Digest Number 6928

[Tonks]

No: HPFGUIDX 149217

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, homeboys at ... wrote:
>
> In HPforGrownups Digest Number 6928, "Tonks" <tonks_op at ...> wrote:
> 
> Remember she said in an interview "these are not secular books".
> 
> Adesa:
> 
> Could you give a reference for this quote? I'd not heard this one 
before.
> 

Tonks:

Ah.. well..(blushing).. Pippin pointed out that I had not remembered 
it correctly and I checked and she is right, much that I hate to 
admit ever being wrong about anything. ;-) I went to Quick Quotes 
Quill and found the exact wording. Here it is and the link to it:

 http://www.quick-quote-quill.org/articles/2005/0705-time-
grossman.htm

It says: (Interestingly, although Rowling is a member of the Church 
of Scotland, the books are free of references to God. On this point, 
Rowling is cagey. "Um. I don't think they're that secular," she 
says, choosing her words slowly. "But, obviously, Dumbledore is not 
Jesus.")

So I am reading "cagey" as not wanting to tell us everything. And 
the part about DD not being Jesus is interpreted by John Granger and 
others, including myself as not meaning that DD isn't a Christ 
figure. 

Now I hear you asking 'how can DD not be Jesus and yet be seen as 
Christ?'  My answer to that is that DD is the human who has been 
transformed..  or more specific to the books "transfigured" into the 
image of Christ.  There is a concept in Christianity which is that 
each of us can be transformed into Christ.  Jesus is one thing, 
Christ is another. Some people think that Christ was Jesus' last 
name, but that is not correct.  Jesus was "the Christ".  I don't 
want to get off on a tangent here about Christian theology.  I just 
want to point out that some of us see many, many Christian symbols 
in the HP books.  And I think that the symbols all come together 
more and more as they lead up to the death of DD.  

Here is another quote from JKR, cut and pasted directly from Quick 
Quill Quotes: 

"Rowling, aware of the protest, said she couldn't answer the 
questions about the book's religious content until the conclusion of 
book seven. "

and this one:

"JK: I do believe in God. That seems to offend the South Carolinians 
more than almost anything else. I think they would find it
well that 
is my limited experience, that they have more of a problem with me 
believing in God than they would have if I was an unrepentant 
atheist.
E: You do believe in God.
JK: Yeah. Yeah.
E: In magic and

JK: Magic in the sense in which it happens in my books, no, I don't 
believe. I don't believe in that. No. No. This is so frustrating. 
Again, there is so much I would like to say, and come back when I've 
written book seven. But then maybe you won't need to even say 
it 'cause you'll have found it out anyway. You'll have read it."

Tonks_op