From the start, Harry Potter has been criticized by some Christian organizations because of its sorcery, and yet lauded by other Christians for its spiritual themes.

Now, the author J.K. Rowling, on the release of Part 1 of the Grand Finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film, has spilled the beans—she is Christian.

According to Ministry Values, Rowling is a member of the Church of Scotland, and her daughter was baptized there. Rowling grew up in a family of unbelievers. Nonetheless, as a 13-year-old she was drawn to faith, and used to go to church by herself.

Danielle Tumminio, a graduate from Yale Divinity School, taught a course at Yale University called “Christian Theology and Harry Potter. She told Ministry Values that as one who also had a similar faith journey, (having grown up without religion but being drawn to the faith), she believes that Rowland was able to use her life experience to put together the Harry Potter series. Tumminio said, “that’s God’s hand at work.”

Part of that life experience included Rowling’s life before Harry Potter, when she was dealing with the death of her mother. At the time, she was a single mother living on welfare, afflicted with clinical depression and a suicidal tendency, according to CNN.

Rowland used this emotion to write Harry Potter. The character lost his parents, just as she lost her mother. In the book, “Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban,” Rowland personified her depression battles with the dementors in the novel, CNN reported.

Spiritually dangerous

Rowland said one reason she withheld her faith was so that the conclusion of the Harry Potter series would not be predetermined, according to The New Yorker. However, one author is not content with that explanation.

Steve Wohlberg, bestselling author of “Exposing Harry Potter and Witchcraft: The Menace Beneath the Magic,” told The Christian Post, “The more I read the books, the more I realized how spiritually dangerous the material is. Even though it’s fiction there is a lot of reality woven in it. My warning is that Harry Potter is a major contributor to Wicca.”

And regarding the claims of Christian themes, Wohlberg told The Christian Post, “To me, she is just like Eve, not realizing she has become a channel for the devil, she is not aware of it.”

Other religious leaders who have denounced the series are Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, and Pope Benedict XVI, who in 2003 as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned of “subtle seductions [that could] corrupt the Christian faith [in impressionable young children]” The Christian Post reported.

Bible in Harry Potter

The New Yorker cited a list of authors who saw biblical lessons in Harry Potter. This includes Greg Garrett, author of One Fine Potion: The Literary Magic of Harry Potter, who called Rowling’s book “the best and most powerful contemporary retelling of the gospel narrative I’d encountered.”

The New Yorker cited other titles of books that found Christian themes in Harry Potter, including “What’s a Christian to Do with Harry Potter?” by Connie Neal; “A Charmed Life: The Spirituality of Potterworld by Francis Bridger;” and “The Mystery of Harry Potter: A Catholic Family Guide” by Nancy C. Brown.

Christianity Today said, “Whether Rowling intended it or not, the Harry Potter phenomenon is an example of how the Holy Spirit uses cultural means to tell God’s story.”

The publication cites Paul in Acts 17 where the evangelist “reminds us to listen to culture for those stories that resonate with God’s story of love and redemption. This doesn’t entail that Christians embrace all of popular culture (or even all of Harry Potter), but it does mean that we are attentive to the world around us, aware of the ways the Spirit is moving.”

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FOX news personality Glenn Beck said recently that Obama does not follow genuine Christianity, but instead, has views akin to Latin American liberation theology, a Catholic movement that is aligned with Marxism.

In his program Beck played a clip where Pope Benedict strongly condemned liberation theology. He also played a tape reel with clips of Jeremiah Wright, Jim Wallis and Michael Pfleger, and a tape of Obama saying, “My individual salvation rests on our collective salvation,” the Christian Science Monitor said.

Beck cited this as “evidence” that Obama is not a real Christian and in this way he implied that neither is Obama a loyal American, the CSM said. However, rd Magazine questioned Beck’s qualifications as a religion expert.

Noting that even many orthodox Mormons (Beck’s religion) see Christ’s atonement as collective rather than individual suffering and loss, rd Magazine stated that a number of Christian denominations share the idea of collectivism as part of Christianity as well.

