“A Myth for our Times”
Harry Potter, Science-and-Religion, and Wesleyan Theology
Thomas E. Phillips
July 21st 2007 was, of course, my 43rd birthday, but it was also the Day of Harry. Undoubtedly, in celebration of my birthday, J. K. Rowling chose July 21 to release the seventh and final of her Harry Potter novels, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was a most anticipated day; it was a most dreaded day. The first day of my 44th year on this planet was deeply anticipated by millions, because on that day hard-core Potterites could finally learn how Harry would vanquish he-who-must-not-be-named. In the months of the build-up to the publication ofDeathly Hallows, the usual internet rumors of leaked copies and exposed plot lines flooded chatrooms and unofficial websites. However, perhaps the clearest indication of the intense excitement over this book was revealed in February 2007, five months before Deathly Hallows’s official release, when another book, What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7, reached number four on the New York Times bestseller list. Amazingly, this best-selling book was neither written by nor authorized by Rowling and it yet climbed into the literary stratosphere by merely speculating what Rowling may or may not say in her final Harry Potter novel.[1] Unfortunately, my birthday was also dreaded by Potterites, because after we finished reading Deathly Hallows our nearly ten year literary odyssey with Harry and company would come to an end and we would never again experience an original Harry Potter plot. Even the fulfillment of eschatological expectation has a downside, I suppose. In any case, my point is merely to establish the depth of Harry Potter’s committed fan base.
For the muggles among us (“non-magical folk” as Hagrid would say), the ongoing adventures of Harry Potter, the orphan boy of J. K. Rowling’s prodigious imagination, have captured popular imagination since the fall of 1998 and have catapulted Rowling from welfare mom to billionaire philanthropist. Rowling is nowBritain’s richest woman (sorry Queen Elizabeth). Rowling’s tales of Harry’s adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry have sold nearly400 million books. That’s a Potter novel (in one of their 64 languages) for every 18 people on the planet.[2] Rowling’s seventh Potter book, an 784 page behemoth rivaling even War and Peace in girth, sold 8.3 million copies—or nearly 21 million pounds of Potter—on thefirst day of its release.[3]
The unprecedented success of Deathly Hallows is not the only indication of Rowling’s prominence in pop culture. In addition to her scores of prestigious literary awards,[4]Rowling has dominated the conversations of pop culture. In 2007 alone, Rowling was named entertainer of the year by Entertainment Weekly, was declared the most fascinating person of 2007 by Barbara Walters, and was even chosen as the most influential person of the year by MSN.[5] Amazon.com declared Deathly Hallows the best book of the year.
This Pottermania is no mere flash in the pan. On the eve of the two week long bifecta of the July 11th release of The Order of the Phoenix (Potter epidsode #5) in theatresand the July 21strelease of Deathly Hallows in print, A.C. Nielsen’s rating service announced that three of ten best selling books in the US between January 1, 2001 and July 1, 2007 were Harry Potter novels. (On the first day of its release, Deathly Hallows joined this list to give Rowling four of the top 10 slots.) In the UK, all six previous Potter novels were listed among the 10 best selling books for the same period! The films enjoyed similar success, the first four HPfilms were listed among the 20 highest grossing films in history, and three of them were in the top ten.[6] Within ten weeks of its theatrical release, Order of the Phoenix joined this list at number six with over $900 million in ticket sales.[7] The Harry Potter series is, therefore, unquestionably the most popular literary and cinematic series thus far in the third millennium.
All that I have said goes to illustrate a single point. Pottermania is a cultural phenomenon that can’t be explained simply as the public’s natural curiosity about another over-hyped set of children’s books and movie sequels. Admittedly, the Potter series is children’s fiction—although Amazon.com lists Deathly Hallows as “young adult” literature—but the key question is: whyare Harry Potter and his colleagues so wildly popular with readers and audiences of all ages? I believe thatAlfonso Cuarón, director of the third Potter film,hit upon the correct answer in an interview withEntertainment Weeklywhen he described the Harry Potter stories as “a myth for our times.”[8] As my thesis, I want to expand upon this observation and argue that the Harry Potter series is so wildly popular because it speaks to the unique cultural concerns of our contemporary, post-Christian, but still spiritually sensitive, Western culture, and because it does so in a manner that presumes both the scientific and culturalassumptions of the West.
