Harry Potter as a religious text?
Natalie, at The Homeschool Cafe, has a post about the most recent 'banned book' lawsuit concerning the Harry Potter series.
Harry Potter books to stay in GA school libraries
Priceless snip:
At Tuesday's hearing, Mallory argued in part that witchcraft is a religion practiced by some people and, therefore, the books should be banned because reading them in school violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
If that were the case, then book banners would be busy in most school libraries, not only in the fantasy section but all over the shelves looking for any book mentioning Easter, Christmas, Yom Kippur, or Ramadan. But, I'm happy to say, that is not the case.
The Harry Potter series is no more about witchcraft-practiced-as-religion than Morris's Disappearing Bag is a Christian text. What's more, Harry Potter isn't about witchcraft-practiced-as-religion -- it's fantasy, it's fiction, it's made up. Novelists do that.
One of the things in the Potter stories that jerks me out of the suspension of disbelief necessary to read fiction and stay 'in the story' was that Hogwarts has Christmas break -- not winter break, mind you, but Christmas break. The kids in the story get Christmas presents, Dumbledore presides over Christmas dinner, and Mrs. Weasley spends what must be a good deal of time knitting sweaters for everyone as their annual Christmas presents. Christmas gets a lot of space in Harry Potter's world although Christmas is not a pagan tradition -- Yule is, but not Christmas.
Another dissonance was that Sirius Black is Harry's godfather. Godfathers and godmothers are a Christian tradition. It may be that in some pagan traditions initiates have sponsors (I haven't a clue), but it is in Christian traditions that children are blessed with godparents.
Some critics argue that Christmas has become a secular holiday, and that many people who aren't Christians celebrate it. Non-religionists may celebrate a secular form of Christmas, but it is unlikely that people of another religion (especially those who want to convert people to their own religion) will make a religious celebration of Christmas day. Heathens and pagans-who-are-so-inclined celebrate Yule or the Solstice, not Christmas. Regardless of a person's choice of winter holiday, secularists do not bestow godparents, so Sirius Black, as Harry's godfather, is in a curious position if the thrust of Harry Potter's world is to be anti-Christian.
I also have to wonder about the Latinate flavor of many of the 'spells' used in the Potter stories (and I'm not the only one who's noticed). Latin was one of the languages of the early Christian Church, which was later scaled back to be the Roman Catholic Church. Latin-flavored spells add a literary gloss to the Potter stories, but they also unsuspend my disbelief as the Episcopal liturgies often include bits of Latin here and there. References in the Book of Common Prayer to the Nunc Dimitis, the Magnificat or Te Deum laudamus rather spoil the otherworldly feel of lumos, colloportus and crucio, but I manage to soldier on.
Authentic witchy spells in another language are more likely to be in Gaelic or the tongue of where the tradition originated. Latiny words could ruin the mood, especially since the Inquisition's prime document, The Hammer of the Witches, the Malleus Maleficarum, was originally titled in Latin.
The opinion of a witch can be found at Witchvox:
Adult Pagan Essay Series: Harry Potter ...
But c'mon! Nobody can just wave a wand while blurting something in amusingly-mangled Latin and expect to work magic. Which, to be honest, is part of the fun for real- world Witches: only in our dreams is magic that easy and the result that spectacular!
Good to know I'm not the only one to notice.
The writer continues with what many think is the underlying theme of the Harry Potter series, xenophobia and genocide.
Voldemort can only have been based on Adolph Hitler: his rise to power is created by appealing to the fears, prejudices, and in some cases snobbery of wizarding society. He preaches racial purity, advocating the destruction or enslavement of all who are not from "pureblood" wizarding families. His and his followers' treatment of non-human magical creatures such as house-elves is extremely cruel, echoing the forced slavery of non-Jewish prisoners in Third Reich war industry. Their term for Muggles, "mudbloods," even echoes the racial rhetoric of the Nazi party**. Yet as the child of a Muggle and a witch Voldemort does not meet his own standards of racial purity, just as Hitler the swarthy Austrian was anything but the Arian ideal.
Those flaws still plague the world of humans, and they have nothing to do with witchcraft -- despite any use by the SS of what they thought to be occult practices. The SS would have gassed witches just as they did the Rom (aka gypsies).
The banning of Harry-as-witchcraft also uses as a reason that witchcraft is anti-Christian, which isn't the case any more than apples are anti-oranges. Satanism (I'm supposing, since I don't know any Satanists and don't have the time or carpal tunnel flexibility to do substantive research) is the Christian heresy, not witchcraft (or Wicca).
The practice of witchcraft has nothing to do, one way or the other, with the middle-eastern Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity or Islam. Much of witchcraft, or Wicca, usually (but not exclusively) derives from European pre-Christian religions.
- Italy: Stregheria
- Wales: Dynion Mwyn
Other non-Christian religions are included in paganism, as well, and they, too, are not related either to Christianity or it's presumed opposite, Satanism.
In any case, the Harry Potter books are novelistic fantasy, not witchtracts. I'll have to join the good Presbyterian, Ian Isherwood, and point my wand at the boggarts trying to ban Harry and yell, "Ridikulus!"
Just to round things out, I have a nice paperback on my shelf called The Gospel According to Harry Potter: Spirituality in the Stories of the World's Most Famous Seeker, by Connie Neal. The back cover says Neal "persuasively demonstrates that Harry Potter need not be rejected as a threat to the Christian faith, as some have claimed." Neal asks, "Is our own faith so fragile that we dare not know what those of a different sect of Christianity or those of undisclosed religious persuasions, or those of different religious backgrounds are thinking?" She notes, "The kind of literary criticism being used by some Christians to discredit Harry Potter while touting Tolkein's and Lewis's fantasy writings is certainly not what Tolkein and Lewis taught their students."
Posted by: Jeanne | 30 May 2007 at 02:56 PM