In 2000, I was a college student working as a part-time children’s ministry leader. There were two fourth grade boys in my Wed. afterschool group who did not want to do anything except play four-square and hide in the basement from the adults. They were hard for me to connect with and to integrate into the program. One week, during free-time, they were not playing foursquare AND I could see them – they were sitting at a table playing UNO. I seized the opportunity to do some relationship building and asked to play with them. They dealt me in and it was then that I noticed that the cards did not have the usual brightly colored numbers and black wild cards. Instead, they had drawings of characters that I did not recognize. “Who are they?” I asked. The game stopped. I received looks of incredulity (not unusual from these two), “You don’t know Harry Potter?” I imagine I said something like, “Not yet?”
I received a flurry of an education that day: “this Harry and these are his two best friends, Ron and Hermione – they attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and there’s Hedwig, Harry’s Owl, and Draco Malfoy, Harry’s arch-nemesis, and Dumbledore the headmaster, who’s really powerful and really nice to Harry, and Hagrid the Gamekeeper, who really wats a dragon for a pet, but that’s not allowed…. And I remembered thinking – a book?! These two boys are this excited about a book?? After all of the children had been picked-up that day, I went directly to the church library and checked out Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. What followed was not only a formed connection, but what is now going on 18 years of being part of the Harry Potter fandom (group of active fans)– midnight book and later movie releases, planning more and more elaborate costumes, conventions and online discussion groups, our home looking more and more like a Hogwarts dorm room…. And I wasn’t alone. Why such devotion? Why a worldwide phenomenon for a world built around the inner monologue and acts of a teenage wizard?
I can’t answer for all, but I can answer for me: Harry and I share the same values. I find hope and courage in Harry and his allies. When, as Dumbledore says, the time comes to choose between what is right and what is easy, I want to do what is right.
In the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, when the leaders of wizarding society, The Ministry of Magic, have become despotic or, as Dumbledore puts it, “blinded by the love of the office [they] hold” and the adult allies at Hogwarts have lost their power and authority, the teenagers claim their own power and authority. Hermione Granger, one of Harry’s best friends, and the most academically gifted and logical of the group, forms a secret student defense society. Based on his knowledge and experience, Harry is democratically elected as leader, and they give themselves the name “The D.A.” – originally meant to mean the Defense Association, but it quickly becomes an acronym for “Dumbledore’s Army.” Dumbledore is the embodiment of all that is good about Hogwarts, as Headmaster, he is its keeper and defender. Ultimately, this group of teenagers take on the mantle of defending Dumbledore’s practice of compassion, acceptance, and love over the ministry’s doctrine of power, purity, and fear.
Throughout the books, the students consistently call truth to power, and, with guidance and support from trustworthy adults, stay the course and save the world… and I do not have to suspend my belief for a moment, because in 18 years of youth ministry, I have never had to explain to a teenager that they should care about other people or that the hard work of love and service is worthwhile.
I said earlier that I find hope and courage in Harry – I can easily say the same of the teenagers I have known and seen grow into strong leaders and shapers of justice and peace in our world – and even in those I don’t know.
Last February, after the world watched in horror as an act of violence tore through a Parkland, FL school, we watched with pride and awe as students rose up and showed us the meaning of integrity and courage in leadership. A tweet by Jennifer Ansbach, a teacher, said this: “I’m not sure why people are so surprised that the students are rising up — we’ve been feeding them a steady diet of dystopian literature showing teens leading the charge for years. We have told teen girls they are empowered. What, you thought it was fiction? It was preparation.” And Time national correspondent Charlotte Alter pointed out, “Harry Potter has almost become their playbook: the Ones Who Lived fighting an ‘evil’ force that has infiltrated the government and brainwashed adults, using only the powers they’ve learned in school: illumination, protection, disarmament.”
In an interview for The Cut, Emma Gonzalez, Parkland student activist, co-founder of the #NeverAgain movement, and one of the primary organizers of the national March for Our Lives demonstrations, was asked: “Does she read YA and fantasy fiction? Which characters does she like or relate to?” The interviewer asked this question because Emma, and the other activist teens from Parkland were being compared all over social media to fictional heroes and heroines, their brave, defiant rebellion reminiscent of something from a dystopian plot. The interviewer, Lisa Miller wrote:
“I have been writing about religion and religious beliefs for years, and saw similarities between the Parkland activists and the Biblical prophets, whose countercultural messages [foreshadowed] wars and revolutions and the coming of a different, better age, galvanizing people to their side. If the activists are like prophets, then the novels and comics and movies consumed by kids are like Scripture, stories told over and over again, to be consumed by a mass audience: defining a mind-set and setting expectations for the future. (And the fandoms are like the apocrypha, new versions and iterations of the canonical story.)” Emma, in particular, whose shaved-head image and fierce, furious speech in Fort Lauderdale circulated everywhere just days after the shooting, looks and sounds like a prophet to me … and can you guess her answer to the question posed about her fictional inspiration? “Harry Potter alone,” she answers.
