Deeper Magic, Deeper Meanings in Harry Potter

An Interview with Greg Garrett

By Evan Weppler
http://www.patheos.com/
November 01, 2010

Across the 4,100 pages of the Harry Potter saga, Rowling writes of magic and mystery and adventure, but throughout the story, there are even more magical themes at work. In his new book, One Fine Potion: The Literary Magic of Harry Potter, Greg Garrett explores the “Deeper Magic” of J.K. Rowling’s writings. The importance of community, the handling of power, the need for redemption -- all of these are powerful forces in Rowling’s work -- and Garrett looks at them one by one, holding them up to the light of culture, literature, and faith. Garrett is a Professor of English at Baylor University, has written more than a dozen books on faith and culture, and is an active blogger at theotherjesus.com, a columnist at Patheos, and has many other print and web publications. He writes with a perspective of hope, leading the reader through Harry Potter’s world and helping them to see the deeper meanings in Rowling’s words.

What does One Fine Potion offer that is different from other books on the topics of Harry Potter and faith? Why were you compelled to write this book?

I guess the glib answer would be that what’s different is that no other book about Harry Potter was written by me, although that’s hardly sufficient. Still, I think, as a novelist and theologian both, I am both a strong reader and critic, and a person who can outline the theological messages the Potter narrative carries with some skill and beauty. The approach I took in reading Potter -- a four-fold medieval reading -- is, I think, unique, and offers powerful perspectives into the Harry Potter story. But ultimately, I wanted to spend the last few years thinking about and writing this book because I felt that Rowling’s 4100-page epic was the best and most powerful contemporary retelling of the gospel narrative I’d encountered. I learned powerful things about my own faith from reading Harry Potter, and that’s coming from someone who thinks, speaks, and writes about faith all the time.

In One Fine Potion, you write at length about the handling of power and about not using it to the disadvantage of others. As an educator, what would you say about the handling of knowledge as power and the correct way of using knowledge in the relation to others?

Good question, Evan -- thank you. I think my approach would have to be the same as my comments in the book: knowledge in Harry Potter’s world is about learning enough to shape the world as one wants. That’s a good definition of power, the ability to shape the world around you. But we all have a responsibility to be aware that what we want may not be what is best -- in fact, it may not be good for anyone but ourselves. We all have a responsibility to shape the world with compassion even for those with whom we might disagree. Knowledge should be a force for good.

What simple message would you give to those you mention in your book who believe that J.K. Rowling is a “Satanist” and is trying to promote witchcraft to younger audiences?

It’s tempting, of course, first to simply argue that this is ridiculous. The Harry Potter novels are fantasy, after all, and magic is a core component of fantasy. Or one might be moved to argue facts -- that J. K. Rowling has spoken about her Christian faith since the release of the first novel, that she has denied that she is a witch, that she has denied any belief in magic, that after the final novel was released, she gave interviews in which she said her faith had shaped the entire narrative and that the two Bible verses in the final book are the thematic core of the series. But people who believe J.K. Rowling is a witch and that the books promote witchcraft are arguing from an appeal to a couple of Old Testament Bible verses which I guess we could say are their thematic core.

So I think the way I’d want to address them would have to be biblical. Jesus says in Matthew 7 and Luke 6 that we judge a tree by its fruits: no bad tree can give good fruits, and vice versa. I can tell you that in four years of talking about the Potter novels, I’ve never once seen a credible account of someone led to practicing witchcraft by reading the Potter books or seeing the Potter films. But I have seen many people -- children and adults alike -- who have learned the value of compassion, the importance of faithful community, and the necessity of living out self-sacrificing love through their encounters with these stories. The fruit of J.K. Rowling’s stories and her own claiming of Christianity have the potential to shape millions of lives in faithful love and service. That looks like good fruits for me.

You mention that Rowling was afraid that if she allowed the public to know of her faith, they could guess how the story would end. Do you believe that this is a problem for authors of faith? How does your faith influence your writing? Do you empathize with Rowling’s concerns?

