Apparently Twilight Preaches Mormonism

I thought it was interesting how the woman who wrote this pointed this out, and I wanted to share it with you guys. :)

quote: “I will NOT let my children read Harry Potter UNTIL they realize the biblical truth that witchcraft is Satanic…all witchcraft, even “good” witches.”

It could be me, but I have trouble accepting anything people like this say, although I have to agree the next sentence seems more sensible(at least more people will agree with it):
“I will not let my daughter read Twilight, UNTIL she can realize how unhealthy Edward and Bella’s relationship is”
it’s bit weird, how can you understand something you haven’t read yet?

I also think her conclusion is bit too much overboard on the conspiracy theorist part.

Some Christians have an automatic magic=Satan connection, as far as I know, there is no such connection noted anywhere except that people were randomly hanged for being witches in the dark ages. Why people still believe this is a misery to all, my guess would be that everybody needs a scapegoat and that witches somehow evolved into it.

It’s a bit overboard, I think. Frankly, were Meyer smart enough to covertly layer her book with mormon teachings, it would have been better written. What is that law called? “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.” It makes more sense to look at Twilight as the fantasy of a woman who didn’t think through its implications.

The whole scandal over witchcraft in Harry Potter is simply ridiculous. There are satanic magical elements in all fantasy stories, many of which resemble real-world paganism far more than what’s taught at Hogwarts. Harry Potter is only targeted because its popular. Meanwhile, people like Phillip Pullman go virtually unnoticed.

True, true. Though I think the moral implications of HDM have been largely misunderstood. As an atheist, my reaction to the books was something like:

“Oh great! It’s a fantasy story where the heros rebel against the church and overthrow an impostor god so that they may freely pursue knowledge and wisdom under the direction of an omnipresent, universal conscious that is the source of all… hey, wait a minute!“

While the books certainly aren’t friendly to orthodox christianity, they aren’t exclusively atheistic either, regardless of what their author may claim. I’d like to think most of HDM’s underlying messages can be appreciated by any enlightened person. The same is true with Harry Potter, really. People are up in arms about the trappings of witchcraft, and never look deep enough to see the strong moral principles on which the books are founded. Twilight has the opposite problem; conservatives only see that the books display chastity in a positive light, and don’t see the underlying sexism (or they just don’t care).

Most of the fundamentalists making a case against the books take one JK Rowling quote, where she said that she used real traditions in worldbuilding, way out of context. Of course, what she meant was that she did her research (mostly regarding potions and divination), not that actual witchcraft involves waving wands and broken latin.

I'm also Catholic and I've never been able to see how Harry Potter is evil. I've never read HDM so I have no comment on that.

Most Christians and Catholics have no issue with Harry Potter. It's a very vocal minority.

But you must remember Exodus 22:18! Even though ‘witch’ was supposed to be ‘poisoner’...

I do love that one. SUFFER NOT THE WITCH TO LIVE.

but it was a page turner of a yarn with characters… that may be stereotypical…but you instantly care about their fate.

I don’t care about Bella because she’s a bitch and is passive agressive to everyone but Edward. I don’t really care about any of them actually.

As for the Harry Potter thing, I love Harry Potter. I am a Christian, and I don’t understand why people can’t see that it’s fictional. In Harry Potter, good triumphs over evil. How is that bad? The good wizards/witches use spells and magic for good. People who misuse magic are looked down upon and punished. It’s not promoted witchcraft and evilness. Harry Potter has good morals and is a lot less sexual than Twilight. The closest they even come to sex is “snogging.”

So why are ten-year-olds allowed to read Twilight where the whole point is that Bella wants to sleep with Edward, but she can’t, while Harry Potter is considered evil because they have magic? I actually know an eleven-year-old who is not allowed to read Harry Potter, but, after discussing it, her parents let her read Twilight. She is actually censoring herself and not reading the last two because she knows what happens. Harry Potter is much better for kids to read than Twilight. Characters being abstinent doesn’t make it a moral book.

If Twilight was really Mormon propaganda, Jacob wouldn’t be likeable enough for fangirls to wear “Team Jacob” shirts. The Mormon religion is not exactly the most pro-Native religion out there. COUGH “Lamanites” being responsible for wiping out “Nephites” COUGH

Any Christians wondering about the HP series I highly recommend this book. I don’t agree 100% with everything he goes over, more like 90%.

If anything, I’m sometimes concerned by Christians’ tendency to label anything “magic” as “bad” when there’s nothing inherently bad about it. As Lewis pointed out: Science & Magic are brothers (in our world, one worked out and the other didn’t) – they are both efforts of man to control the world around him. If you have problems with HP’s magic, then logically you should have problems with Star Trek or other sci fi with the “science” because both are used in the same manner (tools – and like the joke goes: can you really tell the difference between Voyager’s technobabble and the spells used at Hogwarts?).

