AM: Let’s get this question out of the way first. Do the Harry Potter books promote occultism, Satanism, and witchcraft?
CN: No.
AM: Why do so many people think they do?
CN: Those who come from an occult background, or who are well versed in the occult, can read these stories and find elements that really do correlate to real occult practices. For example, an interview on NPR with J. K. Rowling has been misquoted repeatedly in the Christian community. Diane Rehm said, "Now you have obviously done a lot of research, and there are some very detailed mythologies and folklore in these books." Rowling says, "Yes, I did a lot of research. About two-thirds of what I have written is my own invention, but about a third of what I incorporated into these stories was from the folklore of Britain—things people used to believe really worked." In the Christian community, as this has been communicated, people have been saying, "She admits that she studied witchcraft and the occult!"
That is not what she said. What you have here is someone who has drawn heavily on British folklore and mythology. And if you look at the mythology and the folklore and the literature of Britain, you see many references to magic, wizards, witchcraft, spells, and those sorts of things.
Truth, Lies, and Rumors
AM: You write that many Christians have been duped into spreading lies in the name of Christ.
CN: I think the term "lies" is too harsh, because a lie suggests that you know something is not true. But some people are indeed spreading falsehoods and fear about things that are totally and verifiably untrue.
Let me give you a case in point. A very alarming e-mail went around the Internet that quoted children saying, "I used to believe in what they taught us at Sunday school, but the Harry Potter books showed me that the Bible is nothing but boring lies." A quote from someone identified as a Satanist credits the Potter books with bringing his church 14 million new applicants, mostly children. A quote attributed to J. K. Rowling had her saying, "I think it’s absolute rubbish to protest children’s books on the grounds that they are luring children to Satan. People should be praising them for that." Really horrific statements! Some well-meaning Christians ran across this article and didn’t realize that it was a parody from The Onion, a satirical newspaper and web site that was making fun of fears within the Christian community. Every bit of that article was untrue, fictitious, and really ludicrous. It has been dismissed on TruthorFiction.com. But how do you stamp out a false rumor?
AM: It’s almost impossible in the Information Age.
CN: Christians are now spreading this parody on the Internet with their own scriptural commentaries on how we need to stand for truth. Yet the people who are spreading it haven’t checked it out to even make sure it’s true! So we are losing whatever shred of credibility we may have left.
AM: How has the secular press portrayed Christians who spread rumors and make wild claims about the books?
CN: They are totally making fun of us. The secular media purposely go out and get people who had never read a Harry Potter book—who are therefore experts!—and let them say, "Well, I’m not saying that all the kids who read Harry Potter will go out and kill their classmates, but you know, it only takes one, and these Harry Potter books—look at what they are teaching." And the world is laughing at us. They’re lampooning us. Christians aren’t even in the dialogue any more. We’re completely dismissed.
Literary Matters
AM: In your book, you describe the difference between the literary magic of a fantasy world and corresponding real-world occult practices that the Bible forbids.
CN: In order to communicate with the world, we have to make sure that we’re not forcing our personal interpretations on our whole society. And that’s what I think has been going on with Harry Potter. Some Christians read the Potter books and define the terms Rowling uses from sources outside the story, as if they were equal to real-world occult practices.
It’s one thing to say, "I personally choose not to read Harry Potter because to me, this equates to real witchcraft, and therefore I want nothing to do with it." But we step over the line when we say, "Because I think the Potter books equate to real world witchcraft, I insist that everyone else adopt my interpretation—even though the author has made clear that she did not mean it as real-world witchcraft." They take the view that the Potter books are promoting real occultism to everyone who reads them.
AM: And that puts people off.
CN: Yes. I want to try to create for people an understanding of how offensive it is to insist that everyone else adopt their interpretation of literature. Let’s say that maybe your church produces A Christmas Carol, the Dickens classic. What if someone told you, "Now, I have never read A Christmas Carol, but I have seen enough clips of the film to know it is absolutely evil. I saw Ebeneezer Scrooge conversing with the spirit of a dead man. I saw for myself that he astrally projects out of the window. I saw Scrooge in a graveyard, and that hooded figure with him was a spirit who had taken him into the future and shown him his own grave, and that’s divination. Deuteronomy 18 forbids divination. How can you as a Christian say that this has anything to do with Christmas?"
