I.
When I began this series many months ago, I did not intend to offer any focused critique of any existing fantasy works; nor did I intend to offer (beyond my initial thoughts on God in fantasy) anything like a prescription for how to approach religion in writing. I am suggesting things one might imagine and, in so doing, criticizing certain failures of imagination, not saying what anyone ought to do. I have, therefore, effectively treated authorial choices as morally neutral.
I still think this is basically the right proceeding for this kind of essay. However, a conversation with a friend has led me to think that one might say more about the limits an author might wish to impose upon his own writing of fantasy. The topic was the morality of Rowling's Harry Potter series, and, specifically, of its spiritual content. This was a matter of particular concern among Christian readers when the books first became popular; and, though I think active criticism has largely died down with the publication of Deathly Hallows, my friend, a devout Evangelical, offered a variation on the usual complaint. The concern was, put in various ways, that the content of Harry Potter is too "occult" or "magical" to be safe; that it may encourage (perhaps, has in fact encouraged) readers to dabble in esoteric practices and so imperil their souls; that it, in some hidden way, corrupts the mind and draws people away from God.
To this objection, I offered the obvious counters: although theologically confused, Rowling is a professed Christian, and her profession must inform any reading of the work; Rowling most likely saw the magic as mere fantasy, and most readers probably do likewise; and many do in fact find within the books valuable theological or moral themes, so claiming that they are inherently wicked is unlikely to succeed. In short, his reading is bad as a reading: it does not correspond to fact, or distorts certain facts out of proportion, and it confuses the literary for the real.
