They celebrate Christmas, so I think they may just follow the same religions as Muggles do. I love the idea of Voldemortism though. XD

Rissa//Ravenclaw

I would suspect that religion as a whole would be difficult for them to follow. Christianity is strongly against any kind of magic (as my step-mother tells me every time I mention being excited about the books), so I can see some clashing there.

They celebrate Christmas, but IMO, Christmas doesn't mean what it used to mean (and maybe should, in the eyes of Christians). A LOT of non-Christian people celebrate Christmas as a time to be with family and friends and celebrate life together.

So....this long-windedness has lead up to - no, I don't think there are traditional religions in the Wizarding world. Many religions are afraid(?) of magic and I think that would be a major conflict of interest.

Someone correct me if I'm way off track here.

Jackie//Ravenclaw

I don't think the celebration of holidays like Christmas and Easter are necessarily arguments for religion. I mean, they're pretty much just celebrating the secular bits of the holidays, with presents and chocolate. And besides, those are convenient hallmarks for the school terms. After all, universities like Oxford and Cambridge still use Michaelmas to mark their terms and the UK tax year technically still starts on Lady Day, but I doubt very many people even know what those holidays are, forget celebrating them.

But I could see some argument for celebrating Muggle religions. I'm sure it's far more prevalent among the Muggle-born students, because I just don't see many of the old wizarding families clinging on to a Muggle custom like religion for very long. Outward conformity when it was required, say in the Middle Ages, sure. But no long-standing belief.

Rachel//Ravenclaw

I'd think that they share many of their religious beliefs with Muggles. I mean, I'm assuming that Lily and James were Christian, seeing as Harry was christened and has a godfather.

I'd bet that most of the wizard Christians think it hilarious how some Muggle Christians think witchcraft is "evil," lol. There actually are passages in the Bible that- well, I don't want to say condemn- erm, don't speak to highly of witchcraft. So, I'd see Christian wizards as followers more of the principles that Jesus taught instead of strictly following every WORD in their Bibles.

I really wonder if there are religions that wizards follow that Muggles have no knowledge of. There has to be, I'm thinking. It seems like magic would open up a whole new can of worms as far as understanding the cosmos is concerned! And if so, I wonder what myths there are that explain why Muggles don't have magic. Perhaps there's a myth that deals with a figure/group of figures losing the ability to use magic from some sort of fall or blunder on their part. Something like that would definitely help perpetuate pureblood supremacist ideology.

Awesome question, btw!

Jenna::Ravenclaw

Great point, Rachel, about Harry's Christening, etc. (Generally, with a Godfather involved, they would be Catholic).

There's a great essay I read about The Potter-World on The Sugar Quill, and there was a bit on Religion in it:

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Britain is a society with a strong spiritual heritage but little everyday practice of any formal religion. If we ran a census on religion past Harry’s classmates, we would expect eighteen to declare themselves Church of England, eight to be Catholics (Seamus Finnigan among them), one to be a Scottish Presbyterian, one to be a Protestant non-Conformist from England, one to be a Muslim and one who had a different religion (in order of probability, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism or Buddhism). Seven would claim to have no religious beliefs at all (one of these would live in East Anglia and another in Scotland), while three would decline to answer, probably because they were vague or uncertain about their beliefs.

However, daily practice is very different from the census declarations. Among Harry’s forty classmates we could reasonably expect one Evangelical Christian who believes in grace and reads the Bible (I will tell you later who he is), one more liberal Christian who attends church semi-regularly (a person rather like JKR herself), and one student who attends church only at Christmas. There is a better than even chance that one of these three would be a Catholic – yes, we do have Evangelical Catholics in Britain!

JKR has under-represented Islam, since there isn’t a Muslim in Harry’s class, but she has over-represented non-Christian religions in general, since we apparently have two Hindus as well as one Jew. We wouldn’t expect all three of these students to be active practitioners, but nor would we expect them all to be purely nominal.
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I always liked to think of the Malfoys as putting up a very traditional Catholic front, then being all Voldemortist. ;)

Here's the link to the whole thing if you'd like to read it: http://www.sugarquill.net/index.php?action=gringotts&st=classlist

Alyssa/Ravenclaw