You may respond by saying, "Wait, the story is about redemption! It’s about loving before it’s too late!" The story is good—in every sense of the word—even though it is set entirely within supernatural elements forbidden in the Bible.
So how would we respond to critics? Would we say, "Divination and speaking to the dead are no big deal"? No. We say, "I understand that these spirits and supernatural powers are merely literary devices used by the author to tell a story, not a subtle attempt to lead unsuspecting children into occult practices."
AM: This seems to be a difficult concept for Christians to grasp—even Christians who enjoy fantasies by religious authors.
CN: People have said over and over again that kids should read C. S. Lewis’s Narnia stories and J. R. R. Tolkien instead of Harry Potter. I love Lewis’s work, but again, the question is, "How do you interpret a fantasy or any piece of literature that is fiction?
When C. S. Lewis was asked about elements within a work of fiction, he said, "Within a given story any object, person, or place is neither more nor less, nor other, than what that story effectively shows it to be." If you go with that interpretation, you are saying, "OK, I understand that the author has created a fantasy world, and I am going to get my definitions from within the story."
By the way, I talked by e-mail with Lewis’s stepson, Douglas Gresham. He said that much of the response that we’re seeing to Harry Potter is similar to what Lewis received when The Chronicles of Narnia first came out. Christians attacked him. They said his stories were filled with witchcraft. They feature gods and goddesses, spirits of trees, and river gods.
AM: I’ve heard some pretty sophisticated arguments addressing this embarrassing problem.
CN: So have I. In comparing the two pieces of literature, some people will say, "We condemn Harry Potter because the characters on the side of good practice witchcraft, suggesting that witchcraft is acceptable." There’s also the complaint that the Potter books bring in elements of astrology, the use of crystal balls, and spell casting. But all of these elements are also in the Narnia books! In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of the good characters, a little girl named Lucy, casts a spell to make invisible creatures visible again. Now, what is the literal interpretation of that? That you can do spells as long as they are the "right" spells, and you cast them under Jesus’ authority?
This is what I am challenging people to think through. If we apply the same kind of censorship to other pieces of literature as we do with Harry Potter, where does it stop? If you say, "I will not read a story that has any wands or spells," then you have to get rid of over two-thirds of classic children’s literature, including Cinderella, Peter Pan, and Beauty and the Beast.
Disputable Matters
AM: Let’s talk about what the New Testament writers call "disputable matters," where spiritual and cultural issues overlap. Does reading the Potter books fall into this area?
CN: This question, too, has become a disputable matter! It’s quite intricate, spiritually. I did my Bible exegesis on this. I took it to my pastor, and I double-checked it with men of God whose wisdom I trust.
Look at the dispute in 1 Corinthians 8 and in Romans 14. These people were living in a pagan culture; most had engaged in idolatrous religious practices before they became Christians. The dispute arose because the pagans would take an animal to the temple and have it butchered by the temple priests. They would then sacrifice the meat to their god. Then they brought it home, and if they were having a barbecue and inviting their friends, they would cook that meat. So the question arose: "Wait a minute! If you eat meat that was sacrificed to an idol, have you committed idolatry?"
The early Christians asked Paul, "Tell us what to do. Settle this dispute." Paul basically said, "It depends on what it means to you." Some people were saying, "Hey, I don’t believe in idols; there is only one true God. I don’t believe that statue is a god, so to me it is nothing. So I can eat this meat, and even eating it shows that I am free in Christ." Other Christians really believed that idols were dangerous. Paul says elsewhere (1 Corinthians 10:20-21) that if you go into a temple, sit down with idolaters, and eat meat offered to idols, you have just sat down with demons because there is real demonic power behind the idolatry.
So Paul gave them some guidelines. He said, "Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind." If, to you, eating this meat involves you in idolatry, the Bible says you shouldn’t do it. Romans 14:22-23 says, "Happy is he who has no reason to judge himself for what he approves. But he who has doubts is condemned, if he eats, because he does not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin."
