Author Insight: Richard Abanes on Fantasy, Part 2

Richard Abanes, author of The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code and One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church, has written a new book focusing on popular fascination with fantasy in books and movies, Harry Potter, Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings(Harvest House, 2005). Part 1 was posted last week.

What do you think about Christians who say Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is writing in the same vein as C.S. Lewis [Narnia] and J.R.R. Tolkien [Lord of the Rings]?

That’s absolutely false. Absolutely false. For example, [these reviewers] are real big on symbolism. And they say, “This symbol is really a reference to Jesus or is really a reference to the Father or is really a reference to maybe the atonement.” Well, who would know better whether that’s so? J. K. Rowling. So I hunted down, out of dozens and dozens of interviews, what she said about this symbolism, about that theme. What did she say about this character? When you read what she says, they have nothing to do with Christianity. Nothing at all. These other people who are trying to make them Christian are ignoring what she’s saying. And I don’t think that’s fair to her. I don’t think it’s fair to the books. I don’t think it’s fair to Lewis and Tolkien, who really did write from a Christian perspective.

So are the Christians simply engaging in wishful thinking?

I think it’s wishful thinking and selective choosing of facts. For example, you can have someone pick a symbol. These people pick a symbol in Harry Potter and say, “See, this was a symbol for Christ in the Middle Ages.” Is that true? Yes. But it was also a symbol for 10 other things throughout history. And it was a symbol used in pagan lore and witchcraft. So in the context of the story of Harry Potter, you need to allow those symbols to fit into what the backdrop is.

What is going on culturally if people persist in taking that approach? Is it just a desire to be hip?

It is a deep desire to not be viewed as some backward, Bible-thumping fundamentalist wacko. They’re trying to blend in with society, blend in with culture so intensely that they are allowing themselves to not really look at the facts as they stand. And it’s unfortunate because, again, you can’t just make things up as you’re going along.

Whether they are Hindus, astrologers, or even advancers of homosexuality in the church, . . . everyone wants to raise his banner and say, “Harry Potter is really talking about us.” That’s the danger with symbology. It can be made to read anything. That’s why we have to go back to J. K. Rowling, to what has she said, to find the context, and judge it that way.

What about a mature Christian adult picking up Harry Potter and reading it either for entertainment or just to figure out what it’s all about? Do you have any problem with that?

No, have a good time. That’s part of our Christian freedom. My primary concern is not to tell people what they can and cannot read or to ban books or to burn books. I’m just trying to say, “When it comes to your kids—parents, child care workers, church youth pastors—be careful, know what’s in the books, know what’s not in the books, and then make a good decision about specific children.” Studies show young kids are very, very much affected by what they see and hear. Make sure you know what you’re introducing them to before you do so.

Author Insight: Richard Abanes on Fantasy, Part 1

Richard Abanes, author of The Truth Behind the Da Vinci Code and One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church, has written a new book focusing on popular fascination with fantasy in books and movies, Harry Potter, Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings(Harvest House, 2005). Stan Guthrie sat down with him.

Why is the supernatural so big in our culture right now?

Because people are hungry today for the spiritual. People want there to be an afterlife, something beyond this meaningless world that you live through with the wars and the terrorists, and people want to connect. We’re made to be spiritual creatures. We have a longing and desire to connect with the other world, where our Creator is. That’s why you have religion in every culture of every time. People are trying to connect with God. And in this day and age, when there’s so much pressure and things are moving so fast, people are hungry and looking for spirituality, [and for] God their Creator.

Why did you write Harry Potter, Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings?

I’m trying to get balanced information out there about fantasy literature and fantasy movies because they’re big now. And I used Harry Potter, Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings because they’re the most popular right now.

I am a fantasy fan. I love fantasy, I love science fiction, and I basically wanted to say, “Look, there’s good fantasy; there’s bad fantasy. There’s healthy fantasy; there’s harmful fantasy.” And [I wanted to] help parents see the difference between those and how they can tell the difference and make good decisions for their kids.

Do you have a list of good ones and bad ones?

Actually, I use The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings as examples of very, very good fantasy where it uplifts biblical morality and ethics. They give lessons that can be easily transferred from Christianity. And then I talk though something I call the fall of fantasy, where there’s been in recent days a sort of degradation of the literature for kids. In that grouping I would include Harry Potter, Philip Pullman’s trilogy, and R.L. Stine’s material. [I discuss] Stine’s Goosebumps, Fear Street, and all of that because they approach entertaining children in a way that might not be very healthy for some kids, not all kids. It would be too much for them.

