©Photostills.com "Harry Potter" Book Burning. Alamogordo, New Mexico. 2001
When I viewed The Lord of the Rings, I was filled almost immediately with the most unbelievable sense of deep, pervasive Satanism. Almost immediately, I was filled with the greatest foreboding I have ever sensed, and throughout the movie, I felt a great, great power of evil emanating from the screen. This movie is far more Satanic and pure evil than Harry Potter THE LORD OF THE RINGS: PAGANISM, CHRISTIANITY OR SYNCRETIZED CHRISTIANITY?, The Cutting Edge, http://www.cuttingedge.org, Web Nov 29th 2012
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SatanismThough most people might not think it, this is the reason the Lord of The Rings gets challenged and criticized more than anything else. Now anyone who ever watched the 1976 Hobbit animated adaptation as a kid will tell you Tolkien could definitely make you perceive evil when he wanted to, but that was exactly the point. He used extremely dark imagery so that even to small children it was very clear who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. In any case, this is an extremely common misunderstanding, at least among people of the bent to try and ban books (or burn them).
According the The ALA (Banned and Challenged Classics), The Lord of The Rings is the 40th most commonly challenged classic book. Despite this the only official record of a challenge to the work is the incident depicted at Left, the 2001 Christ Community Church Book Burning, which burned a number of Tolkien works as well as the Harry Potter series for satanic content. For The Hobbit on the other hand, 3 other unrelated challenges are reported (2007 Banned Books...), though all 3 where by parents and two resulted in the book being pulled as reading material. What is this Satanic Content though? Magic, Elves, Orcs, Trolls, and other borrowed bits and pieces of assorted Norse and other traditional stories; Pagan Myth. Seemingly, even in works of fiction some people have a hard time handling content they don't agree with explicitly. No wonder they dislike books so much. These borrowed bits of paganism were used to great effect in reinforcing the same basic morals that Christianity espouses; Good Triumphs, Hope Endures. The problem just seems to be that these morals are inappreciable underneath the fantasy theme to some. True, burning a book is a act of free speech, but those who would burn books would usually also like to see no one else read them either and that is why the ALA tracks these incidents too; their indicative of a sentiment. So under the 1st Amendment I respect their right to protest a work they disagree with, so long as that's all they do and they don't try to force their opinions down others throats. Banned and Challenged Classics, American Library Association, http://www.ala.org/, Web, Dec 1st
2007 Banned Books Resource Guide, Robert P. Doyle. ALA, Web, Nov 25th |