Listening to Secular Music

How I Went from a Fundamentalist Homeschooler to Whatever I am Now

Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash

A few days ago, I posted on Twitter and Bluesky that when I was a kid I felt guilty watching the Magica De Spell episodes of DuckTales because it involved magic, and as a good fundamentalist evangelical homeschooler, I knew that any form of magic was evil. Rich Starnes asked how I got from that fundamentalist kid to the co-founder of Christ and Pop Culture, which is a fair question. Even more, we might ask how I got from that kid to a literature professor who primarily teaches secular literature! The following is a rough sketch of my spiritual and intellectual journey from fundamentalist homeschooler to Presbyterian literature professor.

The first thing you need to understand is that Magica De Spell was just the tip of the iceberg. During my childhood in the late 80s and early 90s, magic and the occult was an omnipresent danger. I heard stories of kids who played Dungeons and Dragons and accidentally cast real spells and had demons enter them. I went to a record burning (albums can be satanic). I threw out a CD because of backward masking. I wasn’t allowed to watch the Smurfs for some reason I can’t remember. I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles until my parents saw Master Splinter levitating/meditating, then it was banned. One time during Sunday School, the teachers showed the old cartoon version of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I when I saw my parents afterwards I was overcome with guilt and anxiety. I confessed that we watched something with a witch in it. After I described the plot, they reassured me that it was fine, that the author of the story was a Christian, and that they owned the book themselves. I was horrified. My parents were complicit and condoning of witchcraft?