The Role of Religion in the Potterverse was Magical Latin

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186177

Annemehr (to No.Limberger):
> I think you all may be talking apples and oranges here.  There are plenty of dying-and-rising deities, to be sure.  But the people who are arguing Christian imagery and themes in HP are relating to the *savior* aspect of it.  (This is in addition to the specific individual things such as friars and Bible quotes.)

Carol responds:
Exactly. And I'm adding the Christian heritage of Britain. We're not discussing the Arabian or African or Chinese or Native American WW here. No doubt those heritages, if JKR were to explore them, would have different cultural and religious influences. However, as they'r outside her experience, she'd have to research them to write about them convincingly. The HP books themselves deal explicitly and almost exclusively with a particular Western and (these days) secular Christian culture, that of Britain (wizard or Muggle).

Annemehr: 
> Out of your list of other deities, however, the ones whose deaths I know about have nothing to do with saving humanity, and thus don't apply to the issue at hand.  Do any of them have a savior aspect?
> 
Carol:
Good. Exactly the question to ask. It doesn't matter whether these gods are murdered and rise again (like Christ but unlike Harry, who doesn't really die). It matters whether, like Christ and Harry, they *willingly sacrificed themselves for the good of humankind* (or, in Harry's case, a portion of it.

It also matters that JKR consciously intended the story to have "a savior aspect," as you call it, and that she has openly stated in several interviews that the story reflects her own Christianity.

She also shows through the Resurrection Stone and the appearance of Dumbledore at what Harry envisions as King's Cross (note the symbolic implications of that name) that the soul is immortal and that repentance or the lack of it shapes the fate of the soul, a Judeo-Christian belief. (Other religions and mythologies posited the existence of an afterlife, but none that I'm aware of emphasized repentance or remorse as influencing the soul's fate. Even if other religions do share this belief, the Christian epitaphs, the Christmas Eve service, and the cross that Harry puts on the "grave" of Moody's eye--not to mention JKR's own Christianity--make it clear that it's Christianity she has in mind. And, of course, her own stated intentions make the point indisputable.)
> > 
> > >Magpie wrote:
> <snip> I don't think HP as a story really says anything insightful about Christianity.
> > 
> > No.Limberger responded:
> > I agree. 
> 
> Annemehr added:
> Me, too.  But I believe JKR was at least exploring the questions.

Carol comments:
And that's the point. She's exploring her own religious doubts, specifically the question of life after death, through this book, particularly DH. 

To quote from the interview that Alla linked to:

"But while the book [DH] begins with a quote on the immortal soul — and though Harry finds peace with his own death at the end of his journey — it is the struggle itself which mirrors Rowling's own, the author said.

"'The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It's something I struggle with a lot,' she revealed. 'On any given moment if you asked me [if] I believe in life after death, I think if you polled me regularly through the week, I think I would come down on the side of yes — that I do believe in life after death. [But] it's something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books.'"

In connection with the question of life after death, we can contrast Voldemort, who thinks that death is the end of all things, with Dumbledore, who *knows* that it's the next great adventure, in this respect. We can contrast Harry (here perhaps representing JKR) feeling that his parents are just dead and he'll never see them again with Luna, who knows that the voices she hears behind the Veil are the voices of the dead and that she'll see her dead mother again some day. 

Aside from Harry as self-sacrificing Christ figure (again, not the same as Christ himself or an allegory of Christ like Aslan), we have the immortality and sanctity of the soul (which the evil Voldemort repeatedly violates) and the importance of repentance, all Christian motifs.
 
> > >Magpie wrote:
> > >There are places--particularly in Harry's final sacrifice and return--that I definitely figured Rowling was thinking of Christ.
> > 
> > No.Limberger responded:
> > While it is possible that the story of Jesus dying & resurrecting> may have influenced this aspect of the HP story, the reasons and method for HP's death and return have nothing in common with the Christian belief in Jesus' death in resurrection.  Hence, the similarity is superficial imo.
> 
> Annemehr:
> Well, there *is* that saving-people-thing.
>
Carol responds:
No Christ figure can exactly duplicate the circumstances of Christ's death and resurrection because the Christ figure are fully human and in that respect no different from the people that they save. No one is claiming that Harry is God, a god, or the Son of God. But the act of willingly going to his death to save the WW from Voldemort (along with a near-death experience that simulates resurrection) makes Harry a Christ figure as that term is defined by (Western) literary critics. It also makes him a Christ figure in the view of the author who created him. 

Carol:
As I stated before, Western culture (including, of course, Britain) is based primarily on two great traditions, Judeo-Christianity and Greco-Roman classicism (or, as Matthew Arnold called them, Hebraism and Hellenism). JKR deliberately echoes both these traditions in the epigraphs of DH. To quote from the article again:

"'Deathly Hallows' itself begins with two religiously themed epigraphs, one from 'The Libation Bearers' by Aeschylus, which calls on the gods to 'bless the children'; and one from [the Quaker] William Penn's 'More Fruits of Solitude,' which speaks of death as but 'crossing the world, as friends do the seas.' No other book in the series begins with epigraphs — a curious fact, perhaps, but one that Rowling insists served as a guiding light.

"'I really enjoyed choosing those two quotations because one is pagan, of course, and one is from a Christian tradition,' Rowling said of their inclusion. 'I'd known it was going to be those two passages since 'Chamber' was published. I always knew [that] if I could use them at the beginning of book seven then I'd cued up the ending perfectly. If they were relevant, then I went where I needed to go.

"'They just say it all to me, they really do,' she added."

Carol, who thinks that, if nothing else, these quotations along with the openly Christian motifs in DH firmly establish JKR's intention to write a Christian work or at least a work that explores Christian ideas and ideals