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Religious controversy

Religious controversy surrounding the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone along with the rest of the Harry Potter series have stemmed mainly from assertions that the novel contains occult or Satanic subtexts. In the United States, calls for the book to be banned from schools have led occasionally to widely publicised legal challenges usually on the grounds that witchcraft is a government-recognised religion and that to allow the novels to be held in public schools violates the separation of church and state.^[75][76][77] The series was at the top of the American Library Association's "most challenged books" list for 1999–2001.^[19]

Religious opposition has also surfaced in other nations. The Orthodox churches of Greece and Bulgaria have campaigned against the series.^[78][79] The books have been banned from private schools in the United Arab Emirates and criticised in the Iranian state-run press.^[80][81]

Roman Catholic opinion over the series was divided. In 2003 Catholic World Report criticised Harry's disrespect for rules and authority, and regarded the series' mixing of the magical and mundane worlds as "a fundamental rejection of the divine order in creation".^[82] In 2005 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope later that year but was at the time Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, described the series as "subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly,"^[83] and gave permission for publication of the letter that expressed this opinion.^[84] A spokesman for the Archbishop of Westminster said that Cardinal Ratzinger's words were not binding as they were not an official pronouncement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.^[83] In 2003 Monsignor Peter Fleetwood, a member of a Church working party on New Age phenomena, said that the Harry Potter stories "are not bad or a banner for anti-Christian theology. They help children understand the difference between good and evil", that Rowling's approach was Christian, and that the stories illustrated the need to make sacrifices in order to defeat evil.^[83][85]

Some religious responses have been positive. "At least as much as they've been attacked from a theological point of view", notes Rowling, "[the books] have been lauded and taken into pulpit, and most interesting and satisfying for me, it's been by several different faiths".^[86] Emily Griesinger wrote that fantasy literature helps children to survive reality for long enough to learn how to deal with it, described Harry's first passage through to Platform 9¾ as an application of faith and hope, and his encounter with the Sorting Hat as the first of many in which Harry is shaped by the choices he makes. She noted that the self-sacrifice of Harry's mother, which protects the boy in the first book and throughout the series, was the most powerful of the "deeper magics" that transcend the magical "technology" of the wizards, and one which the power-hungry Voldemort fails to understand.^[87]