Harry Haters

by Travis

We’ve had a good amount of discussion here about the term “fundamentalism” as it applies to Christian anti-Potter crowd. There’s been some disagreement about what the term means. This post might help clarify what I mean when I use the term. Some time ago, I began writing some satire of fundamentalism at my other site. In one of those satires, I wrote the following. The scene takes place as the pastor of a fundamentalist church (“Pastor Funk”) has made a house call to try to evangelize “Fred” -

“I see that there’s a copy of Harry Potter on your bookshelf,” Pastor Funk said. “Did you know the Bible says that witches should be killed? Did you know that there really are demons, and that witches are always conjuring up demons, and that if your children continue to read books influenced by the occult, you could bring demonic influence into this very house?” …

“Here’s a few gospel tracts about the evils of Harry Potter….”

Fred glanced over at his book shelf. Six Harry Potter novels were neatly stacked there…but wait…did he just see one of them move a little? No, his eyes were playing tricks on him. But then again, he and his wife had just finished reading the series to the boys for the third time, and the boys were acting very oddly lately. Chuck, in his last hockey game, had accidently shot the puck into his own goal. And Bill had spilled milk on the floor three times this week. Could demons be turning them into little mentally deranged boys who couldn’t perform simple tasks?

Alas, my satire has become reality. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone went undercover at a “Christian” retreat of a very popular, nationally-known church, and the retreat’s leader (Fortenberry) told the following story:

Fortenberry told a story about a nephew of his who called him up one night. “Both of his kids had fallen on the ground in respiratory distress, half-conscious, writhing around, gasping for air,” Fortenberry said. “And I said to my nephew, I said, ‘It isn’t something they’ve done. It’s something you’ve done.’ ”

The crowd murmured in assent.

“I told my nephew to look around the house,” Fortenberry continued. “I said, ‘Do you have a copy of Harry Potter?’ And he said yes. And I said, ‘That’s your problem.’ So I told him to go get that copy of that book, tear it in half and throw it out the window. So he does it, and guess what? Both of those kids stood up completely recovered, just like that.”

He snapped his fingers, indicating the speed with which the kids had jumped up in recovery. The crowd cooed and applauded. I frowned, wondering for a minute what life must be like for a person mortally afraid of toothless commercial fairy tales. It struck me that Phil Fortenberry’s nephew was probably more afraid of Harry Potter than Macbeth, which to me said a lot about this religion and about America in general.

Scary.

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