A couple of weeks ago, there was a great discussion on Josh Graves' blog about the Harry Potter series. Should we let our children read them? Should we support it as Christians? My answer has been always been an enthusiastic "YES"! Anyway, this article has been buzzing around blogs and emails, so I thought I'd follow suit and share it as well. Especially now, in light of the press we've read about Dumbledore being gay, this adds yet another layer to the HP series. Quote taken from MTV.com:
That was the plan from the start, Rowling told reporters during a press conference at the beginning of her Open Book Tour on Monday. It wasn't because she was afraid of inserting religion into a children's story. Rather, she was afraid that introducing religion (specifically Christianity) would give too much away to fans who might then see the parallels.
"To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvious," she said. "But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going."
Indeed, at its most simplistic, Harry's final tale can in some respects be boiled down to a resurrection story, with Harry venturing to a heavenly way station of sorts after getting hit with a killing curse in Chapter 35, only to shortly return.
But if she was worried about tipping her hand narratively in the earlier books, she clearly wasn't by the time Harry visits his parents' graves in Chapter 16 of "Deathly Hallows," titled "Godric's Hollow." On his parents' tombstone he reads the quote "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," while on another tombstone (that of Dumbledore's mother and sister) he reads, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
While Rowling said that "Hogwarts is a multifaith school," these quotes, of course, are distinctly Christian. The second is a direct quote of Jesus from Matthew 6:19, the first from 1 Corinthians 15:26. As Hermione tells Harry shortly after he sees the graves, his parents' message means "living beyond death. Living after death." It is one of the central foundations of resurrection theology.
Are any of these things going to change someone's opinions about reading the series? Likely not. Most people have already made up their minds about them. But I will say that it easily nudges people to engage each other. To talk and interact and wrestle with these themes. It's exactly what the parables and the stories within the Bible challenge us to do.
