Most college students, most people, in fact, seem to view theology in the same way they view flossing or eating Brussells sprouts: as something that they know is important but which isn’t fun, engaging, or very easy to understand. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, beloved by millions of readers, appear to be at the opposite end of the spectrum, as they are fun, engaging, and easy to read and since they are often (incorrectly) thought to be more entertainment than edification. Who would have thought that theology and Harry Potter could have been combined to create a class that changed lives at Yale? The answer to that question is Rev. Danielle Elizabeth Tumminio, who created an incredibly popular seminar at Yale, tackling the sometimes daunting subject of theology by studying it in the context of the Harry Potter universe. The class took on subjects such as sacrifice, Christology, grace, and the problem of evil, as portrayed in Rowling’s novels. The incredibly popular course garnered international attention, and now, Rev. Tummino takes readers where she has taken students, to a study of theology unlike any other. Follow me after the jump for the full review.
The House Cup goes to Yale: God and Harry Potter at Yale by The Rev. Danielle Elizabeth Tumminio
Jane Eyre 6: Faith and Fairies – Conventional Spirituality versus What the Heart Hears
If you’ve read Bronte’s own preface to the second edition, you’ve noticed that, besides laying it on a bit thick in praise of Thackeray, she also indicates that the novel has been getting some serious criticism for its religious elements (or lack thereof). Those of us here who are used to being lambasted as the spawn of the devil for reading Harry Potter might find 
ourselves doing the proverbial head-scratch over folks getting their dander up over the likes of Jane Eyre, which still makes the school reading lists at religious schools and is hardly the text likely to set parents shouting at PTO meetings. In many ways, of course, this is a Christian novel, so much so that its “preachiness” sometimes turns off modern readers (as we’ve already seen in our conversations here), but its depiction of the spiritual and the supernatural is often unconventional, leading “Currer Bell” to remind readers, in the preface, that “conventionality is not morality.” As we look at the roles of the Christian faith, the spiritual, and the supernatural in Jane Eyre, we may never see what some of those nineteenth-century critics were in such a tizzy over, but we will certainly see some of Bronte’s deft touches with the non-corporeal elements of Jane’s story.
TwiHards Finally Find Middle-Aged Guy Critic?
Over at Twilight Lexicon this week, the biggest Twilight fan site, there is in article praising Mark Kermode for his BBC5 radio review of Eclipse, in which he lauds the film, defying the trend of most film critics. Kermode, who makes a pretty good living by writing against the flow, praises the third cinematic installment of the Twilight Saga (which we also reviewed positively here), despite having never read the books.
The readers at Lexicon commenting on the review are, for the most part, tripping over themselves to applaud him. Oddly enough, they seem to think Kermode is (A) the only intellectual-type taking Twilight “seriously” and (B) the only middle-aged guy doing that. Actually, they are wrong on both counts, and he’s not even first.
Jane Eyre 5: Crossing the Threshold with Jane—The Novel’s Liminal Elements
At first, when I realized we would be reading Jane Eyre during the end of December and beginning of January, I thought that was a little strange. After all, t
his seems more the time of year to read Dickens, or maybe Charlotte Bronte’s sister Emily’s great novel Wuthering Heights ( I still hold to the old traditions of ghost stories at Christmas). Then I realized there is probably no better time of year to read this novel which, in many ways, is a story that focuses on the meeting place between one state and another, making it a threshold or liminal (from the same root word that gives us “limbo”) story of the first order.
January, of course, is named for Janus, the Roman doorway good, whose two faces looked in opposite directions. The Romans took their thresholds seriously, giving us the tradition of the groom carrying the bride over the threshold of their new home (though a Roman groom had a group of his buddies heft the little woman in rather than trying to take on the task alone!). Romans recognized that the threshold was a tricky place, an in-between spot that was neither one place or the other. Threshold places are those that, like Lewis’s Wood Between the Worlds in The Magician’s Nephew, connect two places.
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