Talk about scary!! I nearly had heart failure thinking that these were Doug Phillips’ own words. I was just about to call in my husband and tell him poor Doug had gone over the edge. Praise God it is not so.

As I read the first section of your newsletter, that which followed the words “by Doug Phillips,” I nearly fell out of my chair in shock thinking that you had lost your mind. I told my husband that you had gone AWOL and that I was done with Vision Forum. Just before deleting your email, I scrolled down to see if anything else would jump out at me, and was very confused at the Lavender Brigade — and then “only kidding there’s no Lavender Brigade.” Then I realized the first paragraph wasn’t your thoughts but Mr. Barr’s.

Within a half hour of launching Vision Forum’s latest feature article, “Harry Potter and the Lavender Brigade,” our mailbox was filling fast. As the hours went by, dozens and dozens of e-mails began to pour in. At the time of writing this blog, less than twenty-four hours have transpired since the article reached the inboxes of our subscribers, and I think it is fair to say that no e-mail broadcast in the history of this ministry has produced such an outpouring of response.

Some of you will recall the history of Orson Welles and the Mercury Radio Theatre of the Air’s 1938 Halloween broadcast of The War of the Worlds. Despite the fact that the broadcast contained a number of explanations that it was all a radio drama, those listeners who were not listening carefully at the beginning, or who tuned in late, or who did not listen to the entire show, became so convinced by the realism of the broadcast depicting a Martian invasion of America that widespread panic ensued. People ran into the streets, carried guns, hid in cellars, and even wrapped their heads in wet towels as protection from poison gas bombs from the little green men down the street.

On a very small scale, the Vision Forum feature article “Harry Potter and the Lavender Brigade” had a similar effect on about twenty percent of our readers. (This estimate is based on the correspondence we received.) Some did not read the subtitle to the article or simply overlooked the indentation on the introductory quotation which was followed by the author’s name correctly noted at the end. Still others stopped reading after the first few paragraphs which presented a hypothetical Harry Potter and the Lavender Brigade release, and my analogical use of an argumentum ad absurdum designed to show the implications of the “don’t worry, it’s just witchcraft” philosophy of the Christian Potterphiles.

Reactions included:

OK you really had me scared!! I was reading the beginning and had to keep checking to be sure this was REALLY from Vision Forum. I can’t tell you the relief I felt by the end of the article! Whew! I thought the last of the good guys had jumped ship! Keep up the good work!

Wow, you almost lost me on that one. When I started reading your words, endorsing Harry Potter I got sick to my stomach. I wondered how everything that you stand for and all the books that you endorse could be so biblically based and yet you support Harry Potter. But, I hung on and was so relieved to discover that I was wrong...Thank you for presenting the truth in love. P.M

One person (who later sent an apology) wrote:

I am so saddened to read of your assessment of the Harry Potter books as “simply a part of the imaginative worlds.” Ask any former witch or warlock or Satan worshipper and they would emphatically disagree. The demonic is alive andwell. Though Satan and his cronies have ultimately been defeated by our Lord Jesus Christ, he is not yet thrown into the pit. Satan is an expert at presenting evil in a good light and in “picking his battles” so to speak — reference the encounter with Eve in the garden of Eden or his encounterwith Jesus in the wilderness. Please remove me from your e-mail newsletter as I no longer feel confident to recommend your company to my acquaintances. C.P.

A couple of people were willing to fire off hate mail without even reading two paragraphs into the article. One example is this station manager who accused me of promoting Satanism:

How dare you call yourself a Christian and condone this Satanic Witchcraft movie. Its people like you that give Christianity a bad name. Take us off your mailing list because you sure are not going to get good press from any of our stations. (A Station Manager for a Christian Network)

One person who did not read beyond the intro, proved my point that the reasoning behind the “don’t worry” school of thought sounds great until such reasoning is taken to its logical conclusions:

What you said in the first part was making some sense to me — that it was not witchcraft that was being promoted, but morals and right living, etc. But you TOTALLY blew your credibility when you basically said the same thing about homosexuality and the proper and polite way to be a homosexual. Homosexuality is an evil that has imposed itself on thousands of innocent people who have not known how to resist it. It is like drug use, alcoholism, gambling, murder, dementia, and the like. There is no way to be a good and polite murderer. Murder is an evil. There is no way practice the debasing acts of homosexuality because it too is an evil. There is no “good” evil, and no way to properly or rightly practice evil.

Several were willing to quickly lose faith in the ministry and message of Vision Forum — as well as the sanity of Doug Phillips.

Doug, thanks for clearing things up.... I was beginning to wonder if you’d gone off your rocker!!!

I’m glad I stuck with reading this. I thought at first that you’d lost your mind!! :-)

I am soooooo glad that I kept reading. I could not believe what I was seeing. You really had me going for awhile there. Thank you for your stand, and for providing a good argument against Harry Potter.

It certainly was not the goal of “Harry Potter and the Lavender Brigade” to shock my readership, only to make a point with crystal clarity in a memorable way that held the reader’s attention. As you will see from my next blog post, the presentation of the argument in “Harry Potter and the Lavender Brigade” seemed to be quite helpful, attention-grabbing and persuasive to the majority of those who chose to respond.

But there was a handful of friends and supporters who wrote urging me to “skip the fluff” and just give my bullet-point conclusions. Some made the case that life was just too busy to read a feature essay and that the bottom line is all they want to hear. This deeply troubles me. To these good friends, I would respectfully request a reconsideration of such a position. We will never win the day by accepting carte blanche the conclusions of others — truth must be personalized and hard fought through careful examination and prayer.

It is not my goal, nor the goal of Vision Forum Ministries, to resolve controversial issues by simply handing our friends conclusions. Our mission is not only to give glory to Jesus Christ by always making a presuppositionally biblical case for truth on issues which impact the Christian family, but to train families to think through issues on their own. This requires time. It requires thought, study, and meditation on God’s Word. (We provided twenty-four endnotes with citations and additional points of consideration so the reader would examine God’s Word.) I am far, far less concerned with whether my friends agree with me by reaching what I believe to be the “right” conclusion, than that they dilligently strive to think like Christians. To do this, we must be willing to do more than skim articles and offer viceral reactions. Screaming at Harry Potter will not win the day. We must do the work.

As to biblical principles of literature, there are rights and wrongs. But this fact should not diminish from our need to present nuanced arguments which reflect a carfeul examination of the facts and application of the biblical principles. My goal in the article was to clear away some of the debris that often clutters the public debate, to show what I believe to be inherent fallacy of the “witchcraft is okay in fiction” school of thought, to anticipate some of the side issues and counter arguments, and to proclaim four basic biblical principles which I believe go to the heart of the issue:

1. The seriousness of God’s prohibition on witchcraft and His declaration that it is immoral to practice dark arts make it unlawful even to pretend that witchcraft is a good thing;
2. Man may not lawfully escape the righteous rule of God by entering fantasy realities in which the law of God does not apply;
3. To create fantasy universes built on propositions which are immoral is to undermine the character of God Himself or establish false gods; and
4. God holds man accountable for vain imaginations. This means that fantasy is only lawful insofar as it does not undermine the moral law of God.

In my next blog post, I will share samples of the remaining 80% of our readers (excluding the hate mail we received from the homosexual community).