Horcrux: was Baptism/Christianity in HP

[juli17ptf]

No: HPFGUIDX 153666


> 
> > > Leslie41: 
> > > Just can't help it, considering all the evidence.  Is Harry's 
> > > baptism some sort of protection for him?  Not really.  But I 
> > > think the place of his scar is supposed to remind us of his 
> > > baptism and remind us that it is only through Christ's 
> > > principles that he will vanquish Voldemort.  Not through power 
> > > or destructive raids.  But through love.  

Julie:
I think you can read it that way, but that's not what it's *supposed* 
to mean, not according to JKR. In an interview she said she wanted 
Harry to be visibly marked, in a way that everyone could see and 
immediately identify him, so that's why she chose to put the scar on 
his forehead. No mention of baptism associations, unless she's 
deilberately hiding it and plans to drop it on us in Book 7. I don't 
expect that to happen though.


> > a_svirn:
> > In fact it's really bizarre the way attributes of
> > Christianity in the books are conspicuous for their absence. There
> > is no chapel in the millennium old Hogwarts Castle. Hogsmead, the
> > only wizarding village in England, doesn't boast of any church, 
> > even an abandoned one. No reference to any services of any 
> > description has been made. And last but by no means the least, 
> > Dumbledore's funeral is a thoroughly secular affair. The figure 
> > of "tufty-haired man in plain black robes" is deliberately 
> > ambiguous. We don't know for sure whether he's a priest or not. 
> > Certainly such scrapes of his speech as "nobility of spirit" 
> > and "intellectual contribution" do not elucidate us on the point. 
> > And in any event, it's not what really matters for Harry.
> 
> Leslie41:
> I more look at the places in which Christianity is conspicuous for 
> its presence.  You can cite all the places where it isn't, but you 
> can't ignore the places where it is, in Harry's baptism and the 
> underlying truth that his parents and Sirius were baptized 
> Christians.

Julie:
There is one single place where it is, in Sirius being named Harry's 
godfather, with JKR saying later that Harry was christened at this 
time. So, yes, they were baptized Christians, but they don't actively 
practice Christianity in any way. Nor does any other person in the WW 
that we've heard mentioned, so Christianity clearly has very little 
relevance in their lives. and none whatsoever in Harry's life. 

Really, if JKR wanted to have Christianity a present and spiritual 
force within the story, even in an unobtrusive way, it would have 
been easy enough to have a chapel at Hogwarts (it has to be the ONLY 
ancient castle in the UK without one), to have a minister officiating 
Dumbledore's funeral, to mention a Bible laying around somewhere, to 
mention God on occasion, etc. 

Also, while the afterlife is very relevant in the books, it's all 
about going "beyond the veil" or to the "next great adventure," or 
being too afraid to go forward and becoming a ghost. Then there are 
the soul-sucking dementors and the living-dead inferi. Nothing about 
heaven, hell, reuniting with God or Jesus, etc. Christian rituals may 
exist in the books to some extent, but devotion to specifically 
Christian beliefs clearly does not.

Julie