_Harry Potter and the Bible_

[Penny & Bryce Linsenmayer]

No: HPFGUIDX 17415

Hi --

I was hoping someone would report in on whether this book was trash or
at least worth reading for an intellectual exercise.  Sounds like the
former from Dave's comments!  I'd been toying with ordering it (doesn't
it say something that the brick & mortar bookstores don't carry it
in-stock .... will only "special -order" it?  At least that's the case
in Houston, and I imagine that it's true elsewhere if true in Texas,
home of the Bible Belt).

Dave -- please write a review over on Amazon as the "good" reviews were
outweighing the "this is a load of garbage" reviews the last time I
checked.


> One thing maybe you can help me with: He concedes that
> some Christian leaders think the persecution of Harry is
> silly, but he says that any "expert" on the occult would
> recognize what a threat the Harry books are to the
> salvation of mankind.  My suspicion is that he
> is engaging in "Argument by Definition" (i.e. he
> defines an "expert" on the occult as one who sees
> advocacy of it in the books), but can anyone here point to
> any article online by a Christian leader who speaks
> intelligently about the vast gulf between occultism and
> the Hogwarts universe?

Have you checked out the articles on the HP Culture & Religion site?
Here's the URL:

http://www.cesnur.org/recens/potter_00.htm

This has a nice selection of articles that might be useful.  One that
comes to mind in particular is:

http://www.cesnur.org/recens/potter_016.htm
First Things Endorses HP (written by conservative Catholic theologian)

Peg Kerr has cited the above article before, and I concur with her that
it's really well-written, authoritative & a nice refutation of some of
the common religious criticism of the series.

There are other articles on that website that would help you, but I'd
start with that one!

Penny



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