Harry Potter as Christian Allegory

The blogosphere can be a small world after all. I came across this link while surfing...
This morning's big news story is the bridge collapse in Minnesota...
Dale Carpenter at Volokh just missed being on that bridge by a few minutes...
While checking out the VC comments to another post, the name of Jeremy Pierce caught my eye...
His excellent blog Parableman, was once a daily read for me... (There is so much to read I can't get to it all, so I have to leave behind so much I sometimes feel guilty. But that is a subject for another post.) Anyway, he plugged the Christian Carnival (Number CLXXXIII -- See my parenthetical comment).
Scanning the list the name Harry Potter jumped out at me. Some good Christians I know have a jaundiced view of that series, so I was interested in what the writer had to say.

Behold, she makes perfect sense and her post is worth its weight in silver. I feel like I have found a blossom in the woods that not enough people will ever see. It makes me wish my blog were more important. Oh, well...

The nub of her point is this. She got hold of the series early on and started reading before all the hoopla broke loose. Her first impressions were very positive. She saw serious Christian points being made, including "the themes of integrity and loyalty, the importance of unconditional love, the power and value of sacrifice, even laying down one's life, [and] the triumph of good over evil."


It was around that time that 'The Onion', the satirical (and often very rude) online magazine that writes spoof articles on all kinds of topics, decided to create an over-the-top article about the Harry Potter books. The aim, as far as I can gather, was to make fun of a few American Christian fundamentalists who - apparently - objected to the books because they were about wizards and magic.

Unfortunately, these disapproving folk apparently didn't understand satire, and took the article as truth. It began circulating in an email, which got forwarded and copied and ended up in hundreds and thousands of mailboxes. Christians who had never heard of Harry Potter started forwarding it on, not checking whether it was true or not. Many people, it seems, are all too trusting of emails from (supposely) 'reliable sources', and - worse - are perhaps secretly pleased to have something like this to condemn. Eventually it was widespread enough for Snopes to investigate - and of course they pointed out that (a) nothing published in The Onion is true (b) most of the claims in the article were ludicrous.

Go to the link and read the whole thing. I started to grab the entire essay for my archives, but she deserves the link.

I don't have time for Harry Potter but it is clear that a good many well-meaning Christians have their shorts in a bunch about the series. Those who are getting all fretful about the books need to chill. Read this little essay, lighten up and get on with more important issues. An avalanche of possibilities comes to mind, but off the top of my head I recall a story yesterday about the children of soldiers in Iraq (No, not the results of their wild oats over there...their legitimate offspring left behind with only one parent to do the job of two) who are at greater risk of abuse and neglect than their peers. But hey, that is also an idea for another post.