AP reports from New York: Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at at Carnegie Hall.

Fascinating revelation, though I'm not so sure this is good news to the activist gay community. Before there is celebration in the streets, they may want to actually read the final book in the Harry Potter series. We learn in Deathly Hallows that Dumbledore is not the kind and wise old man he has appeared to be throughout the series but is in fact a manipulator and schemer - and a very conflicted one at that. Is this an accurate representation of an archetypal gay person? Or is it a stereotype? As we've written here earlier, it turns out that Dumbledore was - as Jo Rowling has also stated - Machiavellian in his plans for Harry Potter. Even Snape is shocked by the revelation of Dumbledore's motives.

Deathly Hallows does allude that Dumbledore and Grindelwald engage in a deep friendship that is enmeshed and unhealthly. Everyone else is excluded. Their "breakup" leads to the tragic death of Dumbeldore's little sister. Grindelwald becomes one of the most evil characters ever - on par with Voldemort (who later kills him) and again, I wonder how the gay community will feel about that. It is not an idealized relationship by any means, not like the idealized relationships I would hear about during hearing testimonies at General Convention, for example, where everything is blessed and certainly not obsessive and idolatrous.

The article says this:

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."

Dumbledore's love, she observed, was his "great tragedy."

Before Christians jump at this news and take to the streets for different reasons, we should read the book as well. The "love" depicted in this relationship between Grindelwald and Dumbledore is destructive - it costs a girl her life and more. The 1940s wizard battle with Grindelwald parallels World War II and the atrocities committed by the Nazis. The name "Grindelwald" alludes to Grendel, Beowulf's dragon representing evil ("wald" or "vald" is German for ruler - i.e. a ruler of evil). The context of the story in Deathly Hallows is that this relationship was destructive. The character of Grindelwald is unsavory from the very beginning, as though a tempter of evil - and Dumbledore is indeed tempted - a temptation that he lives with for the rest of his life. Is this the sort of literary portrayal the gay community would like to see attached to their image? I'm not so sure. Is it compelling storytelling? Yes, it is.

Dumbledore went on to lead a chaste life, totally devoted to his role as headmaster (another typical caricature, by the way?) and to seeking the ultimate defeat of Voldermort. That was his whole life. In fact, Dumbledore reminds me very much of this guy. Just put a beard on him and you've got our guy. It isn't what we are that matters, it's what we do with who we are that makes the difference. That's what Dumbledore also said - it is our choices that matter and show us who we truly are.

That being said, I am very surprised that Jo Rowling would add the homosexual dynamic to the youthful relationship between the two titanic characters of Dumbledore and Grindelwald, for it reveals the inherent destructive nature of obsession and idolatry, which - if you read Leanne Payne would tell us is at the center of homosexual behavior. It is quite a revelation indeed. Both of these characteristics - obsession and idolatry - were terrible character flaws in Albus Dumbledore (character flaws he readily acknowledged, I might add). Harry Potter's heart was pure and his love for Ginny (who later becomes his wife) was exemplary - it encourages him and made him whole, quite a contrast to what Dumbledore knew in his relationship with Grindelwald. I am just surprised Jo Rowling would want to open up that can of worms.

Here are some more "revelations" that came from Jo Rowling's event at Carnegie Hall last night:

Jo also revealed that Neville Longbottom married Hufflepuff Hannah Abbott and she was to become the landlady at the iconic Leaky Cauldron Pub. She thought that people would find the fact of Neville's living over a pub particularly cool.

Equally large revelations were made concerning Petunia Dursley when Jo answered the question of what Petunia could not bring herself to say when Harry and the Dursleys parted ways before his seventeenth birthday. She would have wished him luck, saying: "I know what you're up against and I hope it turns out okay."

Information on the original Order members was also revealed during tonight's event. Jo related the fact that Remus Lupin, prior to the third book, was unemployable because he was a werewolf and upon his graduation from Hogwarts along with James and Lily, was supported by James using their own money. In addition to this she shed more light on the early days of the Order, saying James, Sirius, Remus and Lily were full time Order members. "Full Time Fighters," as Jo put it.

Jo also went into further detail about the many portraits in the wizarding world and their occupants. An occupant can only move freely to other portraits in their dwelling or to another portrait in which they are depicted. She also revealed that Harry himself made sure that the portrait of Snape made it into the Headmasters Office

Here's more from the transcript:

Q: How did you decide that Molly Weasley would be the one to finish off Bellatrix?