Of note, Beck has conceived and is promoting a rally for this Saturday themed, “Restoring Honor,” in Washington D.C. His rant against Obama could be one way of trying to generate a huge turnout for this media event and to build personal media mileage, rd Magazine said.

The rally is described by Beck as a tribute to U.S. servicemen and citizens who uphold the country’s principles of “integrity, truth and honor,” according to Beck’s website.

Harold Attridge, dean of the Yale Divinity School said of Beck’s statements, “This is nothing but political rhetoric. There are many Americans with many views of Christian faith that align with what the president believes,” CSM said.

Attridge noted that Beck has a “narrow view” of true Christianity and cited Biblical sources for the collective aspect in Christianity. Matthew 25 for instance shows Jesus saying that “what one does to the smallest member of a community, one has done to Christ,” CSM said.

Attridge also noted that in the Gospel of John it says, “We do belong to one another, by the grace of God we have to care for one another,” and suggested that Beck, rather than opening up a religious dialogue had a political agenda designed to attack Obama, CSM said.

Richard Flory of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California said, “Clearly it has to do with the upcoming elections,” CSM said. Beck could also be viewed as deliberately perverting Christianity to cast further doubt among the public about Obama, rd Magazine said.

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Krista Tippett, 49, is widely identified with her radio program, “Speaking of Faith,” a program that has beat the odds in more ways than one.

First, when she first proposed the idea as a radio program nobody believed in it, and there initially were no takers.

However today, “Speaking of Faith” draws some 600,000 listeners on 240 radio stations nationwide and gets 1.3 million downloads a month, according to The New York Times.

Second, Tippett talks about faith and God with an approach that is the antithesis of the fire and brimstone stereotype in religious broadcasting, The New York Times says.

Third, Tippett manages to talk about normally divisive issues in a manner that is acceptable and non-inflammatory to a wide range of people with different orientations.  For example, Kare11.com has applauded her handling of the topic religion versus science with great care.

Tippett’s radio program melds all sides of herself, as the granddaughter of a preacher who was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, the questioning Brown student and Fulbright scholar studying German literature and history, the product of Yale Divinity School who can parse text in Greek and theology in German, the diplomat who seeks to resolve social divisions, the author of a bestselling book, and the winner of a Peabody Award, according to the New York Times.

According to Tippett’s website, just the other day she had a guest who became paralyzed at the age of 13 in an accident where both his parents died.  The wheelchair bound, paraplegic guest is a yoga teacher, and he spoke about the mind-body connection, and the strength and grace of our bodies amid aging, illness and death.

Another recent show featured an astrophysicist who works with the Hubble Telescope’s findings on phenomena like dark energy and white dwarfs.  The program “…explores edges of discovery where scientific advance meets recurrent mystery.  Questions richer than any of their current answers,” according to her website.

Tippet said, “Religion is a touchy subject.  You’re really getting at the core of people’s identities, an intimate place. This religious sphere in our public life is very charged, and I want to disarm that,” according to The New York Times.

Tippett avoids using religion as a proxy for politics, and on the blogosphere has been criticized for “timidity.”  She said she would not interview a proponent of intelligent design or a strident atheist, believing such guests would only polarize the discussion, though she has done shows about torture and the Sunni-Shiite divide within Islam, The New York Times said.

Others on her show included religious ethicists, textual scholars, and scientists ruminating about the intersection of divinity and humanity (the physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne), The New York Times said.

In a sermon at Yale’s Battell Chapel last year, Tippett described religion as “…a part of life where we give ourselves over to essential, exacting, majestic questions that no other discipline quite presses in quite the same way: What does it mean to be human? What matters in a life? What matters in a death? How to love? How can we be of service to one another and the world?”

Would she call her radio program a ministry?  Tippett said. “I do like the word ‘vocation,’ a calling.  If it is a ministry, it’s a ministry of listening rather than talking,” according to The New York Times.

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