{"id":436,"date":"2008-10-31T09:46:55","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T09:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/harry-potter-and-the-obama-inf.html"},"modified":"2008-10-31T09:46:55","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T09:46:55","slug":"harry-potter-and-the-obama-inf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/harry-potter-and-the-obama-inf.html","title":{"rendered":"Harry Potter and the Obama Infomercial"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the infomercial Wednesday, Michelle Obama told how Barack read all of the Harry Potter books to his daughter. I wonder if they realized that they’d meandered into a culture war mine field.
\nThe Harry Potter books were extemely controversial in evangelical circles when they came out. Many attacked them for glamorizing or encouraging witchcraft. There’s still a few days left for McCain to cut a new ad about Obama being Soft on Witches. Since Sarah Palin was blessed by an anti-witchcraft pastor, the McCain-Palin ticket can justifiably lay claim to being more anti-Witch than Obama. (“Barack Obama is willing to sit down with Voldemort without preconditions…”)<\/em>
\nBut I wasn’t sure if the anti-Potter sentiment was still strong so I asked our Christianity editor, Patton Dodd, whose brilliant new blog “Text Messages<\/a>” represents well the thinking of the new generation of evangelical leaders. His verdict: evangelicals over 40 will hate that Obama digs Harry, and those under 40 will like\/love it. On balance, he generalized, “I’d say moderate evangelicals are Potter fans.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the infomercial Wednesday, Michelle Obama told how Barack read all of the Harry Potter books to his daughter. I wonder if they realized that they’d meandered into a culture war mine field. The Harry Potter books were extemely controversial in evangelical circles when they came out. Many attacked them for glamorizing or encouraging witchcraft.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nHarry Potter and the Obama Infomercial - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/10\/harry-potter-and-the-obama-inf.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Harry Potter and the Obama Infomercial - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the infomercial Wednesday, Michelle Obama told how Barack read all of the Harry Potter books to his daughter. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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