His Dark Messages

[Tabouli]

David:
> Grey Wolf and Aberforth's Goat both mentioned the popularity of HP as 
a factor in the hostility to it.<

Ahem.  This is what you get for not bothering to send a correction addendum.  After "(not to mention insanely)" I intended to write "popular".  Because yes, yes, of course the book burners are bothered because of HP's incredible popularity.  This much is obvious.  What interests me, though, is the role of popularity in fervent religious objection: is the level of popularity, in fact, *more* important than the actual content?  Is anything as phenomenally popular as HP by definition suspect?  Is it some native suspicion that only Satan himself could fuel such popularity?  And so on.  What I meant was what David suggested in this:

> Anything which is very popular is therefore for that very reason suspect for some Christians. Even churches that grow very fast come in for this sort of suspicion.<

The charismatic movement, perhaps?  Ahaa and ohoo.  The church my mother used to take us to in Adelaide was a splinter group from a church which went Too Charismatic.  Their view was that any church that embraced such... *oddness* (closing eyes and reaching out to God, singing and dancing, faith healing, speaking in tongues, etc.) could well be straying onto the Path Of Satan.  But I digress.

The Goat:
> However, as a guy who who puts up with long hours
and a low salary to work for a Christian church, I have trouble not
resenting Pullman's wholesale condemnation of his religion.<

Interesting on a few counts.  First, "his" religion?  Is, or was, Pullman a practising Christian?  I vaguely assumed he was raised nominally Christian and rejected Christianity at adolescence or later.  Second, does the fact that he has *written* a trilogy which denounces Christianity as repressive and deluded necessarily mean that he, as a person, denounces it for the same reasons?  (it's the ol' fictional/factual divide again!).  Third, would Pullman's portrayal of Christianity bother you less if you *weren't* working for a pittance for a Christian church?  If, perhaps, you were a senior figure of a different religion?  Hmmm...

The Goat:
> I don't think even CS Lewis communicated such as harsh message through his
portrayal of witches and Tash-worshippers. Yes, those characters do suggest
a basic distaste for non-Christians. However, the condemnation is implicit
and, I think, even subconscious. CSL was not consciously gunning for Wiccans
or even Muslims<

In Australia, at least, Christian bashing is almost a national sport in some circles.  People who proclaim their Christianity, or argue from an explicitly Christian viewpoint (in, say, a letter to the editor in a newspaper) are quite likely to meet with scorn and derision.  Our politicians, unlike US politicians, are apt to *avoid* any mention of God or their own faith, suspecting (probably correctly) that it would undermine public respect for them.  Mind you, this doesn't stop Australians embracing Easter and Christmas (at least in a chocolate eggs and gifts sort of way), and having basically Protestant values underpinning their laws and institutions.

*However*...

Muslim and Wiccan and other religious group bashing is viewed quite differently.  Sure, you get plenty of the ol' "Muslim societies are misogynist" sort of comments in some circles, and plenty of stereotyping, but people are apt to be a little more wary.  Ridiculing Christians is easy to get away with - ridiculing or criticising Muslims, for example, could get you landed with a discrimination suit. I too have mused on this phenomenon, and my suspicion is that here we have another example of the Overdog Syndrome.

Think about it.  Which country is the richest and most powerful and influential in the world?  The US.  Which religion do its televangelists and presidents and most of its populace adhere to?  Christianity.  According to the rules of the Overdog Syndrome, you can be as rude as you like about an ideology or a person or a religion or whatever, *provided* that ideology or whatever Has It Too Good.  Christianity is, generally speaking, an Overdog in the West, and it's OK to be rude about Overdogs (be they women who are too beautiful, or children who are too smart, or people/countries who are too rich and privileged).  They are fair game.  Deriding them is just redressing their unfair privilege.  It's the Underdogs, the people and groups who are oppressed, or powerless, or unsuccessful, or ugly that you're not supposed to ridicule. It's not fair.  They're suffering already.  This is particularly the case in Australia, where there's a bit of an allergy to differences in status (and therefore any high status "tall poppies" get chopped down), but not uncommon in general.

Probably not the only reason for Christian bashing, but in there, I'd say.

The Goat:
> What *does* give some Christians the willies is the feeling that certain
books which don't *appear* to question their faith actually have a hidden,
hostile agenda. Unveiling sinister secrets is something we all find
exciting; it just so happens that some Christians think they've done exactly
that with HP.<

My impression was that the willies factor (!) with HP is its use of characters traditionally associated with evil in Christian lore, namely witches and wizards.  Someone who knows more about history than me would be a better source, but I believe when the Christians conquered and converted the British Isles, one way of turning people away from their pagan and Wiccan practices was turning all their gods and rituals and revered figures into representations of Satan.  The Horned God, evil spirits, practitioners of Satanic rites and so on.  After all, if they're not with God, they had to be against Him, didn't they?

Having seen these evil characters in the books, the Christian williers *knew* JKR was up to no good, and hastened to scrutinise the books for the matching evil messages they were bound to find within.  And seized on the "defying authority" angle, of all things.  Harry does not show Family Values, because he is rude about the Dursleys (bit worrying, this.  Children, obey your father and mother, or guardian substitutes, no matter how vile they are to you?).  Characters are shown Disobeying Adult Authority... without heavy-handed demonstrations of how Bad this is and why it will lead you straight into Hell!

Tsk tsk tsk.

Grey Wolf:
> Also, I missed your "I'm back" post, so this is a but late, but anyway: welcome back, Tabouli. TAGWATCH wasn't the same without you (and lots of minor competitors have popped up here and there in your absence). Hope you had a great time in your world tour.<

Thanks, O wolfish one!  I have cranked up my main list digests again in preparation for my return.  It's just that I feel terribly out of touch with the Bay.  Once I knew its every boat and billow, but now I barely recognise it.  Worse still, once I had all the can(n)ons of LOLLIPOPS at my fingertips, and could defend it valiantly against every slight, but now my Captain's uniform's all... dusty. *Moth-eaten*!  Still, I must say one of today's digests did inspire mild filkiness...

Tabouli.


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