Religion in the Wizarding World. (Was: Re: Halloween Toasts)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 191419


> > > Geoff:
> > > That is a logical non-sequitur.
> > >
> > > You might just as well say that because we never hear of Harry or
> > > any of the others going to the toilet, they are all constipated or
> > > because they never apparently eat carrots, there aren't any.
> 

Pippin:
Constipation, lest we forget, is mentioned in canon. Remember You No Poo?

Myrtle's home is  explicitly  a girl's toilet in both the British and American editions, but only Hermione's American version forthrightly declares that it's awful trying to "have a pee" with her wailing at you. The Brit-speaking original more delicately says "go to the loo." 

JKR is often allusive rather than explicit. But not writing about a subject explicitly is not the same as not writing about it at all. We can be sure that Ron regularly uses words stronger than "cow" or "git", that Merope forced Riddle Sr into sexual slavery, and that there's something dodgy about Aberforth's affection for his goats, though these things are referred to only vaguely. 

Likewise it's clear that Sirius and Harry regard being a godfather as a sacred obligation, however that was established, and the obligation is to do for their godchild as much as the natural parents would have done -- even dying for them.  

I agree with Geoff that the inscription on the Potters' grave identifies them as believing Christians. As Harry's bewildered reaction shows, it's not a quote that makes any sense without knowing the context, and the context happens to be the  Christian belief in the afterlife. To put it on their graves if they didn't believe in it would be either hypocritical or disrespectful  of the beliefs James and Lily actually held. 

It also shows us that whoever chose the inscription  expected that those who visited the grave would understand it without  needing  any further explanation. Harry's ignorance of Christianity, IOW, was not typical. 

Riddle thinks to himself, as he walks through Godric's Hollow  on Hallowe'en, that the Muggles with their tawdry trappings are celebrating something in which they do not believe. A cynic might make the same observation about Christmas, Easter, and the power of love. But there are people in canon who do believe unmistakably  in the power of love, so much so that they would die for it. 

And that, IMO, is the central religious issue in the books -- not what becomes of the soul after death.  I agree that JKR is not promoting Christianity per se. Other faiths besides Christianity promote the power of love in real life and there is nothing to stop us from thinking that they do so in the wizarding world as well.  But Christianity is the faith which promotes the power of love in canon. 

It is contrasted, not with agnosticism or any real world faith, but with the power-worshipping cults of the Hallows and the Death Eaters.


Pippin