And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,/ And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
—Matthew 21:12-13, King James Version
Harry mulled over the closing speech on the train home.
It had been mildly humiliating.
Dumbledore had switched given the House Cup to Gryffindor. He had given Ron points for being good at chess, Hermione points for being a good friend, and Harry points for knowing scripture.
This had made everyone not in Slytherin happy, and everyone in Slytherin mad. Harry wasn't too upset about it, but he also wasn't overjoyed, for a few temporal rewards meant nothing next to his faith in the eternal reward. Yet that had been shaken.
He nibbled carelessly at some Bertie Bott's every-flavor beans as he thumbed through his Bible. Usually eating Bertie Bott's beans carelessly was a bad idea, but he didn't care.
"What's on your mind, Harry?" Ron said.
"Oh, you've got him started," Hermione said. "Now he's going to start preaching."
"Hermione, you said you'd be nice," Ron said.
"This is nice," Hermione said.
"Kings," Harry said. "I'm reading the book of Kings."
He half expected Hermione to say something sarcastic, or Ron to smile and nod, but he was able to reread 1 Kings 18 several more times before he glanced back up.
They were staring at him.
"What happens in Kings?" Ron said.
"Well," Harry said, with a glance at Hermione—he knew that she had an oddly rote understanding of most scripture — "First Kings 18 is a story about the prophet Elijah. The prophets of Israel were being persecuted by King Ahab, who was worshiping Baal and Asherah instead of God."
He half expected to be interrupted, but his friends let him continue.
"So Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal and Asherah to a sort of duel on top of Mount Carmel. They would all prepare a bull for sacrifice and build a pyre, but they wouldn't light it. They would call on their gods to light the fire for them, to prove whether God was real or if Baal and Asherah were."
Harry took a deep breath. The next part of the story was harder for him to bear, for his faith had been battered over the last year of his life.
"The prophets of Baal and Asherah set up their sacrifice, and didn't light the fire, and they called for Baal to set the pyre on fire, but it didn't work. Then Elijah taunted them and told them to shout louder, so they did… and they cut themselves. Blood magic."
"Not necessarily, if it didn't work," Hermione said. She was going to say more, but Ron shushed her. "Sorry Harry. What happened next?"
"Elijah repaired the Lord's altar and prepared the sacrifice, before dousing it was water several times. Then he prayed to God, and God set the sacrifice on fire and accepted it."
"…wow, Harry," Ron said insincerely. "That's such a magnificent display of God's power. What happened next?"
"The people seized the prophets of Baal, and Elijah had them slaughtered."
The mood in the compartment was somber after that.
"Was there… any particular reason you were rereading this particular passage?" Hermione said.
"I used to think this passage proved the might and truth of God," Harry said. "But now that I know more, surely there are spells that could set meat on fire, even if it was wet."
"Definitely," Hermione said. "The Fire-Making Charm is all a witch or wizard would need."
"We learned that this year," Harry said. "So… maybe Elijah wasn't the prophet of the true God and the other prophets were frauds. Maybe Elijah was a wizard and the false prophets… weren't."
He stared out the window at the rolling hills of the English countryside. This was the conundrum that had come to vex him. What was the value of tales of miracles when he could perform seeming miracles himself? When he had read the story as a child, he had been inspired by the might of the Lord, but knowing what he did now, he couldn't help but wonder if it was a tale of foul murder.
He realized that Ron and Hermione had been oddly silent. When he glanced at them, they were staring at him with concern. Yet still they said nothing. The silence felt like knitting needles poking in and out of his soul.
"Magic changes the meaning of the story," Harry said, turning back to the window. "Because in a world without magic, spontaneous combustion is God's will. But in a world with magic… the story of Elijah changes completely. It changes from a story about the glory of God to a story about a wizard tricking muggles into following him. It turns into a story about how if you know more about the universe than someone else, it gives you the right to trick them and jerk them around."
"Harry—" Hermione said, an edge to her voice.
"I know it's wrong," Harry said, cutting her off more harshly than he'd intended. "I know that I hurt you both by thinking that I was acting to save your souls or with God's plan. Times were different then. But I don't expect you to be able to help me, Hermione."
"Well, why not?" she said, sounding rather cross.
"You regularly consort with demons," Harry said. "I keep expecting you to react to my crisis of faith by trying to tempt me away from it."
"The thought… had crossed my mind," Hermione said. "But I don't expect it to be easy in the slightest, Harry, to open your eyes in this way. I mean, I accused Heaven itself, not merely muggle Christianity, of being morally bankrupt in the autumn, and you're only just seeing it now."
"It's just one story," Harry said. "It could have just been one mistake Elijah made, or perhaps Elijah was just one corrupt prophet. But the core teachings—"
"And that's what I thought you'd say," Hermione said "Harry, you're my friend, but surely you see the quandary here — surely you see you're disregarding the possibility of systemic corruption in favor of one man's mistakes?"
