Answers to the Burning Questions Christian Parents, Educators, and Others Are Asking about Harry Potter. In the world of publishing, few successes have equaled that of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series—magical stories centered on one boy’s adventures at Hogwarts, a school for witchcraft and wizardry. Yet this popular series presents a perplexing—even divisive—challenge to the Christian community. Although the books present a clear picture of the epic battle between good and evil, they appear to support the use of magic and have had a controversial impact on our culture. As a result, many of us are wondering, “How should I respond to this Harry Potter thing?” Find out what the Harry Potter books really say about witchcraft and wizardry. Hear what Christians on both sides of the debate are saying about Harry Potter—and decide what you believe. Learn how you can use the series to protect your child from real occult influences. In What’s a Christian to Do with Harry Potter?, you’ ll explore the valid concerns some Christians have about the series, sort out the fact and fiction at the center of the debate, discover biblical answers that may surprise you, and learn how you can tap into this powerful cultural phenomenon to help advance the kingdom of God. This book has not been prepared, approved, or licensed by any person or entity that created, published, or produced the Harry Potter books or related properties.

Being a teenager is hard work. Thanks to a combination of hormone overload, peer pressure, and social beliefs, teens and even preteens often feel misunderstood or alienated and are treated as unimportant or an outcast. These feelings are a combination of many things but generally come down to trying to figure out your place in the world from under your parent's thumb. Sports and video games sometimes help you escape the pressures of life for a little while. but they are not solutions. You need answers that can help you get a clearer picture of where you're going in life and what you want to be like when you get there. Through movies, we can see the best and worst in ourselves. These studies will help you as a young adult (ages eleven to sixteen) to see beyond the movie's storyline and into the heart of the feelings and issues the characters are dealing with. If you haven't had to deal with some of these issues yet, hang on. They're coming. You need to give serious thought now about how you will choose to deal with these issues when they do come up. No one can do it for you. Going through these questions is a good way to get started thinking. The world is ever-changing, but we have the one thing that will never change--God's Word. Living in this world can be rough, but you can be the one to make it better. Not all of the movies are rated to be seen by someone your age, but they don't have to be. You don't have to see the movies to do this study. The questions will guide you through the scenes so you can focus on the issues without dealing with the emotions that accompany visual images. Despite this, some topics may still be too sensitive for some people. For this reason, movies that focus solely on death or evil are noted with an asterisk on the "Contents" page because viewer discretion is advised.

Christianity and the Culture Machine is a precedent-shattering approach to combining theories of media and culture with theology. In this intensive examination of Christianity's role in the cultural marketplace, the author argues that Christianity's inability to effectively contest the ideology of secular humanism is not a theological shortcoming, but rather a communications problem: the institutional church is too wedded to an outmoded aesthetic of Christianity to communicate effectively. Privileging authority and obedience over the egalitarian and transformative goal of Christianity, the church fails to recognize how it undermines the vitality of the Christian narrative and message. In the absence of a more compelling vision offered by the official church, a new aesthetic can be found forming within the margins of popular culture texts. Despite its past failures in representing the Bible in mainstream film and television, the culture industry now offers more compelling versions of core Christian theology without even realizing it--within the margins of the main storylines. This book analyzes the aesthetic principles employed by these appropriations and articulations of Christian discourse as a means of theorizing what a new aesthetic of Christianity might look like.

This three-volume collection demonstrates the depth and breadth of evangelical Christians' consumption, critique, and creation of popular culture, and how evangelical Christians are both influenced by—and influence—mainstream popular culture, covering comic books to movies to social media. Evangelical Christians and Popular Culture: Pop Goes the Gospel addresses the full spectrum of evangelical media and popular culture offerings, even delving into lesser-known forms of evangelical popular culture such as comic books, video games, and theme parks. The chapters in this 3-volume work are written by over 50 authors who specialize in fields as diverse as history, theology, music, psychology, journalism, film and television studies, advertising, and public relations. Volume 1 examines film, radio and television, and the Internet; Volume 2 covers literature, music, popular art, and merchandise; and Volume 3 discusses public figures, popular press, places, and events. The work is intended for a scholarly audience but presents material in a student-friendly, accessible manner. Evangelical insiders will receive a fresh look at the wide variety of evangelical popular culture offerings, many of which will be unknown, while non-evangelical readers will benefit from a comprehensive introduction to the subject matter.

Imaginatio et Ratio (www.imaginatioetratio.org) is a peer reviewed journal primarily focusing on the intersection between the arts and theology, hoping to allow imagination and reason to be seen as intimately intertwined-as different expressions of the same divine truth. Imaginatio et Ratio was started in the hopes that it could serve a growing community of artists and thinkers and strives to present accessible but high quality art, literary fiction, creative non-fiction, and theology/philosophy-as well as interviews and book, film, art and music reviews. The journal is published twice a year and is available in print and digital formats.

