Forget Harry’s wizardly ways. A former Yale University theologian claims Harry Potter to be a “good Christian.”
Danielle Tumminio taught “Christian Theology and Harry Potter” in the 2008 and 2009 school years to a diverse group of students. In a recent interview promoting her new book due out next month, God and Harry Potter at Yale: Teaching Faith and Fantasy in an Ivy League Classroom” (Unlocking Press), Tumminio said:
I really, firmly believe that we need to read the books with an eye beyond witchcraft. I don’t have the sense from the books that the witchcraft is designed to make us want to be witches and wizards. I think it’s designed to teach the reader about fighting for one’s values and fighting for love.
After finishing the final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, author J. K. Rowling discussed the role of Christianity in the books.
To me, [the religious parallels have] always been obvious. But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going.
Two scriptures figure prominently in the last book. Harry visits his parents’ graves and discovers two quotations on the tombstones: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26); and “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). The church-going Rowling says that these two scriptures “almost epitomize whole series.”
Others disagree with the Christian assessment of these books. James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, condemned the books. Chuck Colson of Christian Prisoner Fellowship takes a different tack. He notes that wizards and magic played prominent roles in Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series.
Is Harry Potter a good Christian? Of course not. He’s a fictional character.
