I didn't realize you had gone to Terminus. That explains why you haven't posted lately. ;-) I'm glad someone was talking some SnapeSense at this one! Every person I've talked to in real life agrees that the obvious reading of DH is that Severus Snape emerged as the hero of the series and turned out to be a good guy, after all. It was only when JKR started saying, no, that's not it, at all, and contradicting what we all read in the last book that my estimation of her started to go downhill. Not that DH was a literary classic, to begin with, but my estimation of it was a lot more positive after my first reading than it has become over the past year.

He said, when I was raving (again) about her misuse of Christian symbolism, "It's Christianity as understood by an atheist."

It strikes me, rather, as Christianity as understood by a fundamentalist: reflecting a very simplistic, biblical-literalist, God-killed-Jesus-cause-he-was-ticked-off-at-wicked-humanity fundamentalism that degenerates into fetishizing death and bloodshed as "magical." In Matthew Fox's terms, it would be "fall-redemptive" theology (and a very crude version of it, at that) rather than "creation-centered" spirituality which is life-affirming and sees people as sacred. Atheists, on the other hand, are sometimes more savvy about theology than many of the professed believers! (Not the least reason being that a fair number of them were raised in one Christian faith or another.)

Anyway, personally, I would prefer to keep the discussion of the HP books to a broader sense of spirituality and ethics, because the attributes of compassion, mercy, kindness, and the valuation of people belong to all healthy spiritual paths, not just the ones identifying as "Christian." And, as we see, not everything labeled "Christian" reflects a healthy spirituality.