The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling are not only popular with children, they are popular with Christian censors as well. Harry Potter books have consistently been among the most challenged books in schools and libraries for the past several years, according to the American Library Association. Why do so many Christians object to Harry Potter? How have conservative Christians attempted to censor the Harry Potter books and prevent kids from reading them?
Read Article: Christian Censorship of Harry Potter: Schools, Libraries, and Free Speech
I’m always a bit surprised by the objections to HP on religious grounds, at least by Christians, because I think you can read it as a Christian allegory. Certainly you can see HP as a Jesus figure, a baby who is predicted/destined to grow up to be a savior and Voldemort as satan. Of course, many of the other characters and events have other non-christian mythological bases. I’m not sure whether the author meant to do this or whether she was simply making use of the universal theme of good vs. evil. I guess the real objection is the use of magic, which I find ironic. After all, if someone walks on water or turns water into wine, that’s a miracle, but if someone is turned into a toad in HP that’s evil? I just don’t get it.
In the end, the Harry Potter series is just a series of books and movies meant to entertain people. Certainly there are lessons to be learned from it such as standing up for what one thinks is right, valuing one’s friends, etc. I don’t why people take it seriously by claiming it teaching young kids witchcraft. Kids are pretending to run around casting spells; using the imagination is a healthy part of growing up. When these kids grow older they’ll come to realize that everything in these books is fiction.
Since funda-nazis believe in nothing, they need a holy crusade to keep them in trim. If it wasn’t Potter it would be sex education.
I’ve tried the spells in the books. They don’t work. Now we know.
Even your corrupted and limited intellect must tell youATHEISTS that there are many books of fiction out there that lead to moral turpitude and the Gates of Hell.
Why do you hate the world that you would subject young children to eternal damnation?
reasons Harry Potter should be banned
1. God shows us that witchcraft, sorcery, spells, divination and magic are evil.He hates those practices because they blind us to His loving ways, then turn our hearts to a deceptive quest for self-empowerment and deadly thrills. Harry Potter’s world may be real, but the timeless pagan practices it promotes are real and deadly. Well aware that the final result is spiritual bondage and oppression, He warns us:
“There shall not be found among you anyone who… practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord…” Deuteronomy 18:9-12
2. The movie’s foundation in fantasy, not reality, doesn’t diminish its power to change beliefs and values…
“But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.” Jeremiah 7:24
3. Each occult image and suggestion prompts the audience to feel more at home in this setting.Children identify with their favorite characters and learn to see wizards and witches from a popular peer perspective rather than from God’s perspective. Those who sense that the occult world is evil face a choice: Resist peer pressure or rationalize their imagined participation in Harry’s supernatural adventures.
The second choice may quiet the nagging doubts, but rationalizing evil and justifying sin will sear the conscience and shift the child’s perception of values from God’s perspective to a more “comfortable” cultural adaptation. Even Christian children can easily learn to conform truth to multicultural ideals and turn God’s values upside down – just as did God’s people in Old Testament days:
“But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.” Jeremiah 7:24
Apparently a true Cristian(sp) doesn’t know how to spell “Christian”. LOL
“…there are many books of fiction out there that lead to … the Gates of Hell.”
Ah! So many books of fiction lead to fictional places. What a surprise.
@ TRUECRISTIAN
“… foundation in fantasy, not reality, doesn’t diminish its power to change beliefs and values…”
My irony meter just broke.
Truecristian, you gotta alot of nerve questioning our intellect when you’re the one who believes in an imaginary friend. I mean come on!!! It’s just a book. Make-Believe stories to entertain us, like “Alice in Wonderland”, “The Bible” , “The Wizard of Oz”,or “Goin Rogue” by Sarah Palin. Just stories nothing more. No need to be afraid of witches and wizards. They can’t hurt you ,their just pretend. The only thing you should worry about is an overreactive imagination….. and the Bavarian Illuminati.
I tried to read it. I really did.
But I got about five lines into it, and all I saw was “blah, blah blah godblah.”
@ TRUECRISTIAN:
Some of your very own Christians are torturing and killing children because they have been accused of witchcraft. The story was on ABC Nightline some weeks back. You might see if it’s available in their archives. These are fellow Christians in the Democratic Republic Of Africa.
Yes, your fellow believers are also burning alive and torturing adults as so called “witches” in the name of your wonderful god. I’ve seen some sickening and horrific videos of that.
I’m positive none of the principles have read HP. They have read your fairytale book though, and take it as permission for all sorts of horrors. I have not heard of any reader of HP behaving in a like manner, however.
That’s what happens when religious ignorance and zealotry reign over reality. Religion is a kind of insanity, a schism between fantasy and reality. HP or any novel of fiction is just that, fiction, not taken as reality; unlike your Bible.
christians have no right to call anyone else evil not after they spent 1200 years killing anyone whos at all different when they ran out of pagans they turned on the muslams and the jews after they finished in isreal they when after eachother sceaming “witch” and “haritic” christian just like to kill the only thing the bible symbolizes is genocide nothing more
Hey “Yossarian”… don’t think that all atheists are Liberal a**-hats like you… leave your political beliefs to some other blog…