So I try to set these principles out and discuss child development issues and how parents can be more careful. That’s really all I’m trying to get across.

What principles guide your discussion? There are people who are critical even of The Lord of the Rings.

I know. That’s one of the reasons I wrote the book. With some fantasy, when it gets too close to real world things and that fantasy line starts being crossed too much, then there’s a danger that kids might start emulating those things they’re seeing that in the real world are not very good.

For example, if we’re going to look at Harry Potter, there’s a lot of discussion of real world occult practices, techniques, things that kids could get information on in a library or bookstore and start emulating. In fact, many occultists and Wiccans are using the popularity of Harry Potter to draw kids to their real world books about witchcraft. They’re seeing the benefits of using fantasy to turn kids in their direction.

Well, The Lord of the Rings provides a lot of the ideas behind fantasy role-playing games that sometimes pique people’s interest in darker things. Somebody could argue the same thing with Harry Potter.

If you go into Tolkien and start messing with it and changing it and expanding it into what you were talking about, that’s one thing. It’s another thing to go into something like Harry Potter and make direct contact with issues like numerology, astrology, clairvoyance, and paranormal incidents. Those have a direct correlation. In other words, you don’t really have to change them at all. When Hermione talks about numerology, that’s what it’s really called in the world. You don’t have to change it. That’s the difference. It’s easier for kids.

One reviewer said that it would be very difficult for a child to read The Chronicles of Narnia and start doing what we see done in there. But it’s far easier to see [children] reading Harry Potter and saying, “Hey, let’s get a book on numerology; let’s get a book on astrology.” It’s much closer.

For whom is this book intended?

This would be primarily for parents with kids and with youth workers, with child care workers, church leaders who have youth groups, and things like this. It’s a helpful guide to knowing what is and what is not in these three most popular series of books.

Next: Part 2

Don’t Rebuild New Orleans

To America’s race-baiters, not even Hurricane Katrina is colorblind. They fault the administration not for bureaucratic bungling, but for a racist hostility to blacks. This goes not just for America’s self-appointed black “spokesmen” such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but for guilty white liberals, too.

Oprah Winfrey, the multimillionaire talk show host, said, “It’s a black thing.” She demanded that the nation, which was busy providing relief, apologize to the victims.

Actor Sean Penn accused team Bush of “criminal negligence.” Bobby Rush, a congressman from Chicago, likened conditions in the New Orleans Superdome to those of slave ships, saying, “If in fact New Orleans were populated by middle-class whites, then you would have seen a far different response.” (Busy faulting Bush, Rush forgot to mention that the person most responsible for the Superdome fiasco is Ray Nagin, the black Democratic mayor of New Orleans.)

Rapper Kanye West said during a benefit concert, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." (West apparently never heard of Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powel, high-ranking blacks who have served Bush with distinction.)

Abandoning his usual caution, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, speaking to the National Baptist Convention of America, noted what he called “the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not.”

Unfortunately, loony conspiracy theories are nothing new for Dean, or for a significant percentage of the nation’s African American community. According to Reuters, “A survey by researchers from Oregon State University and the Rand Corporation released earlier this year found 16 percent of African-Americans thought AIDS was created by the government to control the black population.”

The report went on: “Conspiracy theories also sprouted among Hurricane Katrina evacuees camping out at Houston's Astrodome. Several told Reuters they suspected black residential areas were flooded purposely in an effort to divert water from white housing.”

Such irrational fears play into the hands of a Democratic power structure ever eager for an excuse to bash the president, and looking for ways to keep African Americans on the liberal plantation. They are also a significant hindrance to many African Americans ever getting a realistic shot at the American Dream. While some discrimination still exists, the bigger problem for many blacks is their worldview.

As author Shelby Steele, a scholar who is black, noted years ago in The Content of Our Character, such conspiracy theories are a convenient cop-out on personal responsibility. “When a people of a race or nation are insecure about their ability to thrive in the larger world, they inevitably evolve an identity that allows them to recompose inner fears into external threats,” Steele writes. “It is not that we fear that we can thrive as well as others; it is that others are hostile to us, and we must be tightly unified to defend ourselves.”