To begin with, it has to be acknowledged that Rowling has given us well-crafted children’s tales. The stories are brilliantly plotted adventures and Rowling has created a lavishly detailed, entrancing, narrative world. Her characters evoke strong emotional responses and many readers are sympathetic to the stories’ underdog heroes. Although the HP stories are certainly good story-telling, many other equally well-crafted books and films languish in relative obscurity. Some additional factor is needed to explain the success of the Potter phenomenon. Besides, literary virtue alone hardly explains the motives behind Harrius Potter et Philosphi Lapis, the Latin edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. That’s right. The Harry Potter novels have been translated into the dead language of Latin. They have also been translated into the equally dead languages of classical Greek and Irish Gaelic.
Not even the best-selling novels of John Grisham (suspense), Stephen King (horror), and Danielle Steele (romance) have been reincarnated in dead languages. On one level, Rowling gives us all these elements, the suspense of Grisham (we were forced to wait until the very end of the last book to decide if Snape would turn out to be good or bad), the horror of King (it’s hard to beat the gross-out factor of a slug-spitting curse or the unrelenting violence of wizard’s chess), and the romance of Steele (one could hardly avoid the scent of teen hormones throughout the series and then we ultimately learned that even Dumbledore, Hogwarts’ celibate headmaster, was gay). On a deeper level, however, the various dead language editions of HP novels may be the most important clue for understanding the novels’ cultural appeal. After all, what kind of people read classical Greek, Latin or Irish Gaelic?
It’s a safe bet that not many ten-year-olds are reading HP novels between extended sessions with Virgil’sAeneid and Homer’sOdyssey. If we want to understand why Greek and Latin scholars would sit around translating HP novels, we need only to consider the world inhabited by Hogwarts types. Harry lives in a fictionalized version of the contemporary Western world. In the HP world, the highest personal forces are all human (good wizards like Harry and bad wizards like Voldemort). Of course, Hogwarts is also inhabited by all manner of magical creatures with unique and interesting powers, but none of these creaturesoutperform the human wizardry of Harry and company. Harry’s world is modern and humanistic. All of the highest personal forces in Harry’s world are human. In this respect, the HP world is secular like the world of the Western academics who have translated the novels into various dead languages. Yet, the novels move beyond sterile secularism—and it is this “beyondness” which interests me.
Of course, it probably goes without saying that when fundamentalist web sites like ExposingSatanism.org charge Rowling with seeking to “desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult,” they completely misunderstand the mythology of the HP world. Any semi-perceptive reader of the HP novels can easily recognize that websites like this are silly to suggest that in the HP novels, “Satan is up to his old tricks again and the main focus is the children of the world.”[9] Although websites like the ExposingSatanism.org are completely misguided in their criticisms of the HP phenomenon, their criticisms can be significant because they unwittingly highlight a much overlooked fact about the HP world. In the HP world, there are no demons—and certainly no Satan to battle, or God to call upon. Harry’s world is devoid of all such traditional Christian figures. Such figures, particularly Satan and his demons, belong to medieval Christian mythology. The medieval Christian world was populated by all manner of spiritual beings, but Harry’s world has no such inhabitants. Harry Potter’s world is secular. No such spiritual beings exist. Harry’s world, like the secular West, assigns no active role to personalities (Satan, demons, angels, and even God) not controlled by humanity. In the HP world, Satan and his demons make no appearance; God and Jesus appear only as expletives. In spite of their rhetoric about discovering the true agenda behind the novels, the ExposingSatanism type criticisms fail to recognize the HP world for what it is. Such criticisms import the spiritual populations of the pre-secular medieval world into the secular HP world. Such criticisms are entirely misplaced. It is small wonder that Rowling, who is a self-identified Christian, has dismissed such criticisms as coming from “the lunatic fringe of my own religion.”[10]
One could more easily make the case the HP world is atheistic rather than satanic. However, the atheistic criticism would also be inaccurate. Because Rowling’s fiction presumes a post-Christian cultural ethos, many readers—not just the “lunatic fringe” like the ExosingSatanism crowd—have accused her of being anti-Christian. However, such accusations confuse being post-Christian with being anti-Christian. Although Harry’s seven years at Hogwarts transpire in a world freed from the cultural hegemony of Christian faith, the world according to Potter isn’t anti-Christian. The true or falsity of Christian faith never appears on the horizon.
