Relax... the email you got was a PARODY of JK Rowling's work. It was originally published as SATIRE in "The Onion". You can check out the full story on www.snopes2.com and type in "rowling" in the search field.

Here is a link that might be useful: Snopes Link

Thank you SO much--I figured as much but I wanted to be sure!!!

Megan -

Don't you wish people who emailed this stuff to us would check out whether it's valid or not before they sent it out? I get soooo many email rumors from friends and I have yet to get one that is actually true!

Pam

I saw an interview with JK Rowling last night on A&E's "Biography." In that interview she responded to critics who accuse her of promoting occult and sending negative messages about God and religion. She basically said that was NOT her intent, that she believes children reading her books are intelligent enough to know fiction when they read it. To people who still doubt her intentions of delivering a good story and nothing more, don't buy her books. That's about all she had to say about that.

We are such Harry Potter and Rowling fans in our house, just don't even tell me those rumors! Thems fightin' words. LOL :o) I know what *I* get and what my kids get from the stories, and none of it has anything to do with religion one way or the other. So if it were her intentions, she'd be failing, so it's a good thing it's not.

PS. They also said in that show that the 5th book will be out "this spring" and book 2 will be released as a movie in November. It's gonna be a good year!

I forgot to add my 2cents on the email rumors. I've tried sending the worst offenders of email gossip the link to urban legand sites about the email they sent me, and they STILL don't get it! They keep falling for every email that comes their way. My mom does this, it really scares me that one day someone will send her an email that completely takes advantage of her.

Thanks so much for the info everyone! I think some people just want to think the worst! My parents are freaking out that we allowed our son to see the movie, but DH and I didn't see anything wrong with the movie or books, but I wanted to check this 'rumor' out anyway.

Stephanie,
My friends who are the worst rumor-offenders had to have snopes2.com and urbanlengends.com sent to them by me about 10 times before they began to get the hint that they should check there first. In the beginning, I hated to seem rude or ungrateful, but my goodness, the emails were starting to get way out of hand.
Personally, I prefer a good email joke better than the "Proof that breathing can kill you, unless you forward this to 20 people within 10 minutes" emails. :-)

What difference does her intention make? Her books are either good for your kids or not. If you've read them you know what's in them.

Trish

I follow the golden rule. Unless I know FOR SURE that something is true I will not repeat it. It is morally wrong to spread things about people that are untrue. Others should do the same.

As far as the HP books go they are all simply good vs evil stories. Good always wins. Jesus and G@d do not play a role in these books.

Trish-I do not read every single thing my son reads. He is a voracious reader and I would spend all my time reading kids books with no time left for adult reading. The HP books are an exception. There was such an outcry regarding these books that I read the first one myself to see what all the fuss was about. I must say I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was a great story with engaging characters and very interesting and I think there are people in the world that think that if kids like something then it must be bad and they go out of their way to find the bad stuff, fabricating it if they must.

Mommabear

What I don't understand about fundamentalist sects trying to say that Harry Potter promots the devil, is that GOOD always triumphs in the books! If these people who call the books evil would actually READ them, they would see that yes, they are about good vs evil, but evil is defeated!

My mother is the worls worse about panicking over e mails. She became furious with me over the "do not go to the Mall on Halloween" terriorist plot e mail. She swears that it came from a very good source and the person she received it from knew the orgional author. Of course the mother of someone on another board I post on thought the same thing because the e mail she received came from the mother of a somewhat well known lawyer in the new york area.
My mother gets so mad when I send her the links for snoops or other sites. She just says "well I bet those are really the fake ones"

Your technique makes sense to me, mommabear. You certainly can't preread everything, so just look at what's controversial and make your own judgment.

Trish

I only have one child and he is 2 1/2 months so I have not really dealt with this issue much. I do have a 14 year old sister, so I have been interested in this Harry Potter craze. I found a review for the movie on the Focus on the Famiy website (www.family.org) and I will post the exact link at the end of this message. Focus on the Family, for those not familiar with it, is a radio ministry (Christian) founded by phychologist Dr. James Dobson, who has written many best seller books ranging in topics such as marriage, family, and his recent book Bringing Up Boys. I just thought you may want to check out the review there. They also have other movie reviews there if you are interested in what some members of the Christian community are saying about a particular movie. Hope this helps.

http://www.family.org/pplace/pi/films/A0018592.html

Aspen

Thanks Aspen! I'll check it out.

You know....if we *REALLY* get into the issue of any movie with fantasy-good vs evil-magic-etc being a "bad influence" for your kids.... you would have to get rid of a large percentage of the Disney movies from your kids' collections!!

All I have to say is this: "PUH-LEEZE!!"

I wasn't worried at all about the fastasy good vs evil. If you had read my original post, you would see that I just wanted to make sure that Rowling actually didn't say those words. I really didn't think it was true, but I wanted to check it out anyway. As a Christian parent, if she had stated that God and Jesus was weak I would never buy another book of hers again. Thankfully, it was a rumor (as I figured it to be).

When I ask questions I prefer to be given answers (as most of you did--thank you very much) not slammed!

I myself am a Christian however I do read the Harry Potter series. I have been raised in a Christian home and basically all my family are Christians. So I can understand where people come from when they share their ifs about the books because Christians believe witchcraft is of Satan and they think that these books promote witchcraft. However I know better. I don't believe that the thought of witchcraft is evil, yes I know that originally it was used as I guess people who believed in the Occult but I must have become modernized or something because to me when I think of witchcraft I don't think of the Occult. And some of my family has told me that that's the problem. I don't believe it is evil anymore. I do have a very creative side to me and witchcraft to me is just one of those things that come with the whole fantasy territory. I think it would be cool if I was able to do my chores 10 times faster with just the wave of a wand but I know that that isn't possible. However I do believe that these books open up an imaginative side to children. I believe that in many imagination is lacking but these books I believe help open up a kids imagination. Also as many of you have said these books are about good triumphing over evil which is so true. These books though they may use witchcraft are all about the underdog, a kid who he thought had basically lost everything in the world realizes that he has an extraordinary power that ends up not only giving him hope for himself but hope to a whole society. The last thing I need to say is, if you are one of those that believe that Harry Potter is evil because of its witchcraft, let me just ask you if you are a Lord of the Rings fan or even a Chronicles of Narnia fan?? Witchcraft and fantasy are a key component of those books and I know for sure C.S. Lewis is a Christian but he wrote a book about a wicked witch?? Hmmm...

What an unmitigated load of crap. JK Rowling is no more a Satanist than the Archbishop of Canterbury is. As for tempting children into Satanism, there is no mention of any kind of worship in HP, and good triumphs over evil. You and your co-worshippers are fools if you believe this rubbish. I also don’t think isolating a church member because they read a book is a very Christian act. Shame on you.

You are an idiot. If you had actually investigated the article Here instead of misinterpreting a picture, you would have seen that this was in fact a woman named Pam Grossman, who was promoting a book she has published.

You need to go back to your church with the truth and apologise to the woman you got banned. God may forgive you but I do hope He takes His time about it.

Suddenly very quiet...