This is for those of you who've experienced a conversation that begins something like this:
You like Harry Potter books? But they're all about magic, and as a Christian I don't think we should indulge ourselves in reading something that is tainted with the occult. Besides, Harry lies and keeps secrets from adults - what kind of example is that for children?
At some point you then run into:
Well, C.S. Lewis is different. After all, Aslan is clearly Jesus. There's no God in Rowling's work.
And then:
Well, J.R.R Tolkein, he's different too. Besides LOTR is the book of the century - there maybe no God in LOTR, but Frodo is pretty Christ-like, isn't he?
And usually ends with:
Well, I just don't see the point of reading something like that. I'd be better off spending my time reading something more edifying.
The good news is you can now refer skeptics to a great article by Mark Shea,
Harry Potter and the Christian Critics, posted on the First Things blog.
WARNING: SPOILERS, esp. of the final book. For those of you disturbed by a certain part of the climax of the series, Shea comes up with a really helpful reading of the episode that might alleviate some concern.
I've recently been re-reading the first two books of Susan Cooper's
The Dark is Rising series, soon to come out in the movies. Cooper is a very talented writer, in some ways more so than Rowling, but a comparison of the two reveals how much more deeply Christian is Rowling's work.
Cooper is a modern dualist, and says as much in her books (esp. in
The Dark is Rising, where the world that she has created is explained to Will, the protagonist). The Light for Cooper is defined not by goodness and love, per se, but by its enmity to the Dark, an enmity that is part of the nature of the Light and not a choice. Dark and Light are equally matched opposites, and victory is not at all guaranteed to the Light. The Light are much more considerate of humans than the Dark, and indeed fight on their behalf, but are also willing to pragmatically sacrifice people to accomplish their purpose, something that the virtuous human characters do not do. Bound by their nature and equal to their adversaries, their mercy and love are limited to the tools at their disposal. The results are sometimes quite startlingly pitiless, as truth and mercy are run rough-shod over in order to defeat the Dark and to save humans from pain. There are no gods here; only the magical nature of things and certain persons, which are in turn bound by rules over which they have no control within a world where the bounds between nature and persons are blurred. Victory is through magical strength (whether of persons or things), cunning, and a splash of luck or destiny writ in the nature of things. The ultimate vision is rather bleak, although Cooper tries to stay upbeat. On top of all this, the Church is explicitly denigrated as powerless to fight evil and is implied to be founded on a benign falsehood. A well-meaning vicar tries to fight the Dark through Christian prayer and exorcism, only to be side-lined as ineffectual and treated rather like a brave but foolhardy child while the Light wage the real war and win through magic objects. Will's dualist theology provokes concern by the vicar, who quite understandably wants to have a talk with him someday, but Will's attitude towards him is that of a world-weary grownup who knows better.
There is none of this sort of thing in HP. Christ may not feature in Harry's world, but neither is He side-lined as He is explicitly in Will's world. Also, Rowling has a strikingly different understanding of the battle between good and evil than Cooper. Rowling consistently demonstrates the ultimate weakness of evil, for all of its hideous strength. It fails not because its wizards are not cunning--indeed, who is more cunning than Voldemort?--but because a wicked man is incapable of valuing what is truly valuable: his soul (among other things). As in LOTR and Narnia, evil is not countered by strength in HP, but by self-sacrificial weakness, love, and loyalty. No one is merely expendable, not even enemies (who are generally treated without mercy by Cooper). In HP, goodness or wickedness is not something that you're born to, but born out of the choices you make, and no one in the entire cast (except possibly Lily) makes perfect choices.
All sin and fall short. Unlike Cooper's series, in Rowling's series mercy and repentence are not limited, but offered to
all, even while the cost of rejecting mercy remains.
Anyways, go look at Shea's article - it's a good read, far better than these scattered musings.
