On Faith after Witch-hunts
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:date: 2021-01-11T14:59:47
:category: literature
:tags: review, harryPotter, blogComment, HPreligion

(my comments on “`Doesn't it make sense for wizards to be
Christian? A Historical Perspective`_” by `u/PhantomKeeperQazs`_)

Of course, all Europeans almost without an exceptions were
Christians well into the 19th century. It was traditionally
unacceptable (or perhaps only unfashionable) not to be Christian
in Europe well into the early 20th century, and in US until
recently. (Let’s put aside in this generalization the issue of
Jews, Muslims, and followers of other religions, this is mostly
about Christianity v. nones). Wicca_ really started in public
sometime after the Second World War.

Even if we are most favourable towards nones, we can imagine that
after the witch-hunts most wizards and witches truly rejected
their faith (which is hard to imagine, people don’t do that … see
for comparison most Communists who kept their faith even during
the Stalinist purges, often even those were unjustly persecuted
themselves).

However, it is necessary to understand that even if the magical
world was completely unbelieving, it was still functioning in the
middle of mostly religious Muggle world (see the recapitulation
above). Not only magicals could turn back to the faith from
Muggle sources, but also all people coming to the magical world
from the Muggle one (muggleborns and spouses of magical partners)
were as matter of course Christians and they were bringing their
faith back to the magical world. I could imagine that at least
some of them managed to convert their families to the faith.

So, my head-canon of the religion in the magical world is
combination of mostly agnostic apathetic majority (what we see in
JKR books, where the religion is never even mentioned), but there
are some families which are strongly Christian (the similar
fighting spirit we can see in Christians who are living for long
time in the hostile environment, e.g., Catholics in France). It
is something very similar to what’s the current situation in UK:
people are perhaps nominally CoE, but there are just few of take
it seriously.

----

**(update 2024-01-06)**

Somebody_ noticed that most of the so called pagan religion is
a product of the Romantic/Victorian raving and the so called
The Old Wizarding ways (spread all over the fandom) could be
very well `created by Dumbledore and Grindelwald as a tool for
subjugating masses`_. An absolutely awesome assumption.

.. _`Doesn't it make sense for wizards to be Christian? A Historical Perspective`:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/HPfanfiction/comments/kup6f6/doesnt_it_make_sense_for_wizards_to_be_christian/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

.. _`u/PhantomKeeperQazs`:
   https://www.reddit.com/user/PhantomKeeperQazs/

.. _Wicca:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicca

.. _Somebody:
   https://reddit.com/u/bramblefellburrow

.. _`created by Dumbledore and Grindelwald as a tool for subjugating masses`:
   https://www.reddit.com/r/HPfanfiction/comments/1901p8v/dumbledore_bans_paganism_because_he_and/