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Reviewed by Jonathan Marlowe, pastor of Shiloh United Methodist Church in Granit Quarry, NC The Gospel According to Harry Potter by Connie Neal Over the last few years, I have done a "Harry Potter Bible Study" with the children in my church. We sit down and listen to different chapters of the Harry Potter books on tape, and then we discuss them together and see what (if any) points of contact there are between the world of Harry Potter and the world of the Bible. To my delight, I have found that the children are very creative and insightful in their attempts to make connections between the two literary worlds. A local newspaper heard about the study I was doing with the children and did a newspaper article about it that drew considerable attention. Much to my amazement, the week after the article was published, my office was flooded with phone calls from people who wanted to know why I was teaching the children to practice witchcraft and devil-worship. One especially angry woman threatened to organize a group of mad mothers and picket our church. Happily, this threat never materialized. This episode did, however, make me pause long enough to consider two questions: Why does a children's fantasy story provoke such wild opposition among some Christians? And is there a way for cooler heads to prevail in the discussion of Harry Potter among Christians? I have found an answer to the second of my two questions in Connie Neal's latest book The Gospel According to Harry Potter. Connie Neal's previous book What's a Christian to do with Harry Potter? exposed some of the urban legends and false myths that have been spread among some Christian circles largely through the internet. Neal has given us another opportunity for "cooler heads to prevail" in her latest book from Westminster John Knox that is in the same collection with The Gospel According to Peanuts and The Gospel According to the Simpsons (and which will soon include The Gospel According to J. R. R. Tolkien.) Connie Neal goes carefully through the four Harry Potter books that have been published so far, and patiently shows us the same kind of "points of contact" with the Bible that I discussed with the children in my church. These "points of contact" (or "glimmers of the gospel," as she calls them) include how Lily Potter's sacrifice for the sake of her son Harry corresponds to Christ's sacrifice for us on the cross, how Dumbledore's deep wisdom mirrors the character of God, and how evil forces operate through deception and violence. Neal is careful not to treat the Potter series as Christian allegory, acknowledging that the Potter stories are different from C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. But she wants to prove that J. K. Rowling was right when she said, "You can find in these stories whatever you are looking for." So many have found evidence of witchcraft and the occult in these stories because that is what they were seeking. But Neal has gone to the same stories looking instead for the gospel, and much to the reader's delight, she has found it. From her background in evangelical Protestantism, she has written about how the biblical themes of sin, redemption, love, judgment, and forgiveness are illumined by putting them alongside the Potter stories. Readers from a more sacramental and liturgical background could, in addition to Neal's insights, draw parallels between different parts of Harry's story and the church's practices of baptism and eucharist. This book could be useful for pastors and laity, parents and children who want to think more carefully about how the gospel can be reflected in good stories, whether the author intended it that way or not. The children in our churches are reading these books like no other literary series in the past, and pastors would do well to be able to discuss the themes in these books with children of all ages. Connie Neal has given us a wonderful resource for Christians to be able to relate to their children's interests and gently guide them toward the gospel.
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