Remember that the problem isn’t the item: it’s the use. Thus we should worry less about anything labeled ‘magic’ and more concerned about how ANYTHING in a book (magic, science, etc) are used.

@Nate
That book sounds like a really good counter to the “Harry Potter is evil!!!” arguments… and it’s written by someone who expected to be evil. It sounds interesting.

Anyone who can’t accept a little imagination in entertainment because of their religion really needs to take a breather. I’m a Christian, and I love the Harry Potter books.

Agreed.

I used to play Harry Potter with all the merchandise and stuff. I have the Hogwarts castle and most of the attatchments. I don’t think that makes me evil. Harry and co. never summon demons. They make stuff fly and disarm people. The unforgivable curses are illegal and looked down upon by wizrading society.

Yeah. I find the Twilight series to be far more dangerous than Harry Potter. My children will not be allowed to read those. However, I hope by the time that I have children, this Twilight craze will have died out and just joined the many other pointless pop culture fads.

(from the article)

It’s all about the family

Can someone explain to me when “family” somehow became a mormon value? This is the only baffling part to me when people talk about the mormon propaganda of these books because I thought family was kind of a universal value. Especially among southern Americans where it’s not uncommon to live close to your family and do things with them frequently. We’ve had 30+ people in my grandmother’s small home around Christmas time… does this mean I’m mormon now?

I dunno, I just find it a little depressing.

Yeah, that afterlife. Actually, it’s more like constant sex. To quote a book on cults that I once read:

>And a little further, “The eternal union of the sexes, in and after the ressurection, is mainly for the purpose of renewing and continuing the work of procreation.” Endless, aimless procreation. If that is not the religion of phallicism, what is?

For the record, the quote is from Parley Pratt, one of the earliest and most revered Mormon missionaries. They even sainted him.

Lol’d at “excellent reasoning”. Because if you take the Fairy Godmother and call her a witch, she’s EVIL and BAD. And I don’t see anybody making a fuss over the Good Witch of the North.

Doesn’t matter the reason. You can not like it for whatever reason you like. I just ask that people understand that say… maybe the reason is over pure terminology. Not everything appeals to everyone after all.

Pullman aside, it’s still ridiculous what the fundamentalists don’t seem to notice. In the Bartimaeus trilogy, the protagonist summons actual demons in actual pentagrams, and the demons portrayed sympathetically. Tamora Pierce’s magic systems come straight from wiccan traditions. ASoIaF, so far I’ve only encountered pagans (which is presumably tied into their magic). The Dark is Rising is filthy with pre-christian symbols and traditions from the British Isles. Yet none of these books are ever challenged in libraries. They’re all perfectly accessible, bestselling, on the children’s shelf, making Harry Potter look tame by comparison.

The “cultural osmosis” factor.

Also on the side, movies of HDM and the Dark is Rising had bad enough movies that their popularity might decline while the HP movies are only increasing book sales.

There’s still Bartimaeus, and Artimaeus’s point still stands.

@ Dan: Well, you don’t have people dressing up like Nathaniel and drawing pentagrams on the attic floor. However, I distinctly remember me and my friend running around with baseball bats, twigs and books pretending to be students at Hogwarts.

@SWQ
The point is that HP is treating unfairly just because it is more popular. Less popular works, even if they are much worse morally, are left alone because they haven’t made as big of an impact as HP. My point at least is that if HP were not that big of a deal to people, then the critics wouldn’t care as much.

Of course. I mean, we wished it sometimes, only because Hogwarts sounds ten times cooler than the fourth grade. XD

Unless you live in South Park, Colorado.

Lol @ South Park. At least they're thorough. Got here late because I blocked Twilight and Inheritance categories and then got curious. Should we move this thread to General Reading or Writing?

HARRY POTTER:

My parents happened to be of the magic = bad persuasion. In one way this was bad, as it encouraged me to disobey them and read Tamora Pierce on the sly. They only just allowed me to read HP last month! But the thing is, they've had dealings with the occult and they know it's definitely not what you want to be messing around in, which is why they're so cautious. Plus you also get kids reading HP and then deciding that they want to know more about real witchcraft, which is when it gets dangerous.

So it's not the fact of what Harry Potter IS, but what it is percieved to be that is more dangerous.

I admire JKR for doing her research, and I'd love to do the same but for fear of how the kids who read what I write will see the work.

HIS DARK MATERIALS

HDM annoyed me on three counts: it was anti-religion (I felt personally affronted, let me tell you!), it works on the basis that All Christians Are Catholic (an actual trope. Look it up), and the ending was so needlessly sad. But Philip Pullman has a way with words, and he has definitely influenced me as an author.

