When Connie Neal settled onto a sofa in her family room with a copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" on her lap, the Christian author and lecturer steeled herself for the plunge into a world of mysticism and magic she was certain would clash with her beliefs.
Three "Harry Potter" books later, Neal adores the bespectacled kid wizard -- and he has become one of her greatest evangelization tools.
"I thought I was reading the book to explain to my kids why they shouldn't read it," said Neal, author of the new "What's a Christian to Do With Harry Potter?" (Waterbrook Press). "Once I had made [the] distinction for my kids about the fantasy world versus our real world, I realized these books were so rich and really had lessons that directly connected to the Bible."
Take the story of how Harry becomes an orphan.
In the first book, Harry's mother dies when she throws herself between her son and the curse of death that Lord Voldemort has thrown at Harry to kill him. The curse is broken, and Harry doesn't die.
"It's a beautiful picture of the protection from evil that we have because of what Christ did for us on the cross when he broke the curse of death," Neal said.
Or take author J.K. Rowling's portrayal of Dudley, Harry's jealous cousin.
"He's a good example of someone who was covetous, so I'd talk to my kids about his selfishness and gluttony, and then we'd discuss how the Bible says we're not supposed to be a covetous person," she said.
And Professor Gilderoy Lockhardt, who is vain and selfish, is a character parents can use to teach what the Bible has to say about arrogance and ambition, she said.
Neal concedes that those lessons are easy enough to overlook and have been by critics who have slammed the Potter stories as too cozy with the occult -- anti-Christian, even.
"To a large extent, we let other people think for us" on certain issues, said Neal, a youth leader at her church and former youth pastor. But this issue is "too personal" to let someone else decide whether your children should read the books. "You have to know your own child, whether this will scare them, whether they are sophisticated enough to understand the distinction between fantasy and reality."
Each week, Neal gathered her husband and three children (ages 8, 10 and 15 at the time) in the family reading room of their Sacramento home for what developed into an open-to-the-neighborhood study class of Harry Potter and the Bible.
"As a Christian parent, I need to be able to put these books in the right context for my kids, so I . . . said: 'Here's how we're going to do it. We're going to pray before we read so we're not opening ourselves up to any deception,' " Neal said. If any chapter had occult elements, she would find a biblical passage to show her children why she believed those practices are forbidden.
Neal thinks Harry Potter is less a Satan in wizard's clothing and more the literary cousin of fairy-tale favorites like Cinderella.
She calls him a "classic fairy-tale hero. He starts out in a terrible condition, with his parents being dead, then he's transported into a magical world where there's a villain who has to be overcome."
Good triumphs over evil at the end of most fairy tales, "and the wands, the spells and the astrology are all classic elements of children's literature," she said. "It's a medieval view of the universe, just like C.S. Lewis uses in his 'Narnia' books."
So she approached the Harry Potter books by first teaching her children to understand fantasy literature. "We love 'The Wizard of Oz,' but my kids know there is no Glinda the Good Witch and that the Bible makes it clear that witchcraft is idolatry."
But the distinction between occultism and the literary devices of fantasy children's literature is lost on many Christian readers, Neal said. For example, if Rowling had named Harry's school the Hogwarts School of Magic and Mystery -- instead of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, which sounds like a pagan religion -- "you wouldn't have had this kind of hysteria in response."
"What most Christians don't get is that Rowling shows you the dangers of believing in things like divination and omens," she said. "You see the way that getting sucked into trusting those things brings danger."
Using the Potter tales as a springboard to the Gospels might seem strange at first, Neal concedes. But she points out that Jesus and Paul adopted similar tactics, using stories and examples from the culture of the time and relate them to their messages.
"We have a whole generation of kids who are biblically illiterate, so I share the Gospel story with them through things they can relate to, like Harry Potter or the Power Rangers," she said. "It may seem strange, but it shouldn't."
