Is Harry Potter an Episcopalian?

Did anyone else notice how we learned that Harry Potter is a Christian the same weekend we learned Dumbledore is gay? (Please excuse the MTV News links; they were what came up first. And where else can you read such priceless headlines as "Kid Rock arrested after Waffle House scuffle"?)

J.K. Rowling, a Church of Scotland member, has been reluctant to talk about her faith extensively before, but Book VII makes the Christian parallels as explicit as they ever were in the Narnia books, and in discussing them she starts to sound more like Frederick Buechner than like the Satan apologist some people still consider her: "The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It's something I struggle with a lot ... On any given moment if you asked me [if] I believe in life after death, I think if you polled me regularly through the week, I think I would come down on the side of yes--that I do believe in life after death. It's something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books."

That may not be the kind of ringing endorsement that gets people on "The 700 Club," but it's pretty close to what most Christian writers and artists actually say when you ask them what they believe. Madeleine L'Engle, Linford and Karen, Kathleen Norris, Annie Dillard, and Buechner himself, on back to Dostoevsky with his "furnace of doubt"--they burn and they flicker and they almost sputter out, and then they burn again. "It preoccupies me a lot," she says. Good stories shaped by such preoccupation have done more for my faith than anything else.

And the very same weekend she lets us know that the HP books take place in a Christian universe, she also tells us that (though it's not at all spelled out in the book) Dumbledore experienced same-sex attraction as a young man. This is a woman who knows how to make enemies. Everyone who ever thought she was a shill for Satan is now feeling vindicated; but now all the anti-religionists who'd like to slap C.S. Lewis out of the canon of classic children's books are going to hate her too. "Why, here I thought she was writing fun children's books that promote trust, self-sacrifice, and courage--but in fact she was just writing Christian propaganda!" they'll say, totally oblivious. I look forward to reading the outraged responses from Phil Pullman and Christopher Hitchens. Actually, I look forward to ignoring them.

Meanwhile, Rowling has reminded lots of people of something that I think the news media forgets: some of us believe in Jesus, and resurrection, and also would be happy to attend church with DumbleD whether or not he likes him some wizards. Kudos to her.