Wizardry is big business. The latest boy-wizard Harry Potter book is assured of best-seller status before it even hits the bookstores July 8. If you haven't heard of Harry Potter, you will. The series is immensely popular, with the first three books selling seven million copies before the Christmas rush last year. They also topped the New York Times best-seller lists.

An initial print-run of over 5,000 copies is considered respectable, but Joanne K. Rowling's latest offering will start with 1.5 million copies! Amazon.com predicts that Rowling's fourth book in a promised series of seven will be "the biggest online best-seller ever." Not surprisingly, the market for Harry Potter memorabilia is mushrooming as well. Can a movie be far behind?

The main character is an unusual 11-year-old boy. Raised by abusive foster-parents (relatives), he discovers that he has "special powers" and enrolls in "the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." Once he masters the magic arts, he is able to confront his parents' murderer.

Rowling ages Harry one year with each new book, bringing in issues and interests that are age-pertinent. She promises to introduce a girl in the fourth book.

Presented as "good magic" that pursues and overcomes "bad magic," the theme of the books is controversial. Because they are entertaining and easy reading, attracting even young people who are not prone to read books at all, many teachers have introduced the Harry Potter books in the classroom.

Challenges to allowing, much less encouraging, their reading in classrooms have been launched in at least eight U.S. states. Passions of Harry Potter's defenders are equal to those who want Harry and his Hogwarts banned from schools.

Who would defend books about a child wizard-and why? Christianity Today for one. It reasons, "the literary witchcraft of the Harry Potter series has almost no resemblance to the I-am-God mumbo jumbo of Wiccan circles. Author J.K. Rowling has created a world with real good and evil, and Harry is definitely on the side of light fighting the 'dark powers.'"

Christianity Today not only defends the books, it recommends them, saying, the "series is a Book of Virtues with a funny bone. Amid the laugh-out-loud scenes are wonderful examples of compassion, loyalty, courage, friendship, and even self-sacrifice. No wonder young readers want to be like these believable characters."

Conservative Christians who take issue with presenting witchcraft in a positive light are ridiculed as excessive, unwilling or unable to "lighten up and allow kids to have some fun."

Would such critics judge God the same way? He told His people: "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD your God drives them out from before you" (Deuteronomy 18:10-12). ( Reuters, Christianity Today, January 10, 2000.)