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Tolkien and CS Lewis would like a word with you… Edit: Tolkien was Catholic and CS Lewis was Anglican, but their works seem popular enough with Protestants.

by et1337 5y ago

apocalypstyx 5y ago
I doubt hauntings are distributed uniformly or that their manifestations are identical, which for me recalls the quote from A River Runs Through It: "They were Methodists, a denomination my father referred to as Baptists who could read." And of course I have been in many Baptist churches that avow from their pulpits that Catholics are cultists and non-Christian. Catholicism has always been far more comfortable with the story and the image than its offshoots. So we can get persons like Chesterton who could posit Christianity as distinct in that it is the only religion in which God himself becomes at atheist. And Tolkien could place fiction and fact into oroborosian configurations: "Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story. But since the author of it is the supreme Artist and the Author of Reality, this one was also made to Be, to be true." Comparatively, between him and Lewis, it might be notable that in their major works only Lewis (the non-Catholic) needed to explicitly bring Christianity to the fore. Popularity I don't know about. As someone who grew up in a household where Tolkien and Lewis were okay but Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic, I think for many it's more about what they assume the contents to be, rather than their actual properties. It's a spectrum. As one reviewer of a Christian horror series modeled after Goosebumps put it: "I am not sure how I feel about Christian horror books". Such things tends to occupy that interstitial world of alternative Christian culture that recreates rock music and movies and book series, as if to have no active acknowledgement of God (or perhaps such Christian culture in general) for even the briefest moment is indistinguishable from disbelief. It is the same mindset that compels the production of textbooks that are required to invoke a Bible verse to go along with every math problem and to warn children that doing yoga will allow you to be possessed by demons (my 5th grade health book). But, as I say, I doubt everything is haunted the same way. There are plenty of Protestants who have no problem playing D&D on a Saturday night. But, too, people aren't often consistent. There are many who would defend violent video games, but would then turn around and deploy exactly those arguments against other types of media, as if they too could somehow 'infect'.

Tolkien and CS Lewis would like a word with you… Edit: Tolkien was Catholic and CS Lewis was Anglican, but their works seem popular enough with Protestants.

by et1337 5y ago

Tolkien and CS Lewis would like a word with you… Edit: Tolkien was Catholic and CS Lewis was Anglican, but their works seem popular enough with Protestants.

apocalypstyx 5y ago

I doubt hauntings are distributed uniformly or that their manifestations are identical, which for me recalls the quote from A River Runs Through It: "They were Methodists, a denomination my father referred to as Baptists who could read." And of course I have been in many Baptist churches that avow from their pulpits that Catholics are cultists and non-Christian. Catholicism has always been far more comfortable with the story and the image than its offshoots. So we can get persons like Chesterton who could posit Christianity as distinct in that it is the only religion in which God himself becomes at atheist. And Tolkien could place fiction and fact into oroborosian configurations: "Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story. But since the author of it is the supreme Artist and the Author of Reality, this one was also made to Be, to be true." Comparatively, between him and Lewis, it might be notable that in their major works only Lewis (the non-Catholic) needed to explicitly bring Christianity to the fore. Popularity I don't know about. As someone who grew up in a household where Tolkien and Lewis were okay but Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic, I think for many it's more about what they assume the contents to be, rather than their actual properties. It's a spectrum. As one reviewer of a Christian horror series modeled after Goosebumps put it: "I am not sure how I feel about Christian horror books". Such things tends to occupy that interstitial world of alternative Christian culture that recreates rock music and movies and book series, as if to have no active acknowledgement of God (or perhaps such Christian culture in general) for even the briefest moment is indistinguishable from disbelief. It is the same mindset that compels the production of textbooks that are required to invoke a Bible verse to go along with every math problem and to warn children that doing yoga will allow you to be possessed by demons (my 5th grade health book). But, as I say, I doubt everything is haunted the same way. There are plenty of Protestants who have no problem playing D&D on a Saturday night. But, too, people aren't often consistent. There are many who would defend violent video games, but would then turn around and deploy exactly those arguments against other types of media, as if they too could somehow 'infect'.