Over the last couple weeks, I have been thinking about critical essays and secular versus sacred criticism. I haven't read a lot of religious criticism (though I've heard a lot of it from zealots on TV) but I've read more critical essays of books, movies, etc. than I can possibly count. Lately in particular I've been reading various defenses for or against Harry Potter, written by members of Christian religious communities. That's the specific example I'll be working with, but what I'm interested in is the result and in/validity of religious criticism of secular texts.
The books I read (or attempted to read - most of them were impossible to get through) were as follows:
-God, the Devil, and Harry Potter by John Killinger (pro-Potter, written by a minister)
-The Bible and Harry Potter by Richard Abanes (anti-Potter, written by a minister)
-The Gospel According to Harry Potter by Connie Neal (pro-potter, written by a former youth pastor)
-Baptizing Harry Potter by Luke Bell (pro-potter, written by a Monk!)
The only one of these books I could stand (and didn't get to finish, because I left for school) was Bell's book. Abanes' arguments were unsurprisingly frustrating and illogical, but I was surprised to find I also had such a hard time getting through the Killinger's and Neal's books. The theory I started to come up with was that trying to analyze Harry Potter as Christian Literature when it is nothing of the sort doesn't really work.
Neal states in her introduction that she is using the same deductive methods that anti-Potter critics use to prove their points to defend the books. She points out that if the same evidence can be used to prove opposite arguments, it's probably a pretty pointless fight. For that exact reason I only made it through about 60 pages of her book.
The same was true of Abanes, who consistently pointed out every instance of any child or teacher lying or doing anything remotely "sinful" or imperfect. He cries out against J.K. Rowling's thinly veiled connections to people of the real world who were affiliated with Wicca or ancient sorcery, claiming that children will discover this connection (read: look up obscure names that even I, as incredibly avid and now grown fan have not researched) and want to emulate these people of the real world. He managed to make at least three references to names I couldn't even remember having read, and I've read the series more times than anyone I know - and I have some serious Potterphiles for friends. Perhaps he's giving my generation and the generation after me too much credit. I skimmed Abanes' book, eventually skipping the chapters that analyzed in depth each sinful or dangerously suggestive act of the first four books and moved on to his greater critique of the series as a whole.
It should be noted at this point that the first three of the four books I read were all published around the same time - between late 2001 and the end of 2002 - in the first major lull between books since the series had come to America. This was the break between books four and five, when the first film had been released, and Harry Potter mania was reaching unprecedented heights and breaking unbreakable records. Bell's book was just published in June of this year, and thus has the advantage of being able to use the second half of the series in its analysis. While the series' themes are of course well established in the first four books, it is truly in the final chapter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that all of the messages are made glisteningly clear. I have written some on this before - the importance of love, friendship, loyalty, and fighting for goodness.
John Killinger understood all these themes, good, Christian morals, of course, but he was as extreme as Abanes, though in the opposite direction. I made it through about 100 pages of his book, though the going got tough when he started explaining how Quidditch is a metaphor for life. (The golden snitch is the fluttering, difficult to grasp, best moments of life, and Harry as a seeker has an uncanny ability to do such, which apparently says a lot about who he is as a person. Perhaps. But, really. Come on.) Killinger simultaneously presents Harry and Dumbledore as Christ figures, making a few long reaches to pull obscure Bible details into the books and grazing over most of the characters' imperfections.
The magic of Bell's book is the ability to marry the true Christian ideals that shine through the novel with recognizing that these books were never written to be Christian morality tales. He does not try to convince anyone that Harry Potter's life is a metaphor for Jesus or anyone else, but merely draws parallels between morals of Bible stories and the events of the Potter series. He never says Harry is like Moses because he got dropped off in a basket, or tries to prove that his scar is an important Biblical mark. His arguments are not in story and event parallels, but in moral and theme.
Moral (no pun intended) of the story: It doesn't really work to criticize literature as un-Christian if it wasn't intended to be Christian in the first place. Conversely, it also doesn't work to prove that books are perfect Christian morality plays when they weren't written to be Christian literature. the Potter books aren't one or the other. It seems that some members of the religious community believe that books fall into only two categories - Christian or anti-Christian/Satanic/Dangerously Magical. The problem is, as with so many things in life, things are never that black and white. Many many books are not written with any pro- or anti-Christian agenda at all. (This is probably not a newsflash.)
In some ways, critiquing Harry Potter through a Christian lens is kind of like critiquing Islamic writings through a Christian lens - the rules and the values are not the same. The rules of the secular world and secular writing are not the same. J.K. Rowling never said, "Look, I wrote these cool books, with these kids that everyone should be like!" Because really, what kid wants to read a book about perfect children? No one. Abanes complains that the problem is not so much the misbehaving children but the adults who do not properly punish bad behavior. Well, perhaps. But one of the reasons so many kids like the books is that in many ways they are a magically tweaked version of our real world. It's relatable, with overarching themes that promote a better world.
Perhaps it is surprising that the most balanced (and I think effective) analysis of the books came from a monk - a legitimate Benedictine monk who lives in Wales. Yet he understands better than any other author I read that there is something in between on the continuum of Christian/non-Christian literature - and that the in between is sometimes not even on the continuum at all.
It's nice to gain a little perspective.
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