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Looking for God in Harry Potter Looking For God In Harry Potter by John Granger SaltRiver (Tyndale) 224 pages, $16.99

For nearly a decade, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has been a litmus test of evangelicals' commitment to defying popular culture. Some churches have consigned Potter novels to bonfires because of the series' portrayal of magic spells and wizardry. For some Christians, it was as if an occult hand had nudged unknowing children toward pop witchcraft.

John Granger, a homeschooling father of seven, admits to feeling cautious about the series, which he had not heard about until Rowling published the fourth volume, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, in 2000. When a pediatrician loaned the book to Granger's eldest daughter, Granger began reading Goblet of Fire for himself, and before long he was a convert.

Granger self-published The Hidden Key to Harry Potter in 2002. He now pursues a similar theme in Looking for God in Harry Potter, which is published by an imprint of Tyndale House. He promotes the books and related materials through a website, HogwartsProfessor.com, and teaches free online Potter courses through Barnes & Noble.

Granger's enthusiasm reaches a comic level after he quotes dialogue between Harry and Hermione:

"Harry, I can't believe it … You conjured up a Patronus that drove away all those dementors! That's very, very advanced magic. …"

"I knew I could do it this time," said Harry, "because I'd already done it. … Does that make sense?"

It makes sense, Harry, but perhaps only if you look at this as a Christian who is familiar with the Gospel according to John.

Granger has become such an enthusiast that it's tempting to call him the Comic Book Guy of Potterville, after the guardian of comics trivia on The Simpsons. Unlike Comic Book Guy, though, Granger can assemble his enthusiasms into a coherent argument. For instance, Granger draws a distinction between invocational magic ("calling in" evil powers) and incantational magic (the same play magic C. S. Lewis described in The Chronicles of Narnia).

"Scripture warns that 'calling in' demonic principalities and powers for personal power and advantage is dangerously stupid," Granger writes. "But there is no invocational sorcery in the Harry Potter books. Even the most evil wizards do their nasty magic with spells; not one character in any of the five books ever calls in evil spirits. Not once."

In Harry Potter, Granger sees not just an occasional Christian symbol but a virtual flood of such symbols. He argues that Rowling's symbols for Christ include a philosopher's stone, a red lion, a Gryffindor, a unicorn, a phoenix, a stag, a centaur, and a Hippogriff.

Further, he sees Jesus' life and death reflected in Harry's repeated experiences of figurative death and resurrection.

He devotes a chapter to the series' allusions to alchemy, and to how various characters represent stages in alchemy. "Great writers in the English tradition use alchemical imagery because it helps them connect with that place in our heart designed to respond to the Great Story and promise of our life in Christ," Granger writes. "This is so much a part of us that, though we are largely immunized to this message by our culture and schooling, we respond with joy and longing to the imaginative shadows of it in fiction."

Granger observes that Potter books alternate between interior, psychological themes that appeal to introverts (Sorcerer's Stone, Prisoner of Azkaban, Order of the Phoenix) and those about Harry's exterior life, which appeal to extroverts (Chamber of Secrets, Goblet of Fire).

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October 2004, Vol. 48, No. 10