IT'S STILL THE SAME OLD STORY...:

Scholar likens Harry Potter to Christ: Boy wizard reflects Rowling's 'conviction' (Bob Harvey, March 02, 2003, The Ottawa Citizen)

Since the first Harry Potter novel was published in 1997, poor Harry has been the target of conservative Christians who burned his books and accused the bespectacled wizard of opening a door to the occult in youthful minds. [...]

Now, a Protestant minister and academic whose specialty is the theological aspects of contemporary literature have put the final seal of approval on Harry. Rev. John Killinger says Harry is not a devil or a witch, but a Christ-like figure.

In a learned new book, God, The Devil and Harry Potter, he says the four Harry Potter novels are not only among the best reads of all time, but also "a modern interpretation of the gospel."

Rev. Killinger says there are many similarities between the lives of Harry and Christ. Just as Herod tried to slay the infant Jesus, so the evil Lord Voldemort attempts to kill Harry at birth. And just as Jesus conquered death in his final encounter with evil at the cross, Harry triumphs in the fight over the Sorcerer's Stone and in the cemetery in the climax of the fourth novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Like Christ, Harry is also ready to sacrifice his life for others. He jumps on the back of a troll and thrusts a wand up its nostril to rescue his friend Hermione. He drives off a large black snake to rescue Justin, another fellow student.

Rev. Killinger says the Potter mythology grows out of the Christian understanding of life and the universe and would have been unthinkable without it. Ms. Rowling has a university degree in French and classics, and Rev. Killinger says that also shows in her writing. Hogwarts, the school for young wizards, he says, is a kind of Olympus, where the headmaster, Dumbledore, is Zeus and Professor Minerva McGonagall is Athena. Allusions to Greek and Latin phrases are also found throughout the books, and so are bits and pieces of Greek, Persian, Egyptian and Roman mythologies.

While things like the acceptance of Wicca as a "religion" should be fought, it's always been hard to see how Christians could object to the Harry Potter books. For our money, the best description of Harry's compatibility with the Judeo-Christian ethos came from Alan Jacobs, writing in First Things:

The clarity with which Rowling sees the need to choose between good and evil is admirable, but still more admirable, to my mind, is her refusal to allow a simple division of parties into the Good and the Evil. Harry Potter is unquestionably a good boy, but, as I have suggested, a key component of his virtue arises from his recognition that he is not inevitably good. When first–year students arrive at Hogwarts, they come to an assembly of the entire school, students and faculty. Each of them sits on a stool in the midst of the assembly and puts on a large, battered, old hat—the Sorting Hat, which decides which of the four houses the student will enter. After unusually long reflection, the Sorting Hat, to Harry’s great relief, puts him in Gryffindor, but not before telling him that he could achieve real greatness in Slytherin. This comment haunts Harry: he often wonders if Slytherin is where he truly belongs, among the pragmatists, the careerists, the manipulators and deceivers, the power–hungry, and the just plain nasty. Near the end of the second book, after a terrifying encounter with Voldemort—his third, since Voldemort had tried to kill Harry, and succeeded in killing his parents, when Harry was a baby, and had confronted Harry again in the first book—he confesses his doubts to Dumbledore.

"So I should be in Slytherin," Harry said, looking desperately into Dumbledore’s face. "The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin’s power in me, and it—"

"Put you in Gryffindor," said Dumbledore calmly. "Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand–picked students. Resourcefulness . . . determination . . . a certain disregard for rules," he added, his moustache quivering again. "Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think."

"It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "Because I asked not to go in Slytherin. . . ."

"Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you very different from [Voldemort]. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." Harry sat motionless in his chair, stunned.

Harry is stunned because he realizes for the first time that his confusion has been wrongheaded from the start: he has been asking the question "Who am I at heart?" when he needed to be asking the question "What must I do in order to become what I should be?" His character is not a fixed preexistent thing, but something that he has the responsibility for making: that’s why the Greeks called it character, "that which is engraved." It’s also what the Germans mean when they speak of Bildung, and the Harry Potter books are of course a multivolume Bildungsroman—a story of "education," that is to say, of character formation.

But, not surprisingly, the best argument for the enduring value of stories like those Ms Rowling tells comes from JRR Tolkien:

We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed, only by myth-making, only by becoming a 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbor, while materialistic "progress" leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

The Wife and I have a game we play when we're watching movies: we look for the Obligatory Crucifix Scene. Try it. You'll be astonished at how frequently the theme and even the imagery recurs in movies of every genre. But two glaring and favorite examples are Cool Hand Luke and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Posted by Orrin Judd at March 2, 2003 1:04 PM