Potter mania

At 12:01 a.m., the nearby Borders will re-open and a horde of small children and at least one small woman will descend upon the store for the publishing event of the year: the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Monkette2B (the aforementioned small woman) reserved her copy six months ago, much like many people who want to be first to the cashier when the book embargo is lifted tonight.

Many Christians deplore the book for its witches-and-wizards backdrop, magic, and other flights of fancy in J.K. Rowling's world. But, just like the Christians a few years ago who wanted to cease saying the word "hello" because of the first four letters (the word derives from hallow), this enmity is misguided. First, because both Narnia and Middle-Earth contained magical deeds and fantastic creatures, but were essentially Christian allegorical works (especially Narnia), as Dave Kopel notes:

The Inklings were originally a group of Oxford dons who wrote Christian fiction. The most famous of them are J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Lord of the Rings and the Narnia series never mention Christianity overtly, and in Tolkien's books, religion itself is absent from the plot. Yet these mythopoeic books aim to "baptize the imagination" of the reader — to teach her the importance of fighting for the right, no matter how powerful the forces of evil may appear.

Kopel shows in the column linked above that Rowling isn't anti-Christian. Instead, the stronger case to make is that she is a latter-day Inkling.