The last of the Harry Potter movies will be coming out within a week. For a while, the overly sensitive launched  a campaign against the series, due to its reliance on the old tropes of wizards. they feared that the device meant that it was allied with dark forces. That seems to have simmered down, as new venom gets spewed over new targets.I'm grateful that the series put books into the hands of young people through of all agencies, Scholastic Publishing. I hope that Rowling's fans will be engaged enough to track down some her allusions to christian tradition and in so doing find some new depth in their own journey of faith, one often as perilous as Harry's.
 

For instance, Christians read of the communion of saints in the Apostles' Creed. The series offers a marvelous image for that connection of us all, living and dead. When harry is in battle with Voldemort, the spirits of the dead create a shield around the combatants and those spirits cheer Harry on.  Harry is told that those whom we love and love us never truly leave us. Hers is a bracing tonic against the American notion that salvation is about my, my individual ticket to heaven, alone. Harry , as all of humanity, is not made to be alone. He survives due to his relationships, especially the core group of his tow great and loyal friends, a boy and a girl. The depth of our connections shows itself in grief and the tears of loss. How many readers have been brought to tears by the death of Cedric, the heartbroken cries of his father, and the eulogy made by Dumbledore at the great banquet. On a tombstone she quotes Paul, "the last enemy to be destroyed is death."

Even as she plays games with a horcrux as a piece of a soul, Rowling grasps the importance of the material and the ordinary virtues of everyday life. Harry gets attached to an esired (desire spelled backward)  a device that can reveal inmost longings, so he gets to see his long-lost parents. He is warned "it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." She places a Scripture quote on a tombstone:"where your heart is, there your treasure lies."

Above all, the series is a meditation, as is Lord of the Rings, on the power of love v. the love of power. For Rowling, power is allied with fear and is in the embrace of the force of death. the very name of Voldemort is linked ot death.  Love is allied with virtues such as courage and leads to the force of life. Voldemort's hideous version of a Communion ritual uses death as an instrument toward his renewed life. On the other hand, Dumbledore tells Harry "love is the one thing Voldemort does not understand. A love as deep as your mother's for you leaves a mark." it is that love that allows one to face death, to be self-sacrificial, to renounce power over others in making people mere objects.

What religious censors don;t grasp is the eye of faith. The eye of faith can read anything and make it sacramental and find analogies to God, the work of God, and that which opposes god's vision for the world. To try to deny children and adults of the rare opportunity to be greeted into an alternative world of imagining, one that casts light on our own experience, is a crime against the spirit of human, and yes, divine creativity. No matter the power in a wizard's arsenal, Rowling lifts up the virtues that muggles and wizards may share, ones found in the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, ones shared by all human beings at their best, no matter their station.