I was almost kicked out of my catholic high school in 2006 because I was running a DnD group after school and the administration found out. I had to have several parent teacher conferences which mostly consisted of my mom and I trying to stifle laughter as the principal drew a path of my moral degeneracy (in terms of severity) from playing DnD, to cutting myself, to Wicca and finally, yes, to Islam. I think they saw one of the characters in my campaign was D'jinn or something.
Really? As OP article points out, similar sorts of things have been said about Harry Potter, by definition in the same period.
Besides which, those were the Bush years, conservative Christians were at the highest levels of the government, never mind at some religious school somewhere or other. What I remember from US news in the mid-oughts was serious moves in the direction of teaching intelligent design in schools, and just generally that this sort of thing was not viewed as a ridiculous archaism, but a defined political perspective with a lot of support in red states.
I'm British (and we obviously also have moral panics, but less often overtly religious nowadays), but thanks to the internet I spent a lot of time talking/arguing with Americans, including a few intelligent young religious conservatives, who would share articles around arguing that it was definitely not OK to let your kids go out trick or treating on Halloween (from my memory, the argument was basically that it's all just good fun and games and candy until you're burning in the lake of fire).
When the gay marriage stuff started steamrolling across the states in the last few years, my first thought was how quickly things have changed - that was unimaginable ten years ago.
I used to play a lot of DnD in the early 90's and I loved the Harry Potter books. Of course to me it sounds ridiculous that someone would assume that I actually believe in the magic described in the books, but then I had the realization that if people's "faith" allowed them to believe in the magical things described in the Bible then believing in other magic (presumably evil magic) is not too far off.
I was raised Catholic but decided that it was all bullshit way back in middle-school and have been atheist ever since.
I assure you it felt very strange and unusual to me as well. I was being told all this by someone who had gone to Yale for her PhD (in theology, but still) and who beforehand I was on good terms with, as far as student-administrator relationships go. That's probably when I realized most credentials were bullshit.
