I did a few searches look for other threats along this line, but I haven't found any.

I know that the Hogwarts celebrates Christmas, but are wizards and witches Christians?

I just can't see Albus Dumbledore getting down on his knees so he can pray.

It seems that magic would strip away faith as effectively as science.

 

Good point, I don't think any wizards or witches would believe in God....

Maybe they just like to celebrate and get presents? Or the author wanted to give the Hogwarts student's a long break, and was to lazy to invent a different holiday to do it.

 

You could argue that muggleborns caused the celebration of Christmas as a compromise of cultures or something along those lines, adding some substance to muggle hate. But, more likely in my opinion is that like real people who believe in science, wizards are willing to put faith in a God.

 

I'm not sure why this is important, but yeah.

It wasn't really mentioned in the books, so it's up to individual interpretation. You could go the way you mentioned above, where the ability to wield magic causes them to not believe...

Or the other route, where they think: God gave us magic. If god could create the earth, then he could give magic to anyone he wished.

 

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

At any rate, I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

All by Albert Einstein

You can be a man of science and believe in a God or a religion, the same should be true with magic.

 

I'm going to disagree with the first half of this sentence. In every single way.

 

I don't think Wizards believe in god since they think the magic is in themselves and not really in anything else. At least that's the vibes I'm getting from it, in any case.

 

Hogwarts celebrates Christmas in a completely secular manner. All presents, no Jesus. There's no mention of religion in all seven books, as far as I can remember. And I cornered Taure on IRC just to be sure, and he says there's just a quote from the Bible on James and Lily's tombstone - 1 Corinthians 15:26, Google reveals - but that's about it.

 

I don't think science and religion are mutually exclusive, but I do think that science can exist without religion whereas religion has to bend backwards to accommodate science.

Edit: Considering the fact that witchburnings happened in the HP world, if some conception of a Christian God exists, then it's probably much different from either Catholicism or Protestantism. If anything, I think it's much more likely that wizards assume God to just be the source of magic, but it seems like they really don't care much about religion at all.

 

I find it more surprising that they celebrate Easter, to be honest. The modern Christmas celebrations are a blend of pagan and Christian rites; the pagan rites are the most represented in Harry Potter (the trees and decoration) although there is a mention of Christmas carols at some point. Easter, though...

I was willing to see it as Rowling's way of tranposing familiar elements in a magical setting, just as she does with classes, teachers, detentions and so on. But the very Christian line on James and Lily Potter's grave in DH blew holes in that theory. While a lot of atheist schools here celebrate Christmas and Easter with trees and garlands and chocolate eggs (for the younger kids at least), and none of the religious connotations, the same atheists don't write lines from the Bible on their graves.

... Do they?


EDIT: Aekiel, Richard, Tehan and Lasso all posted while I wrote.

-_-

 

I was thinking of starting a topic on religion in the wizarding world, partly because I found this mildly intriguing (from the Overused Metaphors thread):

It seems quite obvious to me that wizards aren't Christian. What Christian culture they do demonstrate can be satisfactorily explained away as a mixture of muggleborn influence, and the fact that a lot of Christian traditions are supposedly based on pagan rites.

On the subject of broader religion it's a bit vague. To me the "it never says that they have a religious system" is a pretty strong argument. After all, if you were to write the same books in an entirely muggle setting, you probably wouldn't avoid religion entirely.

Magic removes a lot of the reasons we have religion in the first place. Unanswerable questions don't need to have "religious" answers; those would stay in the realm of magic. It also somewhat satisfies the human inferiority complex: the strongest wizards are already infinitely more powerful than the weaker ones.

I also think the existence of magic has an effect on the concept of higher beings. It doesn't preclude their existence, but it does make them rather less interesting, in a way - if He were some sort of sentient being, He wouldn't be so different from a superwizard.

If wizards were to worship anything, or consider a higher power, I think it would have to be magic itself, as a semi-sentient power (or something like that).

 

They worship Satan, of course.

 

Just did a quick count of oaths used - first off, Jesus doesn't get a single mention. Second, Merlin (and his various clothing, bodyparts and facial hair) is used twenty times to God's 15, though there's no pureblood/muggleborn bias - both male Malfoys and Umbridge have all used God, and Hermione's used Merlin. Arthur Weasley and Fudge have used both.

I think it's fairly safe to say that the wizarding world has all the Christianity-derived cultural trappings of Western society, all used in an entirely secular way.

 

There's one area where wizards diverge from their secular/idle-respect for the concept of God and religion- they believe in prophecy.

I know Dumbledore suggested that Harry's prophecy was important if only because Voldemort believed it, but the Dept. of Mysteries collects the things by the thousands. Beyond their knowing of life beyond death, ghosts and the importance of intent when taking action, they also at some level believe in a design. This is the one part that throws a monkey wrench.

 

Design =/= fate. I don't see how they really believe in the former.

 

Yeah, that was a little sloppy in the logic- I was interrupted. What I mean is, the attitude towards prophecy seems to reflect a more Mediterranean polytheistic set of beliefs, one that they abide by because they've seen 'proof' of it's importance. Christianity doesn't allow much for fate, while Judaism, Hellenistic faiths, and other older religions mostly seem to include it as a given. I don't know enough about Celt-Druidic lore to say whether that fits their scheme, but it does speak to a non-Jesus-inspired system of belief.

 

Their collection of prophecies doesn't necessarily imply religious belief. They record magical phenomena, which in many cases prophecies irrefutably are. Whether they come true or not, or whether anyone believes they will, is not the objective. They are interested in the magical occurrence.

On-Topic: I think they'd probably view magic as something similar to the Tao or Brahman (as far as actual theological resemblance).

But if anything, wizards seem pretty secular to me. They're old enough to recognize tradition and call holidays by their "proper" names, but they don't seem to devote much (or any) effort to religious thought or action. As mentioned, they probably celebrate the traditional western holidays in a secular manner.

 

I see Rowling's universe as a reflection of our own culture in England. A lot of people aren't Christian but we all celebrate religious holidays despite this - a holiday is a holiday, after all. It's tradition: it's the way we're brought up to think and what we acknowledge as normal.

I don't honestly think that Rowling put much thought into religion in the books, beyond avoiding mentioning it to avoid the ire of the religious paranoid extremists who'll attack the books as being 'Satanic'.

She created the magical world as a reflection of our own, including everything familiar to her such as the traditional holidays and (as far as I've seen) writes these holidays from the perspective of someone who observes them without religious emphasis. Christmas is about presents to the majority of the UK nowadays, not Jesus's birth.

As to the bible quote: It's also not a surprising use as an epitaph. Even from a non-religious perspective there are things you put on graves and bible passages are high up on the list. Most non-religious people just accept things like that without even thinking, because religion is so ingrained within our culture.

Basically Rowling seems like the average non-Christian Brit to me in her take on religion and how it fits into everyday life. But she's clearly consciously avoided mentioning it or clarifying it, because otherwise all the nut-case criticisers of the books would have a field day.

 

I don't quite see what you're talking about. In any case, the distinction between 'design' and 'fate' is important because 'design' implies there is a designer.

I agree with most of this, but you should note that Rowling is a Christian, who has expressed attachment to her faith.

 

You could probably explain it away (and many fanfictions do, for good reason), but don't we have actual proof in canon for life after death?
Especially in book 4 with the ghosts coming out of Voldemorts wand and the strange station scene in book 7.

That could either support or undermine belief in god. How would you interpret that?