I always knew Molly was going to finish her off. I think there was some speculation that Neville would do it, because Neville obviously has a particular reason to hate Bellatrix. ..So there were lots of options for Blelatrix, but I never deviated. I wanted it to be Molly, and I wanted it to be Molly for two reasons.

The first reason was I always saw Molly as a very good witch but someone whose light is necessarily hidden under a bushel, because she is in the kitchen a lot and she has had to raise, among others, and George which is like, enough... I wanted Molly to have her moment and to show that because a woman had dedicated herself to her family does not mean that she doesn't have a lot of other talents.

(BB NOTE: Again, this flies in the face of modern cultural teaching when the "traditional homemaker" is the one that destroys the most evil character (second only to Voldemort) in Harry Potter's life.)

Second reason: It was the meeting of two kinds of - if you call what Bellatrix feels for Voldemort love, I guess we'll call it love, she has a kind of obsession with him, it's a very sick obsession ... and I wanted to match that kind of obsession with maternal love... the power that you give someone by loving them. So Molly was really an amazing exemplar of maternal love. ... There was something very satisfying about putting those two women together.

How different would the last two books be if Arthur had been killed in the middle of book five?

I think they would have been very different and it's part of the reason why I changed my mind. ... By turning Ron into half of Harry, in other words by turning Ron into someone who had suffered the loss of a parent, I was going to remove the Weasleys as a refuge for Harry and I was going to necessarily remove a lot of Ron's humor. That's part of the reason why I didn't kill Arthur. I wanted to keep Ron in tact ... a lot of Ron's humor comes from his insensitivity and his immaturity, to be honest about Ron. And Ron finally, I think, you see, grows up in this book. He's the last of the three to reach what I consider adulthood, and he does it then [ when he destroys the horcrux] and faces those things. So that's part of the reason. The only other reason I didn't kill Arthur was that I wanted to come full circle. We started with an orphan, someone who lost their parents because of the war. And so I wanted to show it again. ... Even though you don't see Teddy, I wanted to express in the epilogue, that he gets an even better godfather than Harry had, because Sirius had his faults, I think we must admit. He was a risky guy to have a s a godfather. Because Teddy gets someone who really has been there, and Harry becomes a really great father figure for Teddy as well as his own children. I hasten to add that I didn't kill Lupin or Tonks lightly. I loved them as characters...so that hurt, killing them.

Yes! J.K. Rowling tells MTV (of all places!) that the scriptures Harry Potter reads in Godric's Hollow "almost epitomize the whole series"

And what are those scriptures?

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."
-I Cor. 15:26

"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
-Matthew 6:19

BB NOTE: When I read those verses for the first time in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I was sitting outside on the deck of a friend's house. I sat back in my chair - the verses in the book do not refer to the scripture - but I recognized them right away, including the verse from Matthew as being the words of Jesus. I remember trying to hold back the joy. Others were around me still reading and hadn't yet come to the chapter. I had to hold back the delight - what a surprise, what a delight, what a gift. J.K. Rowling is now speaking openly about how her Christian faith influenced the writing of the Harry Potter series. To her "the parallels have always been obvious." But it took a while before Christian believers began to read the stories for themselves, scared off as many were in the beginning by the so-called witchcraft. But once Christians began to read the stories for themselves, well, it sure did look obvious. What a surprise! Her imagery is Christian, blatantly so and it may have escaped so many because so many don't know that imagery - Harry Potter fell upon an unchurched world. Here in this article, Jo Rowling shares that Harry's journey matches her own - which is probably why the books are so real. Read on:

'Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling Opens Up About Books' Christian Imagery

'They almost epitomize the whole series,' she says of the scripture Harry reads in Godric's Hollow.

HOLLYWOOD — It deals extensively with souls — about keeping them whole and the evil required to split them in two. After one hero falls beyond the veil of life, his whispers are still heard. It starts with the premise that love can save you from death and ends with a proclamation that a sacrifice in the name of love can bring you back from it.

Harry Potter is followed by house-elves and goblins — not disciples — but for the sharp-eyed reader, the biblical parallels are striking. Author J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books have always, in fact, dealt explicitly with religious themes and questions, but until "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," they had never quoted any specific religion.

(SPOILER ALERT! The rest of this story discusses the conclusion of "Deathly Hallows.")

That was the plan from the start, Rowling told reporters during a press conference at the beginning of her Open Book Tour on Monday. It wasn't because she was afraid of inserting religion into a children's story. Rather, she was afraid that introducing religion (specifically Christianity) would give too much away to fans who might then see the parallels.

"To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvious," she said. "But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going."

