Religion and Canon, Part 1

I mentioned in a previous post that there was a topic I would like to cover, namely religion. This can be a sensitive topic to discuss for obvious reasons and so I am putting a disclaimer right here in the introduction promising that all views expressed here are my own and that this post will discuss religion as portrayed (or perhaps not portrayed?) in the Harry Potter series.

So, as it turns out I completely underestimated my ability to keep things concise and so have had to split this post into two parts...