Wizarding Religion (Wizarding Anarchy)

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

A long time, more than a week, ago, there were posts on the HPfGU Main
List explaining/proclaiming that most of the wizarding folk in Britain
are C of E, Hogwarts has a (C of E) chapel at whose services
attendence was at one time compulsory, etc, because Christianity had
become compulsory and C of E established (in the Muggle world) well
before the definitive split between the wizarding world and the Muggle
world. Some of those posts mentioned how annoyed the poster gets when
characters in fanfics use 'Gods!' or 'Goddess!' as expletives, and
other Pagan-style details.

I didn't reply on Main List, because my thoughts are not coherent, but
I don't think that is *totally* right. It appears that the wizarding
world was pretty well split off before C of E was established -- in
the *books*, most of the adult wizards and witches wear medieval-style
robes: why would they have adopted Henry VIII's religion if they
didn't adopt his style of dress?

Some would answer, because 'normal' clothing was not required by law,
but established religion was. But the wizarding folk don't appear to
have any particular respect for law. For example, they have laws
against Dark Magic and they have *many* individuals, and entire
families through the generations, who are universally known to be
totally into Dark Magic and yet are totally accepted. 

I really believe that all the bureaucracy and rigidity of the Ministry
of Magic is just a veneer, and the (British) wizarding world is really
quite anarchic. This makes sense because power in the wizarding world
is magic power, which is inherent in individuals. (That is also why
equal opportunity for witches also makes sense: unlike physical
strength, a witch is just as likely as a wizard to have tremendous
magical strength and duel her way to the top of the heap.) 

If someone objected to their neighbor being a Dark wizard, they could
duel their neighbor. The outcome would be determined by individual
power, not law. They could gather a group of wizards who objected to
that neighbor being a Dark wizard in an attempt to overcome the
neighbor's individual power level by their numbers. 

One aspect of that is how many wizards would be willing to join such a
group: "Why should I put myself at risk for your problem?" "If we
interfere with people for being Dark wizards today, is someone going
to interfere with me for breeding fancy hippogriffs tomorrow?" 

Another aspect is, even if a group assembled (say, they all had their
individual reasons for objecting to the Dark wizard in question),
people with that anarchic attitude wouldn't have much practice at
fighting together as a team. The anarchic society and the anarchic
attitude re-inforce each other. The Ministry *hires* people to be
teams of law-enforcers, but it appears they don't get much support
from the community.

The medieval-style robes also are one clue that the wizarding folk are
choosy about which new customs brought in by Muggle-borns they adopt.

So if the wizarding folk are anarchic, are choosy about changing their
customs, and generally look down on Muggles, to me that is an argument
that especially the old pure-blood families would scorn to change
their religion just because Muggles said so, and no wizard would risk
trying to *force* them to change.

(I realise that the argument I've just presented sounds like an
argument that they're all Roman Catholic, but I have a problem with
that. I just can't picture proud pure-blood wizards bowing to a Muggle
pope.)