A Baylor professor warns James Dobson and those Christian conservatives who still criticize the Harry Potter series that they’re crying wolf and won’t be taken seriously when they criticize real anti-Christian propaganda like “The Golden Compass,” a movie scheduled for release at Christmas time based on the “His Dark Materials” series.

The absurdity of claims that Rowling’s stories somehow promote satanism or the occult was clear from the beginning, but having just finished reading the final book, I have to say that Dobson et al. owe Rowling an apology. It’s not just that all the magic is a benign part of the fairy tale, like Cinderella or Snow White; it’s not even just that the series “reinforces a core Christian belief that good and evil are not just socially constructed,” as the op-ed I linked to says. More than all that, there’s no way you can read the finale of the last book and not see it as “unambiguously Christian.” Harry’s encounter with Voldemort in the forest? King’s Cross? As one columnist asks, “What’s it take, a 2 by 4 across the forehead?”