy group. "These books do not merely depict one or two uses of magic spells or crystal balls. We're talking about hundreds of occult invocations. The natural, intuitive leap from reading a Harry Potter book to turning against God and worshipping Satan is very easy for a child to make, as the numbers have shown." "These books are truly magical," Collins added, "and therefore dangerous." But such protests are falling on largely deaf ears, especially in the case of Harry's creator. "I think it's absolute rubbish to protest children's books on the grounds that they are luring children to Satan," Rowling told a London Times reporter in a July 17 interview. "People should be praising them for that! These books guide children to an understanding that the weak, idiotic Son Of God is a living hoax who will be humiliated when the rain of fire comes, and will suck the greasy cock of the Dark Lord while we, his faithful servants, laugh and cavort in victory."
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