TWILIGHT:

SMeyer's Mormon propaganda (aka virgin vamps): look, an author's values will come out in her writing. And I have to say that the vampires are virgins, but they're far too oversexualised to be considered 'clean' in any form, which does make me wonder anyway...

I personally had no problem with the whole anti-abortion, wait-for-sex thing, being as I am a fundamentalist Christian :P. The problem I have is that because her values are different to *the world's*, people are labelling her books as propaganda. This maketh no sense.

I, too, think it's horrible that kids are allowed to read Twilight and not Harry Potter. Despite the behavioural problems of these kids, that's far less destructive to their (girls, especially) emerging sexuality and expectations of guys (because you've also got the antis going, no guy is that great, and you're left wondering, is any guy decent in real life or are they all only after one thing?).

BARTIMAEUS

...well, let's just say that'd be off-limits to my kids until I was sure they were mature enough to handle it in the occult sense. In my case, that was about twelve or thirteen years old. But every child's different. And then, no matter how dorky it would be for them, I'd read it with them. It used to drive me mad when Dad would stop a movie or something and go, "this is why this is not good" but now I realise I'll be doing exactly the same to my kids.

Whoops.

*insert joke about you and I here*

I mean, uh... heh heh.

Yay, fuel for my II Nate/Steph fanfic which will never be written.

Let the shipping wars commence!

Yay, fuel for my II Nate/Steph fanfic which will never be written.

I am going to kill you guys.

I agree with sansa, by the way.

(Hey, sansafro187, if you don’t have an afro, can we nickname you “Sans Fro”?)

I would argue that HP is far more explicitly Christian than Twilight is. Deathly Hallows pretty much beats you over the head with it towards the end, so I don’t get how people are missing it.

I read a well written article on this subject. It’s a pity that poor JKR was never even given a chance.

I will try and find it and post it here.

@ Steph

Real witchcraft is an oxymoron. But if it’s wiccanism you’re talking about, I really doubt the point-and-shoot functional magic of Harry Potter is going to make kids suddenly want to don hoods, toss knucklebones, and pray to mother gaia, even if they call both practices witchcraft. And, if you’ll forgive me for suggesting, I think the dangers of wiccanism are greatly overstated among christian fundamentalists. I recognize that paying tribute to nature gods isn’t exactly in line with orthodox teachings, but it’s not as if they’re channeling malevolent spirits and sacrificing babies. A bit daft, perhaps, but not dangerous, at least not in the physical or mental sense. I’ll leave the spiritual ramifications to the theologians.

Regarding twilight, though, I agree with you, mostly. Mrs Meyer wasn’t trying to preach a conservative message (though, that said, I’m sure Breaking Dawn has convinced a generation of teenage girls that, if they have sex, a demon monster baby will eat them from the inside). Many of the tropes that we’re calling right-wing propaganda seem merely to be genre conventions- the stuff that you will find in most female wish-fulfillment stories. In a way, I think us antis are making the same mistakes as the Potter protesters. Here we are raising a stink about one popular series, ignoring the rest of a genre that swims in equally offensive, anti-feminist tropes.

I read a well written article on this subject. It’s a pity that poor JKR was never even given a chance.

Was it any of these?
http://hogwartsprofessor.com/?p=191
http://hogwartsprofessor.com/?p=239

Ah-ha! Thanks Nate!

(Ahem…hmyd, see Nate’s links above.)

It was all Nate.

Another article that might help some people.

Actually I’m going to link to this and say “ah ha”!

Now I understand better the “mormon propaganda” of Twilight. It’s not the family that’s Mormonish, it’s the idea of salvation through marriage (and NOT the metaphorical marriage of Christ to His Church).

I think HogPro is still giving the books too much credit, but still gotta think him for his efforts.

I used to stare at objects and will them to move, wishing that witchcraft/magic was real.

Sigh.

So did I. =(

@Naphtali

Does this mean Roald Dahl is a member of the occult, too? For shame! Break out the torches, pitchforks, and stakes!

@ SMARTALIENQT: Huh? Who is that? Are you being sarcastic? because it flew over my head…lol

@Moldorm: I was never allowed to watch Matilda, but I liked her just because of her awesome skillz.

She was probably talking about one of his other books. The Witches, for example.

Hmm, I never knew about those as a child. Darnit.

Yes, I agree with you Nate. Dahl’s magic was amazing and very eye opening for me when I was small. Still is today. ;)

I used to stare at objects and will them to move

I did that until a play of Alan Ayckbourn’s scared me peeless.

I used to love Roald Dahl! Matilda, The Witches, The Twits, Fantastic Mr. Fox…oh, the memories. Naphtali, you have been seriously deprived.