The Harry Potter series of books is a very moral and ethical tale. It cares about community, hope, and even faith -- a fath that the powers of good and order will triumph over evil and chaos: Christian values, some would say. Is JK Rowling spoofing us? Is Harry Potter crypto-Christian with its Messianic Harry? Well, they seem to believe so over at The Land of Unlikeness.
'Now Harry Potter uses no, or very little, explicit Christian language, and in fact, many Christians find the books offensive because of its focus on wizards and magic. But any Christian who has read the books would have to be woefully ignorant of the foundational story of their own religion not to notice some strikingly similar values, like, for instance, that sacrificial love is stronger than death and has the power to rescue oneself and others from the clutches of evil. Some Christians, lets say those who enjoy the books, might say that if the books have such a Christian theme, then why doesn’t the author make it explicit, perhaps by providing handy marginal notes a la Pilgrims Progress, or making the allegory exceedingly clear, as in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. But I think that would be missing part of the power of the story, which is that it transmits the truths of Christianity in a viral form. When Burroughs says that the word is a virus he is explicating this thesis of his that written language precedes spoken language and defines human beings as creatures which can convey information to other humans yet unborn; in other words, we alone of all the species are “time binding” animals.'
Interesting idea but I'm not sure the author's hiding christianity in the HP story tho.
Give a character messianic powers and a sense of morals and ethics sounds like more of a replacement of christianity than an attempt to sneak it under the radar.
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