I suspect that this is not. I knew a few folks who were upset by the Narnia series back in the 1970s and the authors of this diatribe talk about their parents being upset by Lewis when the authors were children which would have had to have been prior to Harry Potter.
I would agree that any large movement probably only began after the success of Harry Potter, but I do not think it is accurate to say that such revulsion only began as a reaction to the Harry Potter books.
I go to church once a year, whether I need it or not.
Some years ago at my folk’s Methodist church, the Christmas Eve sermon was entitled “Of Hobbits and Hogwarts” and it was a positive take on the Christ-like qualities of Harry Potter and Frodo.
Part of me was quite bemused by it, but I wasn’t sure it worked for a pastor to be so geekily pop-culture derivative.
I still think that the fad aspect probably is the key factor. Explicit references to spells and witchcraft did not provoke controversy about, say, the TV show Bewitched.
http://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/21815 (Link says that any controversy about Bewitched-- presumably other than the burning “two Darrins” issue-- was cobbled up well after the TV show’s run. Cobbled together after the HP thing started, in fact.)
What’ll provoke a controversy also seems to be something of a crapshoot, though. Anybody remember the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ antipathy to the Smurfs back in the 80s? Sure, I guess you could call Smurfs a fad, so there’s that, but it was more of WTF than anything.
Well, Gandalf used magic to conjure fire on Caradhras, and again to seal the door against the orcs in Moria. Elrond conjured a flood to stop the Black Riders. And Galadriel had her mirror.
How about The Craft? (explicitly non-Christian)
How about Charmed? (Christian-friendly lite)
I don’t remember the howls of condemnation around those, though they’re both stoked with oodles of witchcraft, uppity women, spells, and… one of the Charmed Ones marries a demon…:eek: good times.
What about Supernatural (heavily Christian-influenced)?
Spells, demons, uppity men, hard rock, evil angels, good demons, sex with demons and angels… :eek: When do they come in for some Christian “love”?
And the Vampire Diaries and Buffy and Angel, and… and… etc. Honestly, the fundamentalist occultbusters have more on their hands than they can keep up with…
My priest has definitely used Tolkien references in his sermons. A couple of years ago, he used a bit from the first appearance of Gandalf the White in his Easter sermon.
And my dad was already objecting to both Tolkien and Lewis some time in the 80s. His antipathy towards Harry Potter and D&D is much stronger, though.
It is not entirely clear to me what the fundies believe. Around 1980, when my kids were playing D & D all the time, it became clear that some of them objected because they honestly thought that the kids actually invoking supernatural powers, rather than pretending to. Implicit in a few posts, especially one by puddleglum, would appear to be that fundies believe that magic is actually possible (and genuinely evil). Is this really what they think?
FWIW, I have read LOTR four or five times and, utterly ignorant as I am of Christian theology, I got no whiff of religion from it. I suppose I am just tone-deaf for religion.
When I was growing up and discovered sci-fi, my mother called it escapist (what literature isn’t?)
It was widely predicted I would get over it. Up to age 74 at least, I haven’t.
Wow. I know some REALLY fundamentalist conservative Christians, and while a few object to Harry Potter, all of them are fine with Tolkien and adore CS Lewis.
It’s in there, but it’s awfully subtle. Most of it is grand themes and their interplay, any of which could also show up in non-religious works. And there are a few indirect references to God, though you probably wouldn’t notice any of them without reading the Appendices and/or Silmarillion.
Off the top of my head: “Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker”-- The only being in Tolkien’s legendarium with that level of power and subtlety is God.
Gandalf being sent back into the World, after the fight with the Balrog-- Again, the only being with the power and authority to send him back into the World from outside it would be God.
Gandalf telling the Balrog “I am a servant of the Secret Flame”-- The Secret Flame is the word used in the Silmarillion for the Holy Spirit.
In the appendix on Aragorn and Arwen, Aragorn makes mention of mortality being the One’s gift to humans-- It’s pretty easy to figure out who the One is in this context, but you’d never see it if you just read the main text.
Hari Seldon: I’ve played D&D for 32 years and been an DM most of that time. As far as I can tell, many of the fundies actually believe the books are being used to cast real spells. Chick Publications issued a book on witchcraft in which the author claimed all DMs were actually in contact with demons. Chick also issued a tract, Dark Dungeons, in which a witch used the game to teach real magic to gullible teenagers.
*Legends & Lore *didn’t help matters as that book contained pantheons of gods for characters to worship. Some of the evil dieties required human sacrifice and this got the fundies to howling.
Heh, and recall that that volume was originally entitled “Deities and Demi-Gods”.
Hari Seldon, the fundamentalist fiancee of a ex-co-worker of mine once recounted to me how she had awoken in the night to find a demonic presence in her room. She woke up her flatmate and the two of them prayed until they managed to make it leave. If your worldview allows for such things then it’s a very small step to believing that books of spells can have actual power. (In a way I felt quite sad for her, she was a rather nice lass, and based on what she believed lived in a very dangerous and scary world).
Just wanted to add a tidbit about LOTR: all the religious analysis that I’ve seen of the influence of Tolkein’s Catholicism in the books (and to the skeptics, it’s very much there) highlight that the world of LOTR is “pre-Christian,” i.e. it’s a world that had not yet been saved by the appearance of the Son of God, yet one still featuring a clash of good versus evil consistent with Christian theology.
Of course, to be technical about it, Middle Earth ain’t Earth, but the analogy holds.
Depends what you mean by “technical”. According to Tolkien himself, it is: Middle Earth isn’t an imaginary place; it’s a real place in an imaginary time. And he goes to pains in the books to make it clear that Middle Earth is astronomically identical to our world (though unfortunately his knowledge of astronomy was weak enough that he didn’t do as good a job of this as he should have).
