Potter Panic! Revisiting the HP vs. Christianity Controversies

MuggleCast: the Harry Potter podcast

In this week’s MuggleCast, we’re setting book 4 down and picking up on real world controversy that was happening RIGHT as Goblet of Fire was first published, in July of 2000. At issue was whether the series, quickly gaining national publicity in the US, was instructing young readers to take up witchcraft, join the devil and abandon God. It’s HP vs Christianity on MuggleCast 666!

• New episodes of MuggleCast will now be released in full video on our YouTube channel, right when they are released on our podcast feed!
• For today’s Main Discussion, Eric has compiled a PDF of sources from the late 90’s to 2007 news media. The polished PDF is available via this link.
• By July of 2000, Harry Potter had gained massive popularity in the US, and raise alarm bells with some concerned parents.
• Were any of the hosts told not to read the HP books on religious grounds?
• The controversy may be categorized as a moral panic, not unlike the Satanic Panic phenomenon of the 80’s/90’s, which unfortunately had large ramifications.
• Why was HP targeted? And why were evangelicals in particular caught up in it?
• We discuss four main arguments against the Potter books: that they will make children want to do witchcraft or join the occult; that they make children susceptible to evil by downplaying the danger of magic; that the books themselves are intentionally demonic; that the books are just plain immoral! (We find it hard to disagree with the last point).
• Is there any evidence that kids joined the occult after reading the books?
• Years later in 2005, what did Georgia parent Laura Mallory add to the discussion surrounding the books?
• We review our own attempts on MuggleCast to get a hold of Mrs. Mallory.
• As late as 2019, the argument was still being used to ban books. What lessons can we learn from these events?
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• Visit mugglecast.com for transcripts, social media links, our full episode archive, favorite episodes and more!
• A very special thank you to Connie Neal, Judy Bloom, Rainbow Rowell and others for extolling the virtues of the Harry Potter series when we were all children and too young to do so in print media.

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