Christian themes in Harry Potter?

[inked]

Lief,

Re-iteration:

"I believe in God, not magic." In fact, Rowling initially was afraid that if people were aware of her Christian faith, she would give away too much of what's coming in the series. "If I talk too freely about that," she told a Canadian reporter, "I think the intelligent reader - whether ten or sixty - will be able to guess what is coming in the books."
FANTASIA:THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO C.S. LEWIS by Michael Nelson, published in THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, volume 13, number 4, 25 February 2002.

Addition: the narrowness of some people's perspective (denoted earlier by me as concretalist literalist) does not mean that they are not throwing the baby out with the bath water! Whilst one may construe all of life through that lens, most persons capable of true thought outgrow it by age 11 - 12. Some do not. This is true psychologically (Piaget's outline of intellectual rational development) and also true in the realm of the spirit and matters of the soul. This was one of Jesus' complaints of the stricter party who kept the letter (as was proper He noted) but ignored the spirit (paying tithes on mint and cumin is fine, Dudes, but declaring "Corban" the support of your parents in their old age is eternally tacky and damnable).

Paul's admonition re: whatsoever things are... bears repetition here, methinks.

Have you THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS to hand? I think CSL does a great job in the introduction about the Charybdis and Scylla 'twixt we must sail our barques on this great sea of life under guidance of our Great Captain! (Can you tell I've been reading Dante again?)