Indeed, at its most simplistic, Harry's final tale can in some respects be boiled down to a resurrection story, with Harry venturing to a heavenly way station of sorts after getting hit with a killing curse in Chapter 35, only to shortly return. (Read how Rowling revealed the characters' fates to the "Harry Potter" movies' stars here.)

But if she was worried about tipping her hand narratively in the earlier books, she clearly wasn't by the time Harry visits his parents' graves in Chapter 16 of "Deathly Hallows," titled "Godric's Hollow." On his parents' tombstone he reads the quote "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," while on another tombstone (that of Dumbledore's mother and sister) he reads, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

While Rowling said that "Hogwarts is a multifaith school," these quotes, of course, are distinctly Christian. The second is a direct quote of Jesus from Matthew 6:19, the first from 1 Corinthians 15:26. As Hermione tells Harry shortly after he sees the graves, his parents' message means "living beyond death. Living after death." It is one of the central foundations of resurrection theology.

Which makes it a perfect fit for Harry, said Rowling, who was talking about those quotes for the very first time.

"They're very British books, so on a very practical note Harry was going to find biblical quotations on tombstones," Rowling explained. "[But] I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones at Godric's Hollow, they sum up — they almost epitomize the whole series."

As the one to bring together all three magical Deathly Hallows, Harry, in fact, becomes the "Master of Death" by novel's end, able to bring back the spirits of his parents, his godfather, Sirius Black and his old teacher Remus Lupin. It's a conclusion that ends Harry's three-book-long struggle over questions about the afterlife, which begins when Sirius falls through a veil connecting this world and the next at the end of "Order of the Phoenix."

"Deathly Hallows" itself begins with two religiously themed epigraphs, one from "The Libation Bearers" by Aeschylus, which calls on the gods to "bless the children"; and one from William Penn's "More Fruits of Solitude," which speaks of death as but "crossing the world, as friends do the seas." No other book in the series begins with epigraphs — a curious fact, perhaps, but one that Rowling insists served as a guiding light.

"I really enjoyed choosing those two quotations because one is pagan, of course, and one is from a Christian tradition," Rowling said of their inclusion. "I'd known it was going to be those two passages since 'Chamber' was published. I always knew [that] if I could use them at the beginning of book seven then I'd cued up the ending perfectly. If they were relevant, then I went where I needed to go.

"They just say it all to me, they really do," she added.

But while the book begins with a quote on the immortal soul — and though Harry finds peace with his own death at the end of his journey — it is the struggle itself which mirrors Rowling's own, the author said.

"The truth is that, like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes that my faith will return. It's something I struggle with a lot," she revealed. "On any given moment if you asked me [if] I believe in life after death, I think if you polled me regularly through the week, I think I would come down on the side of yes — that I do believe in life after death. [But] it's something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books."

Read the whole thing here.

Okay, I'll try again, because I really do want to know why she would take on such Christian theological doctrines - like the atonement, which has just completely lost its meaning in the post-Christian West. How do you explain to children what the atonement is? She does a tremendous job explaining the affects of the atonement on believers, I could certainly make the case for it. Perhaps these questions will be asked when when we are sitting in a pub swashing the butterbeer, but here it is - for the record. ;-)

Perhaps it would be wise to quote Dorothy Sayers:

Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as a bad press. We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine—dull dogma as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama.

Question: Do you agree with what Dorothy Sayers is saying here, that that the Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination? How were you inspired by that drama in the writing of the Harry Potter series?

A Question

So many of the questions I have need introductions. They are not just simple questions - which would do better in an interview context, with cups of coffee at Starbucks. But perhaps something could be gleaned from this:

Background: The Christian doctrine of the atonement seems to be infused through out your entire series - that is, that sacrifice is more than just dying for love but that there is real power in the sacrifice in that it protects others from the same fate (including judgment and annihilation). In the Christian doctrine of the atonement, Christ took the place of the guilty and suffered the punishment in our place, He sacrifice Himself for us. In his death and resurrection, through his “blood” Christians find redemption and life. They are “covered by the blood.” From gospel hymns to the Eucharist we see this powerful doctrine and what a surprise to see it reflected in Harry Potter.

Are we wrong to see this over and over again in the Harry Potter series? Do we not see it from the very beginning? Lily sacrifices herself to save her son and her “blood” protects him, he is “covered” by her blood - to the closing pages when Harry sacrifices himself and his sacrifice “covers” all those in Hogwarts when Voldemort’s curses no longer have lasting power on Harry’s friends.

Is this true? And if so …

Question: How did you come to write on Christian doctrines in your books - especially after the initial outcry from the very folks who would later come to love your books? Can you tell us more about your own Christian faith journey?

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