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Every year we got about 3,000 people on Halloween parading through the channel dressed in black with vampire teeth. These are people aged from 15 to 75. And we would get all these people coming to the churchyard and coming to the church. I would stand there at midnight on Halloween and welcome them into the churchyard in the name of Jesus. I'd say, "Come on in, this is holy ground."

You were also involved in some exorcisms.

The thing is that if you get involved in the occult, then you are going to invite all sorts of very negative spiritual forces into your house and sometimes into yourself, or to attach themselves to you. I firmly believe there's no other way of getting rid of these things other than by the name of Jesus. In my ministry over the last 20 years, I've seen that happen so many times. It always comes down to Christian prayer. Every time it happens astounds me when you can see people and places transformed by the love of God.

In your talk about themes in popular culture, did you talk about HarryPotter?

I've got to admit, I'm one of these Philistines who has never been motivated to read Harry Potter. I've seen the movie. From what I've seen of the movie, there's not a lot of witchcraft in it. I'm an authority on Wicca and paganism. What she does is more party-time magic. There are some vague references to things that are taking place, but there are no spells in it.

But if it doesn't attract people into the occult, why has the Pagan Federation of Britain appointed a youth officer to deal with all the inquiries from young people who've read Harry Potter and all these other books and now want to become witches?

Why is it that young people are so fascinated with witchcraft, and how can that be used as a bridge to gospel?

We've got understand that kids want to come into a relationship with a God. They want to come and find out why they're here on this planet. That is why they're reading all these books. And we as a church, should be saying, We have got the answers for you. We have a God who's powerful, majestic, and all-loving. The reason why they're reading these books is because there's a desire within us all to worship God. It's quite a natural thing that they want to know about these things.

Shadowmancer is not a Christian book per se. It is a book where good wins out over evil. And the way good wins out is because three kids come together under the guidance of a guy called Raphah, and they start praying. And Riathamus, whose name means king of kings, he turns up and he helps the kids through. And there's also an angel. So it has a Christian underpinning, whereas all these others don't. It's a book that is a secular book for secular people, and yet has the moral code of J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, and it really ends there.

What was it that made you decide to write? Were you writing all along?

I'd lecture on the occult and the New Age, but because of my background it's my natural interest. I think it's one of the biggest threats to Christianity. Witchcraft is the fastest growing faith system among 14 to 17-year-olds in the U.K. I was out there talking to a church group about the threads, the dark and sinister threads through children's literature. At the end of one of these nights, this woman came up to me and said, I think you should write a children's book, but have the main theme of a God who's triumphant. On the way home this stuck with me.

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June (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48