Mild About Harry

Ralston understands Haddon's concerns but disagrees with him. "Good characters should have depth, which means good and bad in them. And what makes so much Christian literature insipid and bad is these 100 percent good characters who don't do bad things and are therefore unbelievable," Ralston says. "When you have a well-developed character, the question is not so much is the character entirely good or evil, does he or she have flaws, but what happens when they behave according to their flaws?"

Ralston says that Harry does suffer the consequences for lying and breaking the rules. While Harry is not always caught and punished by a teacher for breaking the rules, there are always negative consequences in the books when he makes the wrong choices.

Ralston offers his own hypothesis on why some Christians have stopped protesting the Potter books. "I feel like they just got tired. Christians, it seems, are always looking for something to rail against. They got distracted by The DaVinci Code."

If Ralston is a blasphemer for loving the Potter books, he's not alone. The professors who keep offices next to his at DTS are also Potter fans. And down the hall from their offices are a number of banners bearing the Hogwarts coat of arms. Ralston even has one on the door to his office.

Perhaps it is a sign of the times.