[The Saucepan Man]

I have come across (and participated in) before arguments on this board concerning the so-called "Un-Christian" values of Harry Potter. The arguments have been pretty well summarised so far on this thread. Ultimately, they boil down to these books' portrayal of witchcraft and the way in which the protagonists are said to "bend the rules" to acheive their (unarguably good) ends.

Now, I have have no particular candle to burn for HP. I have not read the books, although I have seen the films. Then again, I intensely dislike any form of censorship, save where necessary.

It seems to me that the reason that LotR is generally admired among the Christian community, whereas HP has many detractors, is because Tolkien is known to have been writing from a Christian (albeit Catholic) standpoint, and his book enshrines many Christian values.

Yet, when I look at what I know about the HP books, I find that they are generally espousing the same values, even though the writer may not be devoutly religious herself. For me, if you are going to damn one, then you should damn the other for the same reasons. However Tolkien may have portrayed magic, it is magic nevertheless. It may comprise a "power", or some advanced technology, known only to the Elves and the higher beings, but who is to say that the magic used by HP and his chums is not of the same ilk? And Tolkien's characters sometimes acted against traditional patterns, to heroic ends. Bilbo, for example, acted in a way which seems extraordinary to the majority of his fellow Hobbits, and was considered strange in consequence. Yet, we would not condemn him for what he did, and what he achieved.

So, if we are banning HP, should we not be banning LotR too? Mind you, as I understand it, LotR is banned in some communities and schools. I am sure that most, if not all, people here will (like me) find that ridiculous. Just like it was ridiculous for the more extreme proponents of Islam to hand down a death sentence on the author of Midnight's Children. And yet, by the same token, surely it is just as ridiculous to think of banning HP, or to reject it as somehow being dangerous to one's own pattern of faith.