August 1, 2004
HOW MUCH MORE CHRISTIAN COULD HARRY POTTER GET?:
(via The Mother Judd):
'Harry Potter' Inspires a Christian Alternative (DINITIA SMITH, 7/24/04, NY Times)
G. P. Taylor, an Anglican vicar, onetime roadie for the Sex Pistols and former all-around sinner, was roaring across the Yorkshire moors on his Yamaha XV1100 in a lightning storm when the idea for his hit Christian children's book, "Shadowmancer," came to him.Posted by Orrin Judd at August 1, 2004 6:47 AMLike some other committed Christians, he had been disturbed by the amount of witchcraft and the occult in children's literature. "Harry Potter," for instance. The best-selling author J. K. Rowling gives too much power to the forces of evil in her books, he told parishioners. Well, one congregant replied, why not write your own book then?
So Mr. Taylor created a story deeply imbued with Christian imagery and set on the 18th-century Yorkshire coast in Britain with its rugged cliffs, hidden caves and smuggler's legends. It is about an evil vicar, Obadiah Demurral, who tries to take over the world but is thwarted by three teenagers and a smuggler.
When "Shadowmancer" was first published in Britain last year, it was soon dubbed the Christian alternative to "Harry Potter" and surged to the top of the paperback best-seller list, outranking its secular rivals, the "Harry Potter" books, for 15 weeks in a row. And in May when "Shadowmancer" was published in the United States by G. P. Putnam's Sons, it beat "Harry Potter" for six weeks straight on the children's chapter-book best-seller list of The New York Times. There are 300,000 copies in print, and now booksellers are eagerly expecting a similar success when the sequel, "Wormwood," is published here in September. [...]
Yet Mr. Taylor, who says he was influenced by the X-rated rapper Eminem as well as Jesus, insists he didn't set out to write a book against "Harry Potter." He has never even read the "Potter" books, he says, though he has seen the films. "I liked parts of them," he said on the telephone from Yorkshire, "though I found some of them theologically a bit difficult to handle."
" `Shadowmancer' isn't an alternative to `Harry Potter,' " he says, adding that he was simply writing "as a Christian."
And meanwhile others are celebrating Lord of the Rings for its lack of religion... it's called allegory, folks.
Posted by: mike earl at August 1, 2004 9:41 AMLOTR is full of religion, it's just subtle. Gandalf refers frequently to providence and divine intervention in Middle-earth.
It helps to have read The Silmarillion, which explicitly lays out Tolkien's whole world beginning from its creation by Eru. The Elves are very religious, but the Hobbits mostly seem to be not aware of a spiritual world.
Posted by: Kay at August 1, 2004 10:05 AMIt also helps to have read Tolkien's own commentary on his work -- a good source of this is The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. He conceived of his world as pre-Christian but monotheistic, explained the Christian imagery behind many of his devices (the lembas as a kind of Host, Galadriel as a penitent like Mary Magdalene, and so on).
Posted by: Andrea Harris at August 1, 2004 10:37 AMWow, 300,000 copies of 'Shadowmancer' in print...
J.K. Rowling is surely shaking in her boots.
Sarcasm aside, that is a spectacular success.
Just not anywhere near 'Potter'-sized.
Jury's out on Shadowmancer. But if it shows either of the following indicators, raise a red alarm flag:
1) It's marketed as "Just like Harry Potter, but CHRISTIAN!"
2) It's distributed primarily or totally within the Christian ghetto of Christian bookstores.
Too much "contemporary Christian writing" are badly-written knockoffs of whatever was popular six months ago with lotsa Bible quotes and an altar call at the end. Thematic to the point of being cheap propaganda worthy of Stalin-era Pravda, as well as the quality of "Eye of Argon". Marketed entirely by a parallel publishing/distribution industry entirely within the Christian ghetto with no crossover to the larger mainstream audience, preaching endlessly to the choir in Christianese.
And it's not just me. I belong to a Christian writer's group trying to break this pattern with little success, I've read the newsletters over at hollywoodjesus.com, and Steve Taylor ("Meltdown at Madame Tussaud's") wrote extensively on similar subjects in his essay "Minister or Entertainer?" at www.youthspecialties.com .
Posted by: Ken at August 2, 2004 12:20 PM