First of all, thanks guys for such an interesting and well argued thread. It took a good one to drag me out of my seclusion and get me to post here.
As for my contribution to this debate, I think that Lush is on to something here:
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What if, the seeming discrepancy between the way that LotR and Harry Potter are perceived by "concerned" parents might have something to do with the advent of the information age and the way people have reacted to it?
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I think part of the screaming frenzy among certain conservative Christian groups about Harry Potter, and the lack of such a reaction to LOTR has a lot to do with currency (as in the state of being current) and publicity. Harry Potter is a new, intriguing, fascinating phenomenon, and like so many people have pointed out, people are frightened by what they do not understand, in this case, that something is the nature of the magic(k) used in Harry Potter. Since the issue is not whether these Christian groups are right in taking an anti-witchcraft position, but whether such a position applies to the content of Tolkien's works and Rowling's respectively, I'm not going to offer an apology for the Christian position here. But it's easy for someone to understand why, when Harry Potter has a lightningbolt burst of popularity, one could be pressured into taking an extreme position.
Why then, is this not happening with Tolkien? With Return of the King taking so many Oscars this year, it's hard (ok, impossible
) to say it's less popular than Harry Potter. However, it's a lot less recent. Lord of the Rings has been flying just under the radar of public notice for decades now. The "concerned parent" who was quietly exposed to Tolkien twenty years ago need not be nervous about it.
Give Christian (and any other anti-HP) groups a few years. I suspect eventually the liberal and moderate ones will accept Rowling (if they already haven't). The hyper-conservative probably don't like Tolkien either, they've just stopped talking about it.
Sophia