"Hermione, the entire Old Testament consists of stories about how the prophets and their fellows constantly make mistakes and how the leaders of the twelve tribes repeatedly succumb to corruption. They're not trying to hide anything," Harry said. "Of course they made mistakes. Of course the Temple or the Church ended up a little corrupt. They were just men, who faced mortal temptations that turned them away from God. But Christ— I believe that Christ — I have to believe that Christ was unimpeachable."
He had to. There had to be some perfection that yet remained. The myth, if not the man.
Hermione gazed at him. Her eyes were glowing ever so slightly with crimson fire, but mostly she looked sad. "Then read the bits about Christ and don't read the parts about Elijah or Bathsheba or the sons of Abraham," she said softly. "Read the bits that make you feel good about humanity instead of the bits that show just how horrid believers can be. Pick and choose, like the hypocrites do."
"You know that's not enough," Harry said. He returned to gazing out the window, closing his Bible as he did so. He wasn't much in the mood for further reading.
"It sounds," Ron said, tentatively, "it sounds a little bit like muggle-baiting."
This didn't sound very nice, but Harry welcomed the distraction from his misery. "What's muggle-baiting?"
"Well, sometimes wizards are mean and they still like to pull one over the eyes of the muggles," Ron said. "Even today. So they'll do things like, I dunno, sell lawnmowers that eat your hair or keys that shrink so you can never find them, and the trick here is to make muggles look stupid. It's a crime these days. My dad's actually the man in charge of stopping it."
He said this last bit with embarrassed pride.
"I didn't know your dad was in charge of destroying organized religion," Hermione said with glee.
"Hermione, haven't you crushed his spirit enough today?" Ron said, wearily.
"Point taken," Hermione said.
"So—what—are you saying that what Elijah did was muggle-baiting?" Harry said, trying hard not to sound angry. He appreciated Ron, he really did, but Ron sure wasn't helping his crisis of faith.
"Well, uh, actually, uh," Ron said hurriedly, clearly backpedaling. "Like—if it was muggle-baiting, surely someone else would've realized it by now. Surely someone would have noticed that a major Christian prophet — possibly all of the major Christian prophets — were mugglebaiting when they did their miracles. But no, the Ministry of Magic still calls itself a Christian institution. They don't have any problem with turning to scripture. So, you know, there's probably a good explanation for what happened with Elijah."
Harry blinked. Ron's words made him feel better, but— "The Ministry of Magic is a Christian institution?"
"…I think so? I don't really pay attention to the government," Ron said. "My dad complains about some of the stuff he has to do, but it's more of a nuisance than a burden."
"Sorry, but the government is a Christian institution? Formally?" Hermione said sharply. She seemed rather distressed.
"Uh, yeah," Ron said. "How have you not realized this by now? Isn't it the same way as in the muggle world? The Church of England was started by a king, wasn't it?"
Harry didn't know for sure, because Uncle Vernon had always said that the Church of England was a false church because it had been started by an adulterer.
"In our first conversation, you called Christ a dark wizard," Harry said. "That gave me the impression that wizards lacked any sort of formal religious structure around Christ."
"You guys did notice my family's eccentric, right?" Ron said, turning bright red, his eyes starting to dart around. Harry, in part, was kicking himself and reviewing everything that had happened over the past year. Had anyone—Dumbledore, Snape, Malfoy, Voldemort—implied that the Ministry of Magic was a Christian institution? Why did he have a distinct impression that it wasn't?
"I thought it was just a majority view," Hermione said, "that the aristocracy was Christian and so they had a de facto Christian government, I didn't realize it was de jure!"
"Draco Malfoy and Daphne Greengrass are part of the aristocracy, and they're pretty brazen about not being Christian, didn't you realize?"
Hermione didn't have any answer to that, and neither did Harry.
"So the Ministry's Christian," Harry said heavily, "and it has been all along."
"If the Ministry's Christian," Hermione said slowly, "then why are Daphne and Malfoy so brazen about… whatever it is they believe?"
Wizarding anti-Christianity, Harry remembered. Bartering with the Kings and Dukes of Hell, Quirrell had said, mocking it as mere transaction instead of true faith.
Ron scrunched up his face. "I think… I think there's a religious liberty exception written into the law, somewhere," Ron said. "I don't really get it. Percy would probably would be able to explain it better."
The Ministry has acted with the authority of some picture of 'Heaven', mocked Quirrell's voice in Harry's mind. A heaven that Quirrell had then derided as a fiction built over centuries of muggle theology. Quirrell had been saying that the Ministry had invoked the ideas and imagery of Christianity, ideas that Quirrell—no, Voldemort, he was Voldemort, it had always been that great deceiver's lies coming out of Quirrell's mouth—ideas that Voldemort thought were false.
"I don't think we need to talk to Percy now. Do you think the Ministry has the answers, then?," Harry said, even though he feared deep in his heart that Quirrell was right about the Ministry. "Do you think they've managed to resolve the theological conundrums that naturally arise from being Christian yet knowing of the existence of magic?"
Ron opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Maybe?"
Harry suspected that Ron was trying not to further destroy his faith.