[HPforGrownups] Godparents (Was: Pondering Arabella Figg)

[Patricia Bullington-McGuire]

No: HPFGUIDX 56675

On Thu, 1 May 2003, Kirstini wrote:

>  Anyway, all this talk about godparents has stirred up something 
> that I half registered and buried after reading PoA. That Harry has 
> *god*parents surely means (in Muggle tradition, obviously), that he 
> was baptised into the Christian religion at some point. Whether or 
> not the WW recognises a spiritual dimension, there has been no 
> mention made in any of the books of any form of organised religion 
> generally adhered to. 

"Generally adhered to," no, not if you mean a single faith held by most
wizards and witches.  But we do know of at least one wizarding figure who
is (was?) very religious: the Fat Friar, resident ghost of Hufflepuff
House, who was apparently devout enough to go and join a Catholic
religious order.  Nobody has commented within canon on the Fat Friar being
somehow weird or extraordinary for being overtly religious, so it seems
that Christianity is something generally considered within the bounds of
"normal."  Of course, that doesn't mean every wizard subscribes to the
Christian religion, any more than every muggle Brit is Christian.

It's also interesting to note that Parvati and Padma Patil are both named 
after Hindu goddesses.  It makes me wonder whether their family gave them 
those names as a gesture of religious devotion, or whether they just 
thought those names sounded pretty.

----
Patricia Bullington-McGuire	<patricia at obscure.org>

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered
three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the
purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each
nonexisted in an entirely different way ... 
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"