“Who is your favorite character?” She is asked.
“Ginny (book character, not movie character) or Luna.”
“Do you see any resemblance between yourself and Ginny or Luna?”
“Ginny is Strong, levelheaded and Passionate (small + powerful); Luna is gentle, kind, Strong, and just has a Wonderful World view.”
This makes sense. It was Ginny Weasley, who coined the name “Dumbledore’s Army.” And it was Ginny and Luna who, (along with Neville), reactivated Dumbledore’s Army, as a full-scale rebellion in the final book. Luna is known for speaking uncomfortable truths and “Nothing’s impossible if you’ve got enough nerve,” says Ginny. What we read as children and teens shape our world view and character. Multiple scientific studies have shown that reading Harry Potter breeds empathy and dismantles prejudicial thinking in the reader. It’s also made powerful communities of activists.
The Harry Potter canon has become a modern-day social justice gospel, and if you have read the books, likening Harry’s story to the Jesus story takes almost no effort at all. They are both non-violent resisters, with love guiding their paths – “until the very end.” Stories like Harry Potter are “activist acts in themselves, providing a language and a reference point for real-world countercultural movements.” For example, “The Harry Potter Alliance,” of which I am a member, organizes Harry Potter fans into activist movements, focusing on “equality, human rights, and literacy” – campaigns including getting Warner Bros. to change the sourcing of all of their Harry Potter chocolate to be 100% UTZ or Fairtrade, sending five cargo planes of life-saving supplies to Haiti, and half a million books (and growing), to start libraries all around the world. The Granger Leadership Academy, based on the character of Hermione Granger, combines the power of story with world class leadership and activism training. J.K. Rowling has said that her own Christian faith helped shape Harry Potter; and she joins the legacy (through her fans) of activists shaped by progressive Christian practice.
There is something about the magic of Hogwarts that creates leaders. There is something about the magic of churches and communities like UCG that create leaders, too. Rituals mark entrance into both communities. The Sorting Hat ceremony at Hogwarts is symbolic of a newcomer’s individual gifts and identity, but also as new members of a larger group. Much like Confirmation and New Member Sundays, we welcome the gifts of the individual and cheer their becoming a part of the whole UCG community. We may not have a hat that we can place on new members’ heads that cheers – “Board of Business!” Or “Racial Justice Task Force!”, but we do understand what it feels like when we find our “house” here, where our gifts are honored and deep relationships built.
As Harry learned, when it seems that evil will triumph over good, we too rely on our friends. We accomplish so much because we have made the choice to not try to go it alone. We know that when it comes to grief, fear, celebration, and making real, lasting change, peace and goodness comes with community. At Hogwarts, Harry is given the opportunity to try his strengths, encounter uncomfortable truths about the world, and make decisions about how he will respond. Those are opportunities we also can and do provide our members. Where else do you know that offers the vast opportunities for care, justice, spiritual connection, education, and creativity listed in our bulletin just this morning? We support our youth in their exploration of what it means to encounter injustice and need and give them the tools to respond. We offer experiences to learn, to grow, and to decide how we want to respond to the uncomfortable truths of the world – together. When given the choice between what is right and what is easy, we can trust each other to help with both discernment and tools for action.
J.K. Rowling gave the commencement address at Harvard in 2008, and I would like to share a portion of it with you:
“Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places. Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy. If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
That is the Gospel, that is why the disciples of Jesus, of Ghandi, of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Emma Gonzales, and of Harry Potter follow them – they have the power to imagine better and the conviction to give their lives to work at making it a reality. It’s how we hope to live as an institution that calls itself a church, a place with the power to imagine better and to work and to live that reality into existence. Hogwarts is magic, yes, but so is UCG.
I asked our youth to share today because Work Tour is a real example of doing what is right instead of what is easy, and they are imagining better. They were our Gospel, our good news reading today. A quote that I repeat often and has become a bit of a mantra for me (and part of my email signature) is one from Professor Dumbledore, Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.
When the time comes that I am having a hard time choosing between what is right and what is easy, or need some truth spoken to power – I am going to Dumbledore’s Army, the DA, although here we call it YU and MST, and I invite you, if you haven’t already, to find your house, your own not-so secret society, the board or committee or small group at UCG, where you are challenged to imagine better, and given the opportunity to put your imaginings into actions. I am also going to remember to be thankful that in this place, we listen to the voices of the youth, and do our best to make sure that we all have Hogwarts experiences here, those that foster empathy, build community, fight injustice, and imagine better. Thank you for being my Hogwarts.
What is Right and What is Easy
July 15, 2018
Talia Raymond