This contributed two-volume work tackles a fascinating topic: how and why God plays a central role in the modern world and profoundly influences politics, art, culture, and our moral reflection—even for nonbelievers. God—in the many ways that people around the globe conceptualize Him, Her, or It—is one of the most powerful, divisive, unifying, and creative elements of human culture. The two volumes of God and Popular Culture: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Entertainment Industry's Most Influential Figure provide readers with a balanced and accessible analysis of this fascinating topic that allows anyone who appreciates any art, music, television, film, and other forms of entertainment to have a new perspective on a favorite song or movie. Written by a collective of both believers and nonbelievers, the essays enable both nonreligious individuals and those who are spiritually guided to consider how culture approaches and has appropriated God to reveal truths about humanity and society. The book discusses the intersections of God with film, television, sports, politics, commerce, and popular culture, thereby documenting how the ongoing messages and conversations about God that occur among the general population also occur within the context of the entertainment that we as members of society consume—often without our recognition of the discussion.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Frankfurt (Main), language: English, abstract: Harry Potter is a heptalogy of fantasy novels by the English author Joanne K. Rowling about an adolescent boy named Harry Potter, first published in England in 1997. Harry Potter attends the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a boarding school for young wizards and witches. Up to his eleventh birthday his cruel relatives, the Dursleys, have raised the orphaned Harry. On this day he learns that he is a wizard and has been invited to attend Hogwarts. The story is mostly set on the school premises, with each of the seven volumes describing a school year at Hogwarts and a year of Harry's growing-up. The main topic is Harry Potter's fight against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort who killed Harry's parents when he was still an infant. Throughout the story the Dark Lord Voldemort gains more and more power and tries to kill Harry several times. In Hallows the climax is reached and the final battle between Harry and Lord Voldemort which will decide the future of the wizarding world. The fight of good versus evil is one of the oldest topics of mankind. Starting with the original sin in the Garden of Eden this fight has dominated moral concepts of the Christian world ever since. This paper presents an analysis of how good and evil are portrayed and presented in the Harry Potter series. First, there is a description of Christian motifs in the series and how these motifs can be compared to certain characters in the books. Second, 'good' characters such as Harry's close friends Ron and Hermione, and Harry's mentor, Professor Dumbledore, are described and characterised as to why they are part of the 'good'. Third, the 'evil' opponents Draco Malfoy and the evil Dark Lord Voldemort are analysed as to how they exhibit 'evil' behaviour. The last chapter deals with the question of whether Harry Potter is 'good' or 'evil' as he does not always act as an exemplary student.

“What the future fortunes of [Gramsci’s] writings will be, we cannot know. However, his permanence is already sufficiently sure, and justifies the historical study of his international reception. The present collection of studies is an indispensable foundation for this.” —Eric Hobsbawm, from the preface Antonio Gramsci is a giant of Marxian thought and one of the world's greatest cultural critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world's preeminent Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review Press is proud to publish, for the first time in English, Santucci’s masterful intellectual biography of the great Sardinian scholar and revolutionary. Gramscian terms such as “civil society” and “hegemony” are much used in everyday political discourse. Santucci warns us, however, that these words have been appropriated by both radicals and conservatives for contemporary and often self-serving ends that often have nothing to do with Gramsci’s purposes in developing them. Rather what we must do, and what Santucci illustrates time and again in his dissection of Gramsci’s writings, is absorb Gramsci’s methods. These can be summed up as the suspicion of “grand explanatory schemes,” the unity of theory and practice, and a focus on the details of everyday life. With respect to the last of these, Joseph Buttigieg says in his Nota: “Gramsci did not set out to explain historical reality armed with some full-fledged concept, such as hegemony; rather, he examined the minutiae of concrete social, economic, cultural, and political relations as they are lived in by individuals in their specific historical circumstances and, gradually, he acquired an increasingly complex understanding of how hegemony operates in many diverse ways and under many aspects within the capillaries of society.” The rigor of Santucci’s examination of Gramsci’s life and work matches that of the seminal thought of the master himself. Readers will be enlightened and inspired by every page.

Sometimes a "Christian upbringing" can go pretty wrong. This is about that. Strict, impersonal, unloving, image-conscious, status-focused legalism is something Jesus addressed pretty directly, as did the apostle Paul. This is also about growing up locked away inside a Christian community that worked like that. Darkly insightful, and told with a lot of humour, with personal statements from a large number of people with problematic Christian upbringings.