The Rapture of Harry

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Then there was Rayford's old friend Hattie, a flight attendant who later becomes Carpathia's mistress and gets pregnant, thereby creating a mind-blowing Christian dilemma: Is it OK to have an abortion if the father is the devil? (Answer: no.) What are the obligations of Hattie's friend, Rayford's daughter Chloe, in a situation like this? "What are you going to do, Chloe?" Rayford asks. "Tell her she's carrying the antichrist's child and that she ought to leave him?" Paging Jerry Springer.

The book has many lines you won't find in a Harlequin romance. One character gives someone a massage shortly before Jesus' return.

"You're tense," she said.

"Aren't you?"

"Relax, love. Messiah is coming."

The little similarities go on. Both books present the media as corrupt or easily corruptible. The Left Behind tribulation takes seven years; so does Hogwarts'. Carpathia takes the form of a snake; Voldemort takes the form of a lizard, and Harry is able to tap into the evil world by speaking snake (parseltongue). And in both, the good guys bear a special "mark"-on their foreheads!-that protects them.

Finally, they both have a theology. It's not, as one might expect, that Left Behind is Christian and Harry Potter pagan, but rather that Left Behind is Protestant and Harry Potter is Catholic. One of the chief theological arguments between Catholics and Protestants has been over whether salvation is earned through faith or by good works. In Left Behind, the only thing that matters is faith in Jesus. Steele explains that church leaders had led so many people astray because they merely "expected them to lead a good life, to do the best they could, to think of others, to be kind, to live in peace. It sounded so good, and yet it was so wrong. How far from the mark!"

While everything is pre-ordained in Left Behind, Dumbledore explicitly tells Harry that even though he carries some of the essence of Voldemort in him, he has the power to do good because he has the power of choice.

In that sense, despite their similarities, at their hearts the two series are different in a fundamental but not obvious way. Left Behind is fatalistic; Harry Potter sees outcomes determined by individual actions. Both provide a roadmap for how to live a good life, but in one case the key is morality, and in the other it is faith.