Religion in the Wizarding World.

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 191399


> bboyminn: 
> > Further, keep in mind that the UK and EU are both more secular than the USA. The extent of many people's religion is confined to baptism, weddings, and funerals. It is entirely possible that much of the wizard world follows this same secular model. 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > Finally, I think JKR intentionally wrote a secular book. She did not want to inject religious bias into the story. She wanted a more spiritual story that did not re-enforce any specific religion, nor does the book deny any specific religion. 
> 
> Geoff:
> I think that you have made an unfortunate connection which I frequently 
> try to undo in my discussions about Christianity in that you are considering 
> "religion" to be the same as "faith". Your comment above about the extent of 
> people's religion is quite true. There are many folk - certainly in the UK – 
> who claim to be Christians by making a nod in the direction of religion. 

Pippin:
I can certainly believe that the Dursleys are too conformist to be anything but the sort of nominal Christians that Geoff describes.  That is the milieu from which we can assume Harry comes. Yet nothing about the wizarding celebrations seems foreign to him. 

And that's really strange.

 Consider -- mostly what wizards consider normal  is to the reader (and Harry when he first encounters it) a mind-bending mix of traditional, obsolete and totally divergent forms. But that's not true of Christmas and Easter. There's nothing about the celebrations at Hogwarts or the Weasley household that Harry finds unfamiliar or archaic. It's *all*  British traditional: Christmas trees, mistletoe, crackers, Easter eggs, feasts, presents, family gatherings etc. Much of it is magical, but none of it is obsolete or weird. In other words, if a British reader who already celebrates Christmas and Easter in the largely secular way wanted to celebrate wizard fashion, she'd have to change -- nothing. Even the pretense that the gifts and ornaments are supposedly magical is already built-in. 

Another thing, JKR's quill lacks its usual satiric edge when she deals with the Christian holidays: overdecorating, ill-chosen gifts, Christmas carols and family tension get a bit of mild parody, but no worse. She reserves her scorn not for those who observe the holidays and rituals but for Scrimgeour who cynically exploits them to get access to Harry. 

BTW, it isn't strange that the wizards didn't reject Christianity even though the church sponsored the persecution of witches, since historically the people charged with witchcraft were rarely anything other than Christians themselves. The Devil, you see, would have no need to bargain for souls which were lost already. 

Pippin