The similarity with the Potter books is this: Reading Harry Potter is not practicing witchcraft. But it’s doing something closely associated by some with the practice of witchcraft.
If reading the Potter books represents real-life witchcraft to you, and you read them anyway, you are in sin because in your own heart you just sinned. But if reading them doesn’t represent real witchcraft to you, you are free in Christ to read them. As long as parents are able to distinguish the fantasy witchcraft and wizardry of Hogwarts as being separate and distinct from occult practices forbidden by the Bible, these stories can be taken as classics of good versus evil.
But then another question arises: Will people think you are condoning witchcraft because you read Harry Potter? Paul’s answer is, If your brother or sister has a weakened conscience and isn’t quite sure that eating meat sacrificed to an idol is permissible, and you sit down and say, "Here, have a bite; it’s great," and that person knows you are a Christian, he might be emboldened to do what for him is a sin. Then the one who is free in Christ just sinned, not in committing idolatry, but in causing a brother or sister to stumble into a offense for them.
AM: So you’re saying those who feel spiritually freed to read the Harry Potter books should go ahead and read them in private, but—
CN: In general, I think it means that you don’t flaunt your freedom. Christians who love Harry Potter should not be going out and in a mixed group and saying, "Oh, the Harry Potter books are excellent! I don’t know what these critics are talking about." That’s a lack of love and a lack of discretion.
I love the verse in Galatians (5:13-14) that says "For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do no use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’"
AM: You write that the only position that cannot be upheld by Scripture is to judge, look down upon, or condemn another Christian for coming to a conviction regarding a cultural matter that is different from yours.
CN: Yes. I met a woman who was part of a group of self-proclaimed "good moms" who have not read Harry Potter. They had decided they would not speak to mothers who have read Harry Potter to their kids.
Read Romans 14! Paul says, "Stop judging each other." He addresses his statements to both sides and says, in effect: "All of you stop acting as though you are the arbiter of God’s will on this." He says we are to make sure that we are acting with love toward people around us who are more sensitive to this issue than we are. But beyond that, hold to your own convictions.
Obviously, we must not disregard or disobey God’s direct commands, such as the clear dictates that we are not to practice witchcraft, divination, sorcery, and the like. But in subjective matters, including whether it’s okay to read a story with such references, we must employ personal discernment. If you think reading Harry Potter is wrong, don’t slide on that because another friend whom you really respect, whom you know is a good Christian, happens to feel particularly free to read Harry Potter. And if you know that God has allowed you to read these books with your children in a way that is then helpful to them, and if you know before God you have a clear conscience, don’t slide to the middle.
In my book I try to help readers see that good Christians can come down either way on the Potter books. We need to understand how this is possible so we can continue to be unified even though we disagree on the interpretation of the stories. Bottom line: The people who are calling other Christians names and attacking the reputation of other believers because they take a different stand on this, they are in sin. In Galatians 5 (14-21), God puts strife, selfishness, enmity, anger, and disputes in the same category as sorcery. Fighting against one can never justify engaging in the others.
Addressing the Occult
AM: In your book, you say that that parents have to be aware of their child’s susceptibility to the occult, and that the Potter books could be more spiritually dangerous for some people than others.
CN: Yes. This is one issue you can’t leave to someone else. You can get your moorings from other people who have looked at these stories, but you need to take this on for your own children because even if you don’t read the books to them, they have so overwhelmed the culture.
There are some scary things in these books. You have to help your child process what is being talked about. If your child has a proclivity for the occult, then by all means, restrict Harry Potter. You need to, prayerfully, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, make a decision that is right for each of your children. You must take into account their age, their spiritual sensitivities, and their emotional maturity. Do they even have the capacity yet to sort out fantasy from reality? Do they understand that what is fantasy in Harry’s world, and is okay there, would always be wrong if it was done in our world? You have to be at a certain developmental level to make that distinction.
AM: The Potter books remind us that occultism exists in the real world. How do we protect children from it?
