Christians and Harry Potter

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La Sahwn Barber's doing research for an article about Christians and the Harry Potter franchise.

I discovered the science fiction/fantasy genre of books when I was about seven years old. It was a book about a small town where people kept turning into frogmen. I won't spoil the story for you in case you come across the book yourself. Anyway I was hooked. My dad wasn't too pleased about me reading sci fi/fantasy stuff. He gave the standard it's demonic/evil/witchcraft arguments. I always responded that it was make believe and I knew the difference between what was in the books and what was real life. I also knew the difference between right and wrong.

I was the kind of kid who read the stories and tried to imagine myself in the thick of things. How would I deal with the challenges and conflicts? Would I make the same decisions that the writers had the characters make? How would I express my faith in terms that the characters of the books would understand? You wouldn't believe how much time I put in to thinking about that one. It was good practice for thinking about ways to express faith to different groups of people in the real world. Besides all of that the stories were entertaining.

Now on to Harry Potter (or Harry Pothead as Sis 2 calls him, don't ask me why). I've read the first book and seen all of the movies thus far. I intend to see any other movies made and I'll read the rest of the books at some point. I was already a fan of the sci fi/fantasy genre so I really didn't (and still don't) see the point of the uproar over the books in the Christian community.

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