Have you heard the song “Online” in which the geeky nerd puffs himself up into a virtual reality hunk on his MySpace page? I suspect folks who come to hear me speak after reading posts at Hogwarts Professor have something like a blind-date nightmare experience when they discover I’m a short man who looks a little too much like a house-elf with a mustache and bow-tie. Maybe one of the reasons people are so kind in saying I am a great speaker after I talk is that I greatly exceeded their expectations that had collapsed when they first saw me at the podium?

If you don’t want to risk that roller-coaster ride, you can hear me speak without the video element at Ancient Faith Radio’s Illumined Heart program. I did an interview there last month with Steve McMeans and two students at Biola University’s Torrey Honors Institute that covered a lot of ground about the status of the Controversy in the Christian community concerning the Potter novels. The folks at Ancient Faith just posted it today as an audio file you can listen to from the Internet. Please give it a listen and post your review here. I haven’t heard it so I look forward to learning from y’all where I misspoke.

If you would like to hear me speak and aren’t afraid of the Dobby Effect, my dates for this month and next include: [Read more…]

Two things made me think of Dobby today. First, the discussion on the Alan Jacobs thread about Harry as a Christ Figure left out Dobby’s relationship with Harry, which, frankly, borders on the messianic. We don’t see other house-elves devoted to their masters the way Dobby is to Harry Potter. Second, a short piece sent to me by HogPro All-Pro, Deborah Chan that I’ve posted below. Note the references to the Book of Revelations hidden in Dobby’s burial: [Read more…]

Wheaton College’s Alan Jacobs has written a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for Christianity Today’s Books and Culture magazine called “The Youngest Brother’s Tale.” (Hat tip to Karl!) It is well worth reading and I look forward to reading your thoughts about his perspective and comments.

My first impression is that Prof. Jacobs goes out of his way to be both laudatory and patronizing in this review. I suspect this will become a preferred posture among the academic mavens of literature because it will allow them to admire Ms. Rowling’s accomplishment without having to admit it to the Halls of Serious Literature above and beyond the dumpsters of fascinating Cultural Artifacts. Prof. Jacobs’ celebration of the books as cliched writing and penny dreadful “kid lit” done very well achieves something like what the New York Times’ creating a Childrens’ Book Best Seller List did: isolating Harry in a lesser category of reading for applause appropriate to this lesser fare. Parents applaud a Nutcracker performance with their children in it with as many decibels as an audience of real ballet aficionados applaud the real Nutcracker at the Balshoi — but there is a difference, even if both dramas receive standing ovations. And the difference is that the kids’ dancing was great only for kids’ dancing.

His comment about Harry as a Christ figure is telling so I’ll quote it at length: [Read more…]

There is a new post at Behold A Phoenix that made my day for several reasons. First, I learned something important, namely, that an idea I had grown up with and had assumed was fact was just plain wrong. The “Dying and Rising Gods” chestnut championed by Frazer in The Golden Bough (and by secularists contra Christianity ever since, not to mention Harry Haters in denial about Deathly Hallows) has been demonstrated to be another 19th century fashioning of the “scientific evidence” to strike out at the beliefs of the faithful (here the singularity of Christ’s Resurrection). While the irony of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named citing the same theory as Time magazine’s Lev Grossman to “prove” the books aren’t Christian is striking (and humorous), finding out that both are repeating ideas from “the history of scholarship” rather than facts from “the history of religions” is a real head-slapper.

I had the extra pleasure in reading the Behold a Phoenix post on this topic in knowing Jonathan Z. Smith, the University of Chicago Divinity School professor and Frazer authority cited as the myth debunker. Mr. Smith (all UC professors were addressed as “Mr” or “Ms” unless medical doctors) was “Dean Smith” for three of my four years in the College and helped me through the first chapters of Thomas’ Summa Theoligica and Pico’s Heptaplus in tutorial. As it was Jonathan Z. Smith who urged me to read Eliade way back when and it is Eliade’s thesis about the religious function of entertainment in a secular culture that is the heart of Looking for God in Harry Potter, I guess this is my moment to reflect on the ends of a circle meeting.

My apologies for this name-dropping, autobiographical moment. Thank you Behold A Phoenix for correcting still another one of my erroneous historical preconceptions! Next thing you know, we’ll learn that Saturnalia was scheduled in late December by the Romans to subvert Christian celebration of the Nativity rather than the reverse…