CN: Many parents have told me that they are not sufficiently biblically competent to teach their own children the basics of the battle between good and evil in the real spiritual realm. My book shows parents how—one chapter is written in "kidspeak" to be read by parents to their children.
The bottom line is, we want to make sure that the kids we love don’t get misled into thinking witchcraft is cool in our world, or into actually practicing some of these things that God forbids and thereby opening themselves up to real spiritual forces of darkness. So parents need to teach their kids the basics of the spiritual war that we are in.
We must teach them that God has not given us the "spirit of fear, but of love, and power, and sound judgment." That "greater is he who is in us that he who is in the world." First Thessalonians says the Lord will protect us from the evil one. We need to help our kids memorize those Scriptures and understand them. And then we need to say to them, "Here is a list of what God says you should never, ever do, even though kids might do those things in Harry Potter’s world."
By the way, the evil villain in Harry Potter is very much akin to what the Bible describes as true evil. If kids have read Harry Potter, tell them, "If you engage in the things that God forbids in our world, that would be like making yourself vulnerable to Voldemort in Harry’s world." And they won’t want to do that.
The Model of Daniel
AM: You point to the biblical Daniel as an example of someone who immersed himself in a pagan culture and yet kept himself from sin.
CN: Yes. We don’t like the fact that we live in a culture where we are inundated with occult influences. Kids are doing Tarot cards in school for fun. I recently pointed my children to the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament. He was taken away from his family when he was an adolescent and put into a completely pagan culture. He was sent to a school where they trained all the magicians and sorcerers, the seers, the wise men, and the astrologers. Daniel not only learned the culture’s language and literature, he was at the top of his class.
Now, many of the subjects he studied involved practices that were forbidden by God. He learned them, but in real life, he never, ever, looked to an occult source for his power. When the king looked to his astrologers and magicians for an interpretation of a dream, they couldn’t help him. And then Daniel stepped up. He didn’t say, "I can do it because I learned better than these guys." Instead, he said, "No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery which the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven Who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days" (Daniel 2:27-28).
While reading and understanding pagan literature, Daniel did not defile himself because he was completely devoted to God. He and his friends were not afraid to read literature that resounded in the hearts of the people with whom they lived. The cultural appetite for the supernatural showed the people’s deep need and desire for true supernatural power. God put Daniel there to be a light in the darkness—and he was. He used his familiarity with this pagan culture to reveal the true and living God.
His example shows that it’s possible for some believers to be educated in the stories of popular culture without violating God’s commands.
AM: How can we train our children to be like Daniel—to be in the world, but not of it?
CN: When children are babies, we have to keep them in a playpen, but at some point, we have to allow them to venture out into the world. As we do that, more and more, we have to remove the external walls that just forbid, forbid, forbid. We have to build up the personal, spiritual armor. Building that armor is teaching my kids on a heart level to want to honor God no matter what is going on around them, and then to understand the distinctions between the pagan elements of our culture and the Christian elements: what God allows, and what God does not allow, so that they determine in their own hearts, "I will not do witchcraft. I will not defile myself."
AM: How successful have you been?
CN: My son recently wrote an essay on what he learned from Harry Potter. Number one on his list was that he was not to practice witchcraft. How did he learn that from Harry Potter? He learned it because we went through the books together. I had read Deuteronomy 18 to my children and told them: I want you to start discerning every time you read something in these books that relates to something real in our world, and let’s talk about how it’s actually happening among your friends in the real world. Let’s talk about what’s at the heart of it."
My children are not only determined never to touch anything related to the occult; they are well equipped in spiritual warfare. They’re able to warn their friends.
Hiding from the Culture?
AM: Is there a danger in trying to hide our children away from the culture—including the Harry Potter phenomenon?
CN: Parents can’t escape the culture unless we put our kids in a cupboard under the stairs and keep them there with the spiders. People who haven’t read Harry Potter won’t know what I’m talking about, but that’s where Harry started out.
