Over at Christianity Today, it’s time for this year’s Harry Potter Smackdown!
It begins with the positive review of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at CT Movies, alongside an article called “Redeeming Harry Potter.”.
Then, the letters start pouring into the CT Mailbag.
In this corner… Doug Kimball!
“Thanks for your thoughtful article, ‘Redeeming Harry Potter.‘Â As Christians, we should be quick to embrace/discern the good and to recognize/avoid the evil. Armed with such resources as your article, Christian teens and adults can help nonbelievers who have experienced Pottermania to (better) see the truth of Christ.”
And in this corner… Mary Ellen Mattern!
“I am thankful that you have had such negative response about Harry. Witchcraft is always an abomination to the Lord. There are no good witches. You are flipping good and evil. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe does not make witches the good guys. Harry does. Please consider the penalty in the Old Testament for this abomination. This is serious stuff.”
Meanwhile off to the side … our good friend Peter T. Chattaway considers Mary Ellen’s assertion that Harry Potter offends Old Testament standards. He responds in his email to me this morning:
“I wonder if Mary Ellen Mattern … realizes that the good guys in the Narnia books practise astrology and dance with maenads and Bacchus himself in a bacchanal. I believe the Old Testament had penalties for these abominations, too.”
And another friend replies:
“Boy, Mary Ellen, if we are going by the Old Testament penalities, we are all in trouble. Disobey mom and dad? Death!”
Hogwash. The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings treat witchcraft as an evil or a force to be fought. In the Potter flicks, witchcraft is a force that can be used for good and needs to be learned! Heaven forbid! Have you lost your minds? You need discernment and I pray that you will reconsider your stance.
Isn’t Gandalf a wizard? Isn’t the stone table cracked because of “Deep Magic”? In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader isn’t there a wizard’s daughter who marries Caspian himself?
Actually, Caspian marries the daughter of a star, i.e. one of those lights in the sky. When Eustace says that stars, in our world, are only flaming balls of gas, Caspian’s father-in-law replies, “Even in your world, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”
So make what you will of that!
About time Harry got a lightsaber.
fiddler on the roof?
Nicholas Nickleby
Fannie and Alexander
Oooooooh…. good guess, Gary. Very clever. But nope, not quite.
Ahhh, which one is “not quite”?
Nicholas Nickleby was a great guess, because of the double Nicks in it.
But no… neither guess has any direct connection to the right answer.
Nicholas Cage film?
Life is Beautiful?
I wanna say Ragtime.
Maybe “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” is the clue…
Midsummer Nights Dream
The Reverend has it.
Nick Bottom, played by Kevin Kline, in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
I’d like to thank the academy.
Congrats CR! Personally, I thought it was from “Top Secret!” But I was disqualified.
So, does that mean the next clue will either be “Cubicle” or “Reverend”?
actually it’ll be Horace, but don’t tell anyone.