A fellow blogger who shall remain anonymous...okay, Mark Sandlin at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thegodarticle/2014/09/the-harry-potter-re-write-christian-style-is-everything-thats-wrong-with-christianity/ made me go look. I read the first posting for "Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles" and cringed. I think I would prefer to read some of the Chinese knockoffs translated into English, where, among other things, Gandalf was written in as Harry's grandfather (if memory serves).
Over the past year, I have been revisiting Hogwarts and my old friends. We did a marathon of the movies over the summer and I wanted to come back to the real thing. (I am a snob when it comes to that, books versus movies).
But something was tickling at my mind about how a Christian could respond to the world of Harry Potter in a way other than this...fan fiction. I would recommend Connie Neal's "The Gospel According to Harry Potter". I read it back in June 2003 on the recommendation of my wife. It takes us through the first four books, but with a remarkable degree of subtlety and balance. She has since released an updated version taking us through all seven books (I am putting THAT on my Amazon Wish List!)
Stack Harry Potter alongside Lord of the Rings (professing a Nordic-esque pantheism), Star Trek (professing a humanist progressiveness), Dungeons and Dragons (where do we even start?), or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (did God tell the computer the answer was 42?), and we have the makings of systematically undermining the Christian faith through the ages or we have voices of God's creation that, like the Bible, must be taken thoughtfully, deliberately, and, with proper perspective, can deepen and delight our hearts and imaginations.
Re-writing fiction to "Christianize" it is about as effective as trying to rewrite history to "Christianize" it. It makes everything all nice and neat and denies the truly messy, dangerous, and deadly world in which we live.
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