Book Reviews: Various Christian Commentators on HP

[pennylin]

No: HPFGUIDX 60397

Hi --

Well, the ........er.........response to my review on Granger has been
mostly not what I expected, but what the heck.  I'll plunge in anyway with
the other reviews I had written for recent HP-related commentaries by
Christian authors as I've been promising to do for months now.

In God, The Devil and Harry Potter: A Christian Minister's Defense of the
Beloved Novels (St. Martin's Press, 2002), author John Killinger asserts
that the overarching plot of the Harry Potter novels mirrors the integral
messages of orthodox Christianity.  In addition to being a rousing good
story ("maybe one of the best of all time"), Killinger believes that the
Harry Potter books can be viewed as a modern interpretation of the Gospel.


Killinger draws on his background in theology and literary criticism to
sprinkle many interesting observations throughout his book, including:
Yahweh may have originally meant "flash of lightning," Godric may mean
"God-rich," the wood of Harry's wand, holly, is long associated with
Christianity, and the Crucio curse is suggestive of crucifixion.  He
speculates that Petunia Dursley may well be based on British comic figure,
Hyacinth Bucket, and Rowling may have picked up the name Salazar while she
was in Portugal (for Portugese dictator Antonio Salazar).



Like Granger, Killinger sees abundant Christian symbolism and messages in
the HP books.  He identifies the same Christian symbolism in the griffin,
unicorn, phoenix, red lion, hippogriff and centaurs.  He wonders if it is
purely coincidental that Harry spent 3 days in the hospital after his
encounter with Quirrell/Voldemort in PS/SS, a connection that Granger
touches on as well.  He uses Jesus' parable about the weeds and the wheat
field to illustrate the complex nature of good and evil, a message that he
believes is central in Rowling's work.



He also does not shy away from refuting
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-on-This-List, emphasizing that Jesus too exhibited
a healthy disrespect for rules and authority when higher moral principles
were at stake.  Noting that the words "magic" and "imagination" have the
same root meaning, Killinger argues that the world of magic and miracles is
part of the Judeo-Christian heritage.  He also points out that the notion
that the dead can assist the living, which is ever-present in the
Potterverse, is also a concept familiar to many Christians.



Observing that Rowling has identified Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus as her
favorite painting, Killinger makes even stronger connections between
Christianity and the Potter novels, concluding that Harry is a potential
Christ figure.  He believes that indomitable hope is perhaps the strongest
message of the Harry Potter novels and that Harry himself is a strong symbol
of both hope and resurrection.



Killinger's writing style is crisp and absorbing, and he uses abundant and
effective examples from the books to make his points or give context to his
thoughts.


In A Charmed Life: The Spirituality of Potterworld (Doubleday, 2002),
Anglican theologian Francis Bridger also argues that the over-arching
message of the Harry Potter novels is the all-conquering power of love.  As
an ethics teacher, Bridger is particularly appreciative of Rowling's skill
in demonstrating the growth of her characters through the increasingly
complex moral decision-making they employ.  The Potterworld characters are
rarely portrayed in terms of black and white, and Bridger applauds and
explores in great depth the "grayness" of most of Rowling's principal
characters.  To Bridger, the depth and reality of Rowling's characters, not
the magical universe they inhabit, is the key ingredient to the popular
appeal and wide success of these novels.  Harry is vulnerable and real to
his readers: he is neither a devil nor a saint but simply "The Boy Who
Lived."



While he finds that the value system of Potterworld is consistent with the
Christian belief system, Bridger stops short of identifying Harry as a
Christ figure or acknowledging any explicitly Christian messages in these
novels.  He makes no presumptions with respect to Rowling's religious
beliefs and confidently states that he believes that the "snippets of
Christian theology" in Rowling's novels were worked in without any overt
intent on her part (and perhaps without her knowledge even).  He finds that
Rowling's treatment of death and resurrection put her most at odds with
Christianity, and he accordingly cannot believe that she is writing with any
particular theological intent.  Granger would disagree with this conclusion,
as he notes that Dumbledore, who often acts as Rowling's direct narratorial
voice, refers to death as "the next great adventure."  While Rowling has
said explicitly that the dead cannot be brought back to life in her
fictional universe, Granger would argue that she quite clearly believes that
there is a "next life that makes death anything but the end."



Echoing Bridger's argument that intellectual consistency demands that a
reader rejecting Rowling's novels on the grounds of dark tone or magical
setting or content must similarly reject works by Christian authors C.S.
Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, noted Christian author Connie Neal also finds much
to praise in Harry Potter.  Neal is the author of two books on the subject
of Christianity and Harry Potter: What's a Christian to do with Harry
Potter? (Waterbrook Press, 2001) and The Gospel According to Harry Potter
(Westminster John Knox Press, 2002).  Her first book on this subject is far
too repetitive on the point of admonishing Christians to respect one another
's choices with regard to reading and/or endorsing the Harry Potter novels,
and Neal arguably ends up taking a somewhat equivocal stand on the merits of
the books.  However, she does argue forcefully against selectively reading,
using faulty logic and circular reasoning and removing passages or things
from their context to which many critics of the series, particularly
Christians, fall prey.



She wrote her second book with the intent to use the same interpretive
methods employed by "certain critics" (though unnamed, this is likely
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-On-This-List) to find evidence of occultic themes
and messages in Rowling's work.  In The Gospel According to Harry Potter,
Neal exhaustively catalogues potential evidence of Christian gospel in each
of the four Potter novels in turn.  In this second work, Neal corrects the
principal deficiencies in her first book in that she takes a much stronger
stand in favor of Rowling's work, and she uses more specifics from the
novels to support her points.



I have a very lengthy review for a book to be forthcoming in September
entitled "The Wisdom of Harry Potter" by Edmund Kern, but as I gave it to
the publisher for promotional purposes, I don't feel comfortable posting any
excerpts from it until they've used what they want (the publishers that is).
I will say that with respect to the religion issue, Kern agrees mainly with
Bridger in viewing the books as consistent with Christian moral principles
but not believing the books relay any particular religious message.  He
argues that while Rowling's works *can* be viewed as Christian allegory,
it's certainly only one of my variable interpretations that can be given to
various symbols and themes.  Kern essentially sees the books as being
religion-neutral.  It's a great book, and I'll post more on it later after
the promotional blurb is finished.



Penny