Parents must prepare their kids to handle the culture in such a way that they are not going to be defiled or destroyed. Harry Potter has become very influential in our culture. Ladies Home Journal just did a "Thirty Most Powerful Women" piece, and J. K. Rowling was Number One in the area of influence.
And I want to say to my fellow Christians: God has allowed this! I believe "God causes all things to work together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose." So we Christian parents cannot escape this; our children cannot escape it. They are going to hear these stories. We need to at least know enough of what is in the books that we can help them frame the message.
It’s fine to hold strongly to the conviction that for you, Harry Potter means witchcraft and therefore, you can’t go there. But personally, with my children, I’m seeing the fruit: Not only have I led someone to Christ by discussing these books, my two little kids, ten and twelve, led their friend to Christ. My 16-year-old daughter was able to point a girl away from so-called white witchcraft to the Bible, to God Almighty, and have her really listen.
I believe parents should enforce whatever conclusion they have come to by the leading of the Holy Spirit and much prayer. We need to make sure that our kids understand that not every child who likes Harry Potter is practicing witchcraft—and that Christian families that like Harry Potter are not bad Christians. We need to teach them how to be civil to others and how to show love.
Furthering the Kingdom
AM: Explain how you have used the Harry Potter books to witness to Christ.
CN: I had a parent come to me—his daughter is a good friend of my kids—and he said, "I’m really upset because I heard a Christian on the radio saying you should ban and burn Harry Potter, and I don’t want you to tell my daughter that." I had been trying to witness to this man for three years. Basically, whenever we would try to present the Gospel, his response was, "Oh my, look at the time!" and he was gone. When he made the comment about Harry Potter, I thought, here’s my chance. I said, "I personally enjoy the Harry Potter books, and I have actually found the Gospel in the first story. He looked at me, and he started laughing. He plopped down on my couch, and said, "You finally got me. I have to hear it!"
And so I said to him, OK, look at the story line. You have a wizard who went bad. He came into the wizard world and he had the curse of death. He is wielding this curse of death and everyone is in terror because no one is safe. He uses this curse of death to kill Harry’s dad. He throws the curse of death at Harry, but Harry’s mother jumps in front of this curse. She takes the curse of death, and she dies in Harry’s place. The evil wizard then throws the curse of death at Harry, who is a baby at the time, but something has happened. The curse rebounds on the evil wizard; it breaks his power, and Harry lives. How did he live? His mother laid down her life. She took the curse that was meant for him.
At the end of the story, Harry has a showdown with the evil one—Voldemort—and Voldemort can’t even touch him. Harry says, "Why couldn’t he touch me?" His mentor replies, "Harry, to have been loved as much as your mother loved you, that kind of love stays with you forever, and it gives you protection that remains forever."
Then I said to my friend, Let me tell you another story. There was an angel who went bad; the Bible calls him Lucifer. He tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden. He lured them, they fell, and they sinned. Death entered into the equation, and the curse of death was on all mankind. Everyone lived in fear of death until "God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son," and Jesus laid down his life for us. He jumped in front of the curse of death because the Bible says, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree." Jesus hung on the Cross. He took the curse; he took our sin, and therefore the power of the evil one was broken. We no longer have to live in bondage to this fear of death.
In the Harry Potter books, the kids have to constantly be on guard against an evil one who is now invisible. Real life people have to be on guard against Satan who is now invisible.
A month later, this man’s wife, who was 42, died suddenly of undiagnosed lung cancer. The curse of death came on that family, and in the process of our pastor ministering to him during the funeral, he accepted Christ.
AM: Your experience suggests that, even though the Harry Potter stories were written by an author who doesn’t promote her aims as Christian, we can use them to further God’s kingdom.
CN: Yes. J. K. Rowling has created a body of literature that is consistently moral within the moral world she created. Kids are eager to read about it. And—whether by design, the influence of her literary training, or an undisclosed spiritual training—the moral world of Harry Potter is in keeping with what the Bible reveals about the nature of good and evil. Therefore, we can use these stories for godly purposes—regardless of whether the author intended them to be used for training in Judeo-Christian faith and practice.
AM: Thank you for giving us so much to think about.
Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries
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