c. 2000 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Literature instructor Carolyn Whitney-Brown was first drawn to Harry Potter by an 8-year-old girl who was struggling with leukemia.

The Toronto girl, faced with the prospect of early death, found a kindred soul in the boy wizard who is forced to come to terms with mortal danger, the slaying of his own parents and the murder of his friend.

The mega-selling series, which began with “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” is a fantasy that, not so ironically, is about real life, particularly about loss, powerlessness and solitude. And right and wrong.

The books are also filled with laughs, toilet humor and and soccerlike competitions played on broomsticks. It all struck a chord with the girl whom Whitney-Brown, who has a Ph.D. in literature from Rhode Island’s Brown University, came to know through the close friendship the girl had with her daughter.

“Harry Potter is profound,” says Whitney-Brown, a Christian so entranced with the moral and spiritual lessons in the series that she is teaching a unique course, “Harry Potter and the Ultimate Questions,” this fall at St. Michael’s College, a Catholic university affiliated with the University of Toronto.

Although the girl, who died at age 9, never told Whitney-Brown exactly what she loved about Harry, Whitney-Brown believes it had something to do with the way author J. K. Rowling honestly faces life’s big questions _ without pretending evil and suffering are always overcome.

“Harry Potter inhabits a make-believe universe of great fears and hopes,” said Whitney-Brown. “It’s a world in which both set-upon Harry, and young readers who feel powerless in today’s world, can learn to make choices for good.”

We have not been hearing much about the serious philosophy inherent in the Harry Potter series.

Most of the media coverage has gushed about the more than 35 million copies sold, the $400 million in sales, the upcoming movie, the new tie-in products and Rowling’s visit to North America in late October, where she’ll read from the fourth installment in her seven-part series, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.”

The subject of religion and Harry Potter rears up only when small groups of conservative Christians in dozens of U.S. states and some Canadian provinces have tried to restrict Harry Potter books in public schools, claiming Harry promotes witchcraft and subliminally fosters Satanism.

Despite the attention they’re receiving, these Christians don’t represent most evangelical Christians, let alone liberal Christians.

Christianity Today, the evangelical magazine founded by Billy Graham, is no friend of wicca, but it endorsed Harry Potter, saying “the literary witchcraft of the series has almost no resemblance to the I-am-God mumbo-jumbo of wiccan circles,” adding that “Harry is on the side of light.”

Whitney-Brown suggests the Christian militants also seem to have forgotten the magic-filled fantasies of C.S. Lewis’ famous Narnia series, which included the title, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Lewis, an icon among evangelicals, is never protested because he also wrote elegant defenses of traditional Christianity.

It’s true, Harry is not an explicit Christian, says Whitney-Brown, who has done consulting work for a range of Christian organizations, including the Canadian Council of Churches, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the United Church of Canada.

“An omnipotent God also does not appear in the books,” says Whitney-Brown. “The series does not adhere to any ideological line, religious or otherwise.”

Turning the protesting Christians’ worry on its head, Whitney-Brown suggests the series’ exploration of spiritual ambiguity is actually one of its greatest strengths.

Although Harry is clearly a good boy who fights evil, especially his arch-enemy, the wizard Lord Voldemort, there are times in the series, for example, when Rowling acts as if there is an odd kinship between Harry and Voldemort, between good and evil. The series also ponders how evil can exist in a good world, with Rowling appearing to adopt poet John Milton’s idea that divinity mysteriously permits evil in the world.

Whitney-Brown said she believes one of the main reasons children are captivated by Harry is that “they know bad things happen in today’s world.”

They’re afraid of war and environmental destruction. They know people who have died or who suffer from multiple sclerosis. And, like Whitney-Brown’s friend with leukemia, they know they’re not going to last forever.

The Harry Potter series is “about being courageous in the face of such fears.” To Whitney-Brown, one of the best ethical lessons the books teach “is that kids who make brave choices can make a real difference.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

As the kindly, eccentric headmaster of Hogwarts school for wizards, Dumbledore, an archetype of good, teaches: “It’s our choices, Harry, that show who we really are, far more than our abilities.”

Harry, for example, loves competition. But he also gives up his chance to win a game of underwater wrestling by choosing to save someone who’s struggling. Another time he decides the fairest way to end a tournament he could win is by orchestrating a tie.

In Harry Potter, Rowling has created a character who is a comfort to a dying girl. And though it will drive some to distraction, Whitney-Brown finds it perfectly understandable that Rowling maintains she is a Christian. Rowling regularly attends church and says it means a lot to her.

As for ultra-conservatives’ anxiety that the magic in the series promotes witchcraft and Satanism, Whitney-Brown makes a strong case that Harry’s magic _ including a mirror through which he can talk to the spirits of his parents _ is “a metaphor for the human imagination.”

Maybe that’s why the books are so frightening to ideologues, Whitney-Brown said, “because imagination can’t be controlled or packaged into orthodoxies.”

DEA END TODD