Chapels in British boarding schools

[Carol]

> > Carol, <snip> mostly just asking whether chapel is still a part of
boarding school life in Britain
> 
> 
> montims:
> Well, I never attended boarding school, but I found this by googling:
> http://www.boardingschools.co.uk/religion.htm
> 
> 
> Most schools have an affiliation to the Anglican (Church of England)
or Catholic church and in most cases there is a chapel (small private
church) on the school grounds where pupils are expected to attend
religious services two or three times per week. Children who are
practicing members of another religion (e.g. Muslims, Jews) may ask to
be excused attendance at religious services, but atheists and
agnostics are not exempt.
> 
> England is a secular society and regular attendance at church
services does not play a major part in the lives of the majority of
the population. However schools feel that church services and
religious instruction lessons distill in the children broad moral
values - the difference between right and wrong, consideration for the
welfare of others etc. <snip>

Carol responds:

Thanks for the link and the quoted passage. Makes me wonder why JKR
didn't include chapel service at Hogwarts, considering that it
reflects British boarding schools in so many other ways (and some of
its former students eventually became monks or friars, based on the
portraits and the Hufflepuff ghost).

Was she trying to hide the Christian themes by reserving explicitly
Christian motifs and symbols (and biblical quotations) for the final
book? If so, was she trying not to spoil the plot or avoiding
potentially hostile criticism that might restrict her audience? (It
seems to me that she could have moved the events of the books back by
just one century and avoided the problem since British society was
less secular at that time.)

Thoughts, anyone?

Carol, hoping that this post doesn't conflict too strongly with her
post to the main list about author's "intentions" not providing the
definitive interpretation of a literary work (though perhaps we can't
ignore them altogether)