Harry’s world is not atheistic; it is secular and post-Christian—and I mean post-Christian, not post-religious or post-spiritual. The HP world has been constructed from the cultural remnants of Christian society—as opposed to the cultural remnants of, say, Buddhist society. Harry’s calendar records Christmas, Halloween, and evenEaster. Harry’s closest living relative in the wizarding world is his godfather, the once notorious Sirius Black. (Black is murdered in the fifth volume.) Although these traditionally Christian holidays and relationships are secularized in Potter’s world, their lingering presence in the narratives harkens back to an earlier time when Christian faith was more central to society. However, at the surface level of Harry’s post-Christian world, celebrating Christmas and having a godfather have nothing to do with Christianity. Such institutions are merely the residue of an earlier age of Christian cultural dominance. The HP world is secular; it doesn’t even have an active deity.
The subtle dissolution of a meaningful role for an active God is, of course, one of the primary effects of the acids of Western modernity. In the post-Enlightenment West, geology and physics have edged an active God out of earth-forming processes. Biology has edged an active God out of life-forming processes. Anthropology and economic theory have edged an active God out of social and historical processes. Psychology and sociology have even edged an active God out of emotional and mental processes. The result is a largely secular world with no place for direct divine action. Harry’s world inherits the scientific assumptions of the secular post-Christian West. God and other spiritual beings are otiose and irrelevant to the everyday activities of life.
Like the post-Enlightenment world of the modern West, Harry’s world is largely governed by impersonal forces. In modern Western culture, we call these impersonal forces the “laws of nature” and they are comprehended and brought into humanity’s service through science. In Harry’s world, these impersonal forces are comprehensible and broughtinto human service through magic. In Harry’s world, magic takes the place of science. In fact, the “magic” so meticulously apprenticed at Hogwarts is, for all practical purposes, a sort of science.
Learning magic at Hogwarts is more like a high school chemistry experiment than an ancient exorcism or medieval incantation. When Harry desired to create a Draught of Peace potion, the ingredients had to be added to the cauldron in precisely the right order and quantities; the mixture had to be stirred the right number of times, firstly clockwise, then counterclockwise; the heat of the flames on which it was simmering had to be lowered to exactly the right level for a specific number of minutes before the final ingredient was added. Any deviation from this formula would render the potion usable.[11] Similarly, when Hermione wanted to make a polyjuice potion, she needed nearly a month to perfect the concoction and then a single stray hair from a passing cat ruined the entire episode for Hermione and sent her to the hospital seeking a cure for her newly acquired tail. Such potion-making is really a kind of science, not magic. Even wand-waving is a skill that must be physically mastered. Harry’s not a medieval warlock; he doesn’t call upon mystical powers or malevolent beings. Harry’s more like a modern scientist; he calls upon his knowledge of this world and his skill in manipulating its forces to his convenience.
