While JK Rowling may not share the committed faith of Tolkien, she has stated publically that she doesn't believe in magic and is rather bemused by the people who tell her that they have "tried all the spells" since she has made them up.....
However what strikes me as rather sad is that the fundamentalists who banned it have totally missed (because they haven't bothered to read it presumably) that the main messages of Harry Potter include:
The overwhelming love of a parent for a child
Doing the right thing even though it is harder than doing the wrong thing.
Sacrificing yourself for your friends/common good..
Protecting the weak
Past wrongdoing can be redeemed.....
Hmmm where have I heard some of these things before?
However from my point of view such intolerance and bigotry helps dissolves any residual feelings of sorrow that I have lost my faith....... I rather think that the fact that that chappie Mister Yulko (in the link mentioned by SpM) thinks that poor old Prof Tolkien is roasting in hell just for being Catholic speaks volumes. I mean, I have some issues with Catholicism myself but at least I am an oecumenical agnostic
As for Tolkien, partly I think that it was a different atmosphere - maybe the secularisation of society has not only made the churches more fundamental and evangelical but made them slightly paranoid. When most people at least paid lip service to Christianity an "irreligious" book (not that I think LOTR is such)is less threatening maybe?
Also it was before the expansion in university education and a time when an educated person would to some level have received a "classical education"; many clerics would have been classics scholars and all educated people would have some Latin if not any Greek. If you have grown up in an atmosphere that regarded an education based on the myths of Greece and Rome as no threat to the Christian Religion, a novel set in "another world" was unlikely to be a problem. And LOTR has such a straightforward Good v Evil message that it is hard to imagine anyone sane having a problem with it.
If I hold anything sacred these days it is probably books. To me book banning (whether Harry Potter, Lady Chatterley or Gideon Bibles) is on a par with book burning and equally abhorrent. Any religion or political who tries to ban a book because it disagrees or is perceived as disagreeing with it's world view is clearly insecure. If they are right people will come to that conclusion for themselves. The more widely you read the more likely you are to develop sound judgement and make good decisions for themselves. To limit a person's reading is a form of brainwashing. And bans are counterproductive - forbidden fruit is the most desired..... Children are not stupid either .... they will read what interests them and they can cope with. If I were a parent I would be much more concerned by what my child saw on TV or film than what it read.
Also it is far easier to monitor what children read than what they watch. And books that can be enjoyed by both adults and children provide much needed common ground with adolescents... Tolkien and Harry Potter can help to keep the communication channels open I have found with my young cousins. I gave them Pullman's Northern Lights becasue it is fantastically well written though I did warn them it was one of the darkest books I had ever read...
I will end my ten pennorth with two favourite quotes :
"There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well-written or badly written. That is all." (Wilde).
"Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? " Shakespeare.