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And yet, where is the brouhaha over Lord of the Rings? I have not heard it. All I have heard are desperate, wrong-headed attempts at explaining why Tolkien’s (and Lewis’s Narnia series’) use of magic is fine while Rowling’s is bad. Even Harry’s critics feel compelled to defend Tolkien.

In fact, Tyndale House, the publisher of the Left Behind series and the New Living Translation of the Bible, has gone so far as to publish Finding God in The Lord of the Rings. Written by a vice president at Focus on the Family (another organization that few would claim suffered from liberal leanings), Kurt Bruner and writer Jim Ware attempt to show the “strong Christian faith that inspired and informed [Tolkien’s] imagination.” No scent of hell in that.

Bruner and Ware point out, “Many hard-line believers have been hesitant to embrace a creative work that includes mythic figures, magic rings, and supernatural themes. This is unfortunate because the transcendent truths of Christianity bubble up throughout this story, baptizing our imaginations with realities better experienced than studied.”

Bruner and Ware are right about Tolkien, but their observations apply equally to Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Neither series makes much sense apart from a Christian ethic—whether or not this was the author's intent, especially in Rowling's case. Both works convey a palpable sense of Providence; both lift up agape love as the highest virtue; both flesh out what it means to have noble character; both see evil as coming from the heart and not “out there.”

So why does Frodo get a pass while Harry is demonized? Perhaps it is because Tolkien is a safe, dead, white male who taught at Oxford and helped C.S. Lewis become a Christian. He is one of us. Whereas Rowling is a divorced mother who only mentioned she was some kind of Christian when Christians starting attacking her. Perhaps it is because Christian parents get very anxious about things that so stir our ideals but do not come from our pews, like the Harry Potter craze and the Star Wars phenomenon before it. I do not know.

But here is where Bruner and Ware make their stand: “The Lord of the Rings is a tale of redemption in which the main characters overcome cowardly self-preservation to model heroic self-sacrifice [which is true of each of the Potter books]. Their bravery mirrors the greatest heroic rescue of all time, when Christ ‘humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!’”

I smell the same spiritual scent in both works, and it is not sulfur.

Michael G. Maudlin is the executive editor of Books & Culture.

Visit Books & Culture online at BooksandCulture.com or subscribe here.

Focus on the Family’s Plugged In Web site has an archive of articles on Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings to provide advice for “Christians grappling with pop culture's mystical mania.”

“Movie Mom” Nell Minow said of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: “A terrific book is now a terrific movie. Every family should enjoy them both.”

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