It's a pity that so many conservative Christians have identified Harry Potter as their enemy, because he is probably the most effective proponent of the classical Christian view of the world to have appeared in decades.
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Jerry Bowyer hosts a daily radio program on 1360 WPTT-AM and a TV program on Cornerstone TeleVision, "Focus on the Issues" (jerry@bowyermedia.com). | | |
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Of course, with the release yesterday of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the fifth in the series, the old hubbub has started again: Harry Potter is a wizard; he consorts with witches; the Bible says witchcraft is bad; Harry Potter is bad.
I will not rehearse, in this space, the arguments in favor of liberty of conscience in the matter of Harry Potter. These arguments are valid, but I don't believe they go far enough. The matter of Harry Potter is not like the debate over whether serious Christians should celebrate Halloween. Should Christians look askance at their brothers and sisters who read Harry Potter? Wrong question. Let's ask whether we should look askance at those who don't read the books.
This is because, in the great battle between Christianity and its modern rivals, Harry Potter is on our side. And he's one of the few pop culture figures who is.
In order to see why, we have to look a bit into history. What does the classical Christian tradition say about sorcery? Why is it sin to be a witch or a sorcerer? It is a sin because it treats power as the ultimate value, subordinating questions of good and evil. Two of the more influential works of literature on sorcery in Christendom were both written about the same man: Faust. "Faust" by Goethe and "Dr. Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe each tell the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil in order to achieve occult power. "All things that move between the quiet poles shall be at his command. . . . A sound magician is a mighty god" ("Dr. Faustus"). The point here is not whether the seeker of power uses incantations or technology to manipulate the world; the point is that the sorcerer uses his technique in such a way as to elevate himself above good and evil.
C.S. Lewis, a favorite of evangelical Christians, said this more clearly than anyone else in "The Abolition of Man": "I have described as a magician's bargain that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to nature in return for power. . . . For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality. . . . For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: The solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hither to regarded as disgusting and impious. . . . You will find in some critics that Faustus has a thirst for knowledge. In reality, he hardly mentions it. It is not truth he wants from his devils, but gold and guns and girls."
The sorcerer is a seeker after power, much more like the villain of the Potter stories, Lord Voldemort, than like Harry himself. In fact, at the climax of the first book, Harry confronts Lord Voldemort over the evil wizard's desire for the Sorcerer's Stone, which has the power to grant eternal life to the disembodied villain.
Having failed to successfully tempt Harry into giving him the stone, Voldemort's final and paramount argument is given: "There is no good and evil, only power, and those too weak to seek it." Thus J.K. Rowling puts into the mouth of Harry's archnemesis a brief summary of the philosophy which can be known in the 20th century as "relativism."
Fundamentalist critics have made much of the fact that the character who owns said Sorcerer's Stone is named after a real-life occultist named Nicholas Flamel. Thus, we are told that the Potter literature is a "gateway to witchcraft." I think these critics have neglected to actually read the story and have therefore missed the point.
The Sorcerer's Stone was the goal of Renaissance-era alchemists who believed that it could transform base metals into gold and grant eternal life to its owner. Alchemy was objectionable to Christians not because it didn't work, but because even if it did work, it would grant wealth to those who did not create it and eternal life on man's terms rather than God's. With whom does J.K. Rowling side? Apparently not with the alchemists. Albus Dumbledore, Harry's mentor, at the end of the book persuades Flamel to destroy the stone even at the cost of his own life.
All the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of this world can add together all of the sermons that they've preached on this topic over their lifetimes and not have reached one-hundredth of the number of people with this message as Rowling did. Nor would they have done it with one-hundredth the persuasiveness.
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