Big questions, and they come to the heart of faithful art. Rowling’s concern, simply, was that those who knew she was a Christian would be able to discern whether or not Harry Potter would live, die, or do both. This awareness of resurrection faith is probably more important to Rowling’s particular narrative than to most narratives by Christian authors, but it’s probably there, since what we ultimately believe in, as J.R.R. Tolkien and contemporary theologians like Jürgen Moltmann and John Polkinghorne point out, is happy endings.

As a writer, you want people to believe that disaster and sorrow are possible outcomes of your story; I think if you write well, even as a person of faith, readers will have the shock of surprise when they reach a happy ending. And, if you are a person faithful both to God and to observation, it’s possible that you’ll write something that doesn’t end happily in the moment, because sometimes people die, sometimes hearts break, sometimes the Holocaust happens. So your novel or story can end unhappily, even as we believe and hope for something different.

At the end of Deathly Hallows, Harry offers Voldemort a chance to repent. In today’s world, filled with real-life terrorists, world leaders, and power mongers, is this an option? You write of the importance of compassion and redemption -- but are these possibilities in the higher spheres of power, in government and the justice system?

As a person of faith, yes, I believe there is always the possibility of repentance and redemption, although Rowling’s story points out how difficult it may be. Voldemort is set in his ways -- calcified, petrified -- and the possibility that he will allow his heart and mind to change is slight. But I do and must believe in the possibility that God’s love moving in the world can still move mountains and change minds. How we play this out in institutions is probably different from how we believe as individuals. As Reinhold Niebuhr argued, “Christian realism” insists we recognize that, for example, all our prayers for Hitler to change may not stop him from attacking Poland or killing Jews. Perhaps justice demands we take up arms to oppose great evil; I myself am unsure. I want to be a Christian pacifist and place my complete faith in the God of Abraham -- what Reinhold Niebuhr’s brother Richard called “Radical Monotheism” -- but honestly, most days I’m too weak to do that. I could never do what Harry ultimately does in Rowling’s epic -- go to his death without taking up arms, trusting that there is a greater plan, a deeper magic.

In One Fine Potion, you mention J.R.R. Tolkien’s idea of the eucatastrophe, the story that offers the audacious ending of hope amidst disaster. For many people today, a story that ends with “all was well” seems contrived and, well, cheesy. Why is this? Why does the good ending feel so artificial sometimes? And why is the Harry Potter saga an exception?

We have been conditioned by bad Hollywood films that did not earn their happy endings to think of them as somehow unrealistic. I know as a novelist that we have to earn our endings, and they have to have been prepared for. A good writer does the groundwork for possibility, and plants hope. Theologically speaking, though, the eucatastrophe is at the heart of our faith: no matter how bad things look, we believe the God is working to redeem the cosmos, and eventually that plan is going to show its face. In Harry Potter, what makes Rowling’s accomplishment so brilliant is that she has planted so many little seeds of hope, has done her work so well, that we are willing to believe -- and rooting for light to somehow overcome darkness. In the book, I think I managed to talk rationally about the beauty of her ending, but I find now, thinking about it, all I can do is gush. What an accomplishment, both in literary and theological terms!

How does reading fantasy -- works by Rowling, Lewis, or Tolkien -- inform and influence our thinking, our living, and our beliefs?

C. S. Lewis said that in literature that seems to be separate from our own experience -- I’d include fantasy, science fiction, horror, and other otherworldly genres here -- we find it easier to absorb moral lessons. He used the analogy of stealing past sleeping dragons! Since it doesn’t look like our world and our experience, our guards are down, and we are more willing to mark, learn, and digest what the stories have to teach us. That’s why the Narnia books, the Lord of the Rings epic, Madeleine L'Engle’s Wrinkle in Time series, and the Harry Potter books -- all of which, incidentally, are written by confessional Christians -- have the power to shape our thinking and encourage our faith. They present lessons that reinforce our faith and because we think we are reading about other worlds, we aren’t saying -- “Wait! This is about me!”

