Harry Potter and the Question of Religion – Part 1

This topic will be in several parts as the Harry Potter stories are laced with religious references, myths, stories and ideas.

I want to offer first a few thoughts about whether there is justification for religious outrage at these stories about witches, wizards, ghosts and other supernatural phenomenon.

Let me begin with a story about when I was a teacher. I was teaching at a girls’ school and had set a series of ghost stories as a class reader. The books had been taught at the school before and comprised a selection of Henry James, Somerset Maugham, M R James, Sheridan LeFanu, Edgar Allen Poe and tales by other well-respected writers. These weren’t driller-killer stories.

After one lesson, I found one of the girl’s mother waiting to speak to me.

“I’m not having my daughter reading this book!” she exclaimed. “We’re a Christian family and don’t believe in ghosts and other such supernatural things.”

I let her spill it all out, which took several minutes. When she had finished, I said:

“Very well. Let’s go see the head mistress together.”

“What? Why?” she asked in some surprise.

“To arrange to have your daughter withdrawn from the school,” I replied.

This stopped her.

“Why?”

“Because, if I can’t teach stories with ghosts, I can’t teach her Julius Caesar. I can’t teach her Richard III. I can’t teach her Macbeth. I can’t teach her Hamlet. If I can’t teach her those texts, there is no way that she will get her GCSE examinations, her “A” levels or get into university, so you may as well take her out of school now.”

The mother went home to reconsider and I never heard about it again.

Stories with ghosts and witches and magic are part of the wonder of the culture of the world. They are stories, and when regarded and taught as stories, they are fun and fantastical and provide much amusement, and some chills, too.

Regarded as such, they do little, if any damage to anyone. Like all things, they can be misused. Teaching that Harry Potter was a real boy and that the dark lord known as Voldemort does exist and is waging a secret war in a hidden world is something else altogether.

I’ll talk about evil in another article, but my point here is that read in the way that it’s intended, there’s little harm – and arguably a deal of good – to be found in reading the Harry Potter stories.