I have recently had the experience—dare I call it “pleasure”—of reading Richard Dawkins’s unrelenting apology for atheism and secularism in The God Delusion where Dawkins rails against what he calls the “God Hypothesis,” which he states as the notion that “there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.”[12] Dawkins isn’t merely attacking Christianity; he insists: “I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented.” Dawkins is a diehard materialist, by which he means that all processes can be explained using the tools of the physical sciences. He even insists that “the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other.”[13] Dawkins assures his readers that scientific understanding is incompatible with belief in a personal god and that the most prestigious scientists, and in fact, nearly all truly intelligent persons, understand this incompatibility. He explains that “American scientists are less religious than the American public generally, and that the most distinguished scientists are the least religious of all.”[14] In fact, Dawkins assures us, that “the higher one’s intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to be religious or hold ‘beliefs’ of any kind.”[15] According to Dawkins, belief in a personal God is supernaturalism and he “decr[ies] supernaturalism in all its forms.”[16] Dawkins proudly expels a supernatural god from his universe; he is a self-described materialist and science is the only appropriate tool of analysis.
Although Harry’s world is impersonal like Dawkins’ world, Harry’s world is not materialist like Dawkins’s world. Harry’s world is post-materialist; it is not reducibleto a crass materialism free of mystery. The magic in Harry’s world is science, but his world cannot be explained in exclusively materialist and scientific terms. This world is more complex than Dawkins’ world. Reality is more than mere motion and matter. Harry’s world contains mysterious forces and powers not adequately described by materialism. Hogwarts examines the realities which go beyond physics, chemistry and biology, but these realities are not the personalities of traditional theism, nor do they exceed human understanding and control. Although the mysteries of the Hogwarts’ worlddefy material explanation, Hogwarts breathes deeply from the optimistic air of modern science. The mysteries that go beyond materialism in Harry’s world can be brought into the service of humanity. They, unlike the arbitrary gods and goddesses of the ancient world, have no will of their own. They are impersonal forces,like those of modern science. Such forces, unlike gods and demons, can be both comprehended and controlled through human intellect and ingenuity.
Rowling’s work has frequently been compared to that of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, but the comparison is misguided. Lewis and Tolkien, writing at the middle of the twentieth century, could still assume a robust Christian hegemony over culture. Their novels were explicitly Christian and were immediately perceived to be so. Tolkien and Lewis wrote for a culture which still accepted fantasy literature with explicit Christian themes and very thinly veiled Christian plots and characters. Rowling, writing at the beginning of the twentieth-first century, can no longer assume such Christian hegemony over an increasingly secular culture. Of course, her novels are subject to Christian interpretation. For example, Rowling’s religious silence in the first volumesprompted some Christian interpreters to anticipate a theological Trojan horse in Rowling’s final volumes. Indeed, the set-up for such explicit Christian themes was in place. Harry’s mother had sacrificed her life for Harry and many Christian readers were hoping for Harry’s mother to be resurrected as an explicit Christ figure in the stories’ climactic volume. John Granger, author of The Hidden Key to Harry Potter, even speculated that Rowling would unveil hidden evangelistic agenda in the final volumes of her series.[17] Granger was wrong and Harry’s mother was never resurrected and Rowling offered no overt evangelistic call in her final volumes. Granted, it can be argued that in the final volume, Harry experienced a sort of death and “resurrection” of his own, but Rowling has provided no explicitly Christian connections to these narrative events. Harry’s voluntary death-like experience (remember Dumbledore twice insisted that Harry did not really die)[18] and post-resurrection non-violent defeat of evil are certainly open to Christian interpretation, but Rowlinghas never promoted a distinctively Christian interpretation of these events, nor has she—unlike Tolkien and Lewis—ever claimed any explicitly Christian motive behind her work. Even chastened Christian readings of Rowling’s novels, as proposed in Connie Neal’s The Gospel According to Harry Potter,[19] overread the Christian themes in the HP novels as more hegemonic than they actually are. Rowling is not writing “Christian fiction” in mode of Tolkien and Lewis.