Perhaps this dysfunctional group mentality helps explain the otherwise incomprehensible comments from some black leaders pooh-poohing the looting of New Orleans by marauding blacks. (Celine Dion said simply, “Who cares?”)

Such a herd mentality has done little to advance blacks in New Orleans, where they constituted two-thirds of the population. Crime, corruption, and poverty run rampant in the Democratic-run “Big Easy.” Joel Kotkin, writing in OpinionJournal.com, notes that the city of under a half-million was a dead end for its citizens even before Katrina.

“In l920, New Orleans's population was nearly three times that of Houston," Kotkin said. "During the '90s, the Miami and Houston areas grew almost six times as fast as greater New Orleans, and flourished as major destinations for immigrants.”

While I have heard one government official after another vowing to “rebuild” New Orleans, I have yet to hear one displaced resident vowing to return. Here’s hoping that many will escape the city’s dysfunctional culture and start new, more hopeful lives elsewhere.

Whatever the logistical and financial challenges to rebuilding the city, I hope they don’t rebuild it (at least the way it was). The poor people of New Orleans need a fresh start, and many are already availing themselves of it. Perhaps getting out of New Orleans, some for the first time in their lives, will open their eyes to new ways of looking at the world, and at their fellow citizens.

Some already are. Joseph Brant, 36, escaped the city by hitching a ride with compassionate white people. Brant told Reuters, “Before this whole thing, I had a complex about white people. This thing changed me forever.”

An Act of "God"

Hurricane Katrina has caused the president’s bitter opponents to get religion. Judging by their response to the hurricane and its aftermath, they apparently believe W. is able to control the wind and waves, and can choose whether or not to protect helpless citizens from the wrath of nature and their fellow man.

To his critics, W. has become God.

Consider:

· In a commentary entitled, modestly enough, “For They That Sow the Wind Shall Reap the Whirlwind,” a certain Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in the Huffington Post that Bush and now-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour sank the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and, by implication, brought on Katrina: “Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence. . . . Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and—now—Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

· In the Boston Globe, Ross Gelbspan wrote that the “real” name of Katrina is global warming, which has been aided and abetted by “big oil” and the policies of George W. Bush.

· Juergen Trittin, Germany’s environment minister, said, “The American president is closing his eyes to the economic and human costs his land and the world economy are suffering under natural catastrophes like Katrina and because of neglected environmental policies.”

Never mind that responsible scientists are dismissing the supposed link between global warming and Katrina. According to The New York Times:

“Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming.

“But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught “is very much natural,” said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.”

However, that same Times still blames Bush for the nightmare scenario that has unfolded, for the mauraders raping and looting their way through New Orleans and for the slowness of relief to reach victims. Not even bothering to disguise its contempt for the man, the “newspaper of record” sniped on September 1:

“George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.”

More blunt was the mayor of New Orleans, who said he was “pissed” about the federal response. (No wonder the waters have become so foul down there!)

The television news is full of reporters badgering Bush administration officials about why they did not foresee the disaster and why they have not instantly solved this logistical nightmare and stopped the anarchy. Meanwhile, Louisiana officials (and the able-bodied people who chose to ride out the storm) closest to the problem seem to be getting a free pass.

The president’s opponents must think he can simply snap his fingers and make it all better. Actually, while the response has been too slow in some quarters, the federal government and the military (not to mention armies of churches and private aid groups) are working heroically.

About 30,000 National Guard troops have been deployed; several Navy ships have been sent; the EPA is easing rules to allow more gas to be produced; the Transportation Department has dispatched 400 trucks with 5.4 million MREs and 13.4 million liters of water; and we have seen many troops from the Coast Guard pluck thousands from their roofs. Yes, the long job of rescue and rebuilding has barely begun, but it is a start.

We Americans are so spoiled. Rather than take responsibility for our actions, we seem to think it is George W. Bush’s responsibility to clean up our own messes, and that he can do so effortlessly.

The leaders of corruption-ridden New Orleans, seeing the vulnerability of the city, could have evacuated their citizens, built better levees, and protected the surrounding moisture-absorbing wetlands. They didn’t. Rather than admit their abject failures, it’s much more convenient to blame Bush.

He is God, after all.