The Role of Religion in the Potterverse was Magical Latin

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186145


No.Limberger wrote:
<snip>
> Thus, as demonstrated here, the concepts of an immortal soul, love and self-sacrifice are universal themes that no one religion can claim ownership. I believe that JK Rowling knew this long before she began to write any of the Harry Potter novels and do not believe that she used these themes as a means to promote Christianity even though she herself is Christian. Additionally, I believe that it is safe to say that the WW would have adopted these concepts of an immortal soul, love and self-sacrifice long before Christianity came into being since, as my understanding goes, the WW existed long before Christianity in the Harry Potter Universe.

Carol responds:

There's no question that the concepts of self-sacrifice, love, and the soul exist in other cultures. However, as I've noted in other posts, it's unlikely that those other cultures (aside from classical Greece and Rome) had much influence on the *British* WW, of which Hogwarts is a part, or the European WW, of which Beauxbatons and Durmstrang are a part. To take Britain alone, we can assume that Celtic and pre-Celtic peoples had some influence on the British WW, as would the Roman Empire, of which the Brythonic Celts (but not the Goidelic Celts or the Picts) were a part. When the Roman Empire accepted Christianity, the Brythonic Celts accepted it, too, and even after the Romans left, they sent missionaries to the Celts of Ireland and Scotland to Christianize them, too. The Romans withdrew ca AD 410 and the pagan Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) began arriving ca. AD 450, but the influence of Christianity continued. By the 550s, Ireland was largely converted. When Pope Gregory sent St. Augustine to Britain from Rome in AD 597, Augustine found that missionaries from Ireland had preceded him, with monasteries in Iona and Scotland. Augustine succeeded in converting Kent, but it was the Celtic missionaries from Ireland who converted Wales and Northumbria. By AD 634, through the combined efforts of Irish and Roman Catholic missionaries, only Sussex and the Isle of Wight remained unconverted. By the second half of the seventh century, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had all been converted and, despite setbacks like Viking invasions, the entire British Isles was effectively Christian, with Roman Christianity winning out over Celtic Christianity a the Synod of Whitby in AD 664. All of Britain, whether Saxon or Celtic, and all of Ireland was Christian at the time of the founding of Hogwarts.

Needless to say, England remained Christian after the Normans defeated the Saxons in 1066, as did the Celtic parts of the British Isles not conquered by William the Conqueror and his successors. Later conflicts between Protestants and Catholics and the still later Puritan Revolution (Commonwealth, Protectorate, Restoration) did nothing to make Great Britain (England and Scotland) or, for that matter, Wales and Ireland, any less Christian. As of 1692, the date of the Statute of Secrecy, all of the British Isles had been Christian for about a thousand years.

I won't go into modern history, but as I mentioned in another post, Muggles and Magical people remained in contact through Muggle-borns and Half-Bloods, and it's plain from such details as Christmas trees and chocolate Easter eggs that secularized Christianity is as prevalent in the WW as it is in the Muggle UK.

While I agree with you that JKR avoided making the books (with the partial exception of DH) explicitly Christian, and that the values she depicts are not exclusively Christian, she is herself Christian, and both her real world and the imaginary *British* and *European* have been shaped predominantly (but not exclusively) by Christian culture, an influence that remains strong even in the secularized twentieth and twenty-first centuries. No doubt the Middle Eastern and Arabian WW have been equally shaped by Islam, but we see nothing of them except a reference to Ali Bashir's flying carpets. We see nothing at all of the Chinese WW, no doubt shaped by China's many religions and perhaps by Chinese Communism.

Muggles and Wizards alike are the products of their cultures, and Christianity as a major element of British and European culture cannot be ignored. We see vestiges of paganism, it's true, but primarily as those traditions have been incorporated into Christianity.

Carol, noting that the dates I listed vary somewhat from source to source and my point does not depend on their exactness