Actually,
'Shroom, your response was more on target than mine, so save that sad face for a rainy day.
I'm Christian, but I don't like relating things to people "from a Christian perspective," because we're not a homogenous group and the spectrum of opinion on certain matters, especially literature, can stretch quite wide.
I can, however, speak more freely from the perspective of a person that has devoted her life to studying literature (until I go completely bonkers and join the circus, that is); from a literary perspective, I would argue that the people that want to ban Harry Potter, yet at the same time profess to enjoy the LOTR are failing to read between the lines a bit.
Sharkey has made a number of important observations regarding the way magic is treated in Tolkien's works. The fact that a more traditional definition of magic is usually attributed to the actions of the bad guys (i.e. Melkor & Co) is not to be taken lightly; then again, there are several examples of what I would argue to be magic used in more ambigious terms. In this category I would place the Girdle of Melian, Luthien's ability to escape from her wooden prison by making her hair grow long and weaving out of it a robe that was "laden with a spell of sleep," and, for another example, the fact that Galadriel was able to stop time with the power of her ring.
Now, this is different from what goes on in Harry Potter, but not radically so. The magic J.K. Rowling writes about is more "pedestrian" and often light-hearted, but the underlying theme, I would argue, is just as serious as that of Tolkien's Legendarium, and it uses many of the same elements.