You have written a number of nonfiction and fiction books. What are the differences in the writing process? Do you have a preference for either?

I’m a novelist at heart, because, to paraphrase Orson Welles, storytelling is the biggest and best play-set there is. But it’s arduous and often time-consuming work, and I can’t write a novel every year or even every other year. So in the in-between times, I love looking at narrative from my standpoint as teacher, cultural critic, and theologian, which is what I do in many of the nonfiction books. Fiction is more about gathering, shaping, and discovering; nonfiction, for me, is more about paying attention. If I have two years to read or watch carefully, I can write a nonfiction book, and I’ve discovered that if I choose a topic that has meaning for me and I explore it faithfully, it tends to have meaning for many others as well.

You have written many books about different cultural elements -- from the Matrix to U2 to comic books and graphic novels to Harry Potter. What leads you to write about these various topics? How do you go about researching and developing your thoughts?

I’m drawn to stories, films, and music that teach us how to live, and since so much of my spiritual journey has been mediated by stories and experiences outside the Church, I pay close attention to the possibility that something sacred might be happening in the movies, music, and fiction to which I’m drawn. When I write, I’m doing a faithful reading of a text or texts, but I’m also trying to place it in the midst of a centuries-long exchange, what Stanley Hauerwas has called the ongoing conversation about God we have from generation to generation in the Church. So with each book, I read primary texts and I read theology, ethics, and other cognate fields, and I try not to get lazy, relying on old conclusions and sources. That way I can learn and grow with each book, as well as give something fresh to my readers. And because I get bored easily, I find myself moving in new directions all the time. My next few books include a work on 21st-century Christianity (The Other Jesus, out in February), and my books in progress are a cultural and theological history of the war on terror, and a book on a Christian political ethic, in time for the 2012 election. I’m reading up a storm for them.

You are the Writer in Residence at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest. What does that role entail? How does being a part of both that community and your community at Baylor University affect your writing?

My relationship with the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, is a way for me to serve the Church that rescued me and redirected my life, and the seminary that trained me as a theologian. Like anyone who wants to be responsive to the ways God has moved in her or his life, I look for opportunities to give back, and my work with faculty and students there -- as well as my ongoing writing and research carried out from my office at the seminary -- has been a blessing to me and, I hope, to others. I also serve St. David’s Episcopal Church in Austin as a licensed lay preacher -- that community too has been formative for me.

My twenty-plus year relationship with Baylor has been a search to find myself and the best way to serve others. That call to vocation is something Baylor takes very seriously and has encouraged in me and in many others. I love teaching and do it well, I think, and Baylor is the place where I’ve been offered the encouragement to teach, to write and speak, and to be a public intellectual and theologian as well as a novelist. Not many employers would have given me permission to be a fulltime student knowing I might never return, but my seminary education made me a better Baylor professor, and has launched my writing in new directions toward theology, ethics, politics, and culture. I can’t say often enough how grateful I am to Baylor and to the administrators who have supported and do support the work I do. I couldn’t write and tour and speak without that support.

Community is one of the lessons that Harry Potter has reinforced for me. Although our culture often celebrates so-called “self-made” men, it’s not enough to be individually brilliant. Voldemort is one of the greatest wizards in history, and he’s a disaster for himself and everyone who comes into contact with him. We need to be shaped and loved by community in order to turn into the people God has called us to be. And that’s what I think these communities have done for me -- they’ve given me the chance to become the person I think I’m supposed to be, or at least to take some giant steps in that direction.



Evan Weppler is a senior at Baylor University, studying Religion and Communications, with plans of going on to seminary and into church ministry. He is from Cypress, Texas, and is deeply interested in the "Deeper Magic" of life and the interplay of faith, art, and culture..