Is Harry Potter the Son of God?

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 171149

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Metylda <bamf505 at ...> wrote:

bamf:
> While many of the Christian religions have the same
> core, many of them go about them in different ways. 
> Evangelical is a way many groups describe themselves.
> (I have also had my head chewed off my Evangelical
> Lutherans for saying that all Christians believe the
> same thing. Their argument was simply they were right
> and I was wrong.) Evangelicals tend to be those that
> want to thrust their religion on everyone.  My
> opinion.
> 
> I do not believe it is a media bias towards many of
> the Evangelical groups - they have a 'bad rep' among
> more main stream religions.  They tend to be louder,
> and have much more of a conservative opinion of things
> that bothers many main stream people.  

<Snipped>

Geoff:
As I said in message 171060, there seems to be a very 
different meaning attached to "evangelical" in the UK 
judging by the points bamf has made.

To repeat myself, I am an evangelical Christian and also 
a member of a mainstream Free Church (the Baptist 
Church) and would view the dictionary definition of 
the word which I quoted in that message as being a 
fair description of the meaning certainly accepted by 
individual UK Christians. Most Protestant churches 
and a fair number of Anglican churches would 
subscribe to this view as congregations.

bamf:
> But, to say that HP is a Christian allegory, does
> cheapen the books.  To me, they have many Heathen
> aspects to them.  To others, it maybe Pagan.  
> 
> But that does not mean I'm going to advocate them as
> Heathen, just that they demonstrate a lot of Heathen
> qualities.  
> 
> And I agree with Katie.  I, too, get sick of seeing
> the argument of HP as a Christian book come up again
> and again.  Faith is deeply personal, and people will
> take from the books what they want.  Not what others
> think they should. 

Geoff:
I agree that faith is deeply personal. I also see a difference 
between "religion" and "faith". Being religious can mean going 
through the activities and motions of a bellief system without 
actually seeing the real meaning. There are many people in 
the UK who have grown up in the church and go through the 
rituals and services because they have always done so - what 
George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury once called 
"Churchianity". I even have a cousin who has changed his 
religion three times in the last 25 years so that it satisfies his life 
style and I do not jest.

Faith - whether Christian - or otherwise - means really accepting 
the belief and building your life round it at the deepest level.

Coming back to the books and JKR's approach, which is what 
we should really be considering, you may get sick of the fact that 
people bring up the argument that the HP books are Christian but 
we have to take on board that we need to consider what the *author* 
may have said or done in the writing - not what we *want* them to 
do or say. JKR has referred to her faith. I have said previously, 
that if she has a real Christian faith which is an integral part of 
her life and not just lip service paid on a Sunday, that will reveal 
itself in her writing - not in hitting her readers over the head with 
it - but in the subtle ways in which she develops her story. 

Of course, readers of different faiths and persuasions will read 
things differently but to throw JKR's Christian views out of the 
window and rubbish them because she does not apparently 
agree with you seems. to me at least,  to constitute something 
of an insult to her as the creator of Harry Potter and his world.