Wizarding Religion (Wizarding Anarchy)

[bluesqueak]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince 
Winston)" <catlady at w...> wrote:
> 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 admit I haven't read the thread, Rita. But technically, most 
English and Welsh wizarding folk *could* be C of E (or Church of 
Wales) if they liked, because in England and Wales the Anglican 
church is parish based, not baptism/membership based - which means 
that anyone resident in an English/Welsh parish can claim 
membership. I suspect that wasn't what the poster meant, though. And 
it certainly doesn't apply to Scotland - the established Church of 
Scotland is Presbyterian, NOT Anglican. Calling a Presbyterian an 
Anglican would be good grounds for having a Bible thrown at you with 
considerable accuracy and great force {g}

The idea of Hogwarts having compulsory chapel is probably based 
around English public schools - but most of those were founded 
either for charitable religious purposes, or had a very strong 
Christian ethos. Hogwarts was *not* founded for religious purposes - 
it was founded to educate those with magical talent. Further, it's 
in Scotland, not England, so the period of compulsory C-of-E 
churchgoing would *never* have applied. 

Catlady writes: 
> 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 think, myself, that religiously, the English (and Welsh) Wizarding 
World is probably very like the English (and Welsh) muggle world. 
That will mean that probably many (though maybe not most) of the WW 
would consider themselves various types of Christian, with an 
attendence at church that would vary between weekly and 'weddings 
and funerals'. The rest would be either other non-Pagan religions,  
Pagan, or agnostic/secular (and if it's an exact match with modern 
Britain, that last category will be the majority). The big 
difference might well be that more of the WW kept to pre-Christian 
religions - but since the Hufflepuff ghost is 'the Fat Friar', we 
*know* that some of the WW  had 'careers' within organised 
Christianity.

I'd like to think the pure-blood-ites aren't Christians, but since I 
am a Christian, that would be my prejudices showing. The nasty 
villains of the series can't belong to my religion, that sort of 
thing. ::embarrassed shrug::

And I doubt sincerely that we're ever going to find out in huge 
detail; JKR is exploring prejudice by creating her own type of WW 
prejudice. I've argued before on HPfGU that this, effectively, means 
that religion can't be mentioned except in passing - as soon as she 
mentions a character 
is 'Anglican', 'Catholic', 'Pagan', 'Muslim', 'doesn't believe in 
that rubbish', then many her readers are going to be making 
judgements according to *their* prejudices, and this will affect the 
points she is trying to make.

> Catlady writes:
> (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.)

And how do you know the Popes were all Muggles? ;-)

Pip (delurking on The Old Crowd. Does this mean I have to write an 
introduction?)