Religion in the Potterverse

[pamscotland]

No: HPFGUIDX 40586

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "bluesqueak" <pipdowns at e...> wrote:

> Harry having a godparent also implies that Harry was himself 
baptised 
> as a baby.  Sirius certainly seems to take his position as Harry's 
> godfather extremely seriously - again, this implies to me that he 
> regards the promises he made to and for Harry as sacred (something 
> also consistent with his being a magician, brought up in the 
> knowledge that the power of symbolism can be very real).

I think your average non-regular-church-going Brit would refer to 
this as a Christening and mean a public naming  - not a Christian 
baptism although the ritual is called Baptism of Infants (or some 
such).  Many, many families take their children off to church to be 
Christened (and therefore have to have godparents) with no more 
thought of its being religious than they had when they got married in 
church (makes for a prettier setting for the photos doesn't it?)  
That being said, although many, many modern godparents give no 
further to the vows they made on behalf of the child and, quite 
possibly, due to marriage break-ups etc. no further thought to the 
child, there are also godparents who are also absolutely delighted to 
be a special person in a child's life without giving a thought to the 
Christian aspect of their role.  In my limited experience these 
godparents have generally been older people who have remained single 
or do have no children of their own.  

Godparents can be great - they can be an extra source of income for 
pocket money, and may even leave you something in their will!  (I 
didn't have any godparents - I wasn't Christened.)

> So Christianity is *there*, but generally not directly referred to. 
> Partly this could be because we are seeing things very much from 
> Harry's point of view. The Dursley's seem pretty much part 
> of 'secular Britain' to me - somehow I rather doubt that Harry was 
> dragged off to Church every Sunday. 

Agreed.  I do not think that religion featured at all in the Dursley 
household.  

> Hogwarts appears to have decided (quite correctly, for a modern 
> specialist school) that it is interested in its students' magical 
> abilities, not which religion (if any) they profess - put a secular 
> upbringing together with a non-religious school in the modern UK 
and 
> it's entirely possible to get a teenage boy with no real knowledge 
> of, or interest in, religion, who wouldn't be likely to enquire 
where 
> a particular student or teacher went to on a Sunday morning, and 
> would probably be rather surprised to discover that it was to a 
> religious service. 
> 
> However, I think there has also been a deliberate authorial 
decision 
> *not* to refer to details of Christianity. I think that JKR wants 
to 
> say some very particular things about the nature of good, and evil, 
> and the hard decisions that have to be made when fighting evil. I 
> suspect that she has decided that adding any 'sectarian' dimensions 
> to that is just going to get in the way; 

<snip>

I am reminded of what I read somewhere about William Golding's answer 
when asked why there were no girls in 'Lord of the Flies'.  He 
replied that he wanted to keep the story simple and that the presence 
of girls would have been a complicating and distracting factor.  
Although, obviously, the girls may well have been quite distracting 
for the boys in the book, I'm fairly sure that Golding meant that 
girls would have distracted the *reader* from the central themes of 
the book.  

Pam