why does a story about porcupines have to have any magical quality about it, Christian themed or not? Why do trees have to have a meaning when the story is about a child who is pretending to be an airplane and he pictures himself flying over a forest? I am afraid I don't quite get the point of what the author is trying to say. JKR is very much like Tolkien in that she has removed any 'religiosity' from her story, and from the interviews I have read, it is most certainly NOT from any particular and personal scorn she has for Christianity...it is more of a means of telling the story without having to laden the reader's mind with a distinctive theology. If she had written it with distinctively CATHOLIC themes, the Calvinists would be screaming bloody murder...and if vice versa, the Catholics would object to it as being devoid of any real depth. Its along the same arguments that Tolkien and Lewis had about the purpose of a myth, especially Christian mythology. Tolkien despised allegory, and Lewis encouraged it as a way of imparting basic tenets. I think JKR did what she could to avoid having to address that problem. The magic in her world, the way I see it, is more tongue-in-cheek and a wink and a nod to the more commercial ideas that people have of magic and witches and wizards. Not once have I read the story thinking she was ENDORSING something like that.