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- [00:00]
A
And like muggle blood or whatever that is. What is it? Muddle.
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B
Muggle.
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C
She's a muggle.
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A
Muggle.
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C
Yeah. You mixed, like, the appropriate term and the slur into one word.
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A
That's what I. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the sky pod, brought to you by Holy Post. Media and flourish and bots. I am joined.
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C
I know that one. All right.
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A
I am joined by my colleague, Caitlin Shess. Hi, Caitlin.
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C
Hi, Sky.
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A
All right, so here's what we're doing today. We are talking about Harry Potter.
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C
Harry Potter. We've got the books.
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A
Harry Potter.
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C
Oh, that was pretty good.
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A
I can do some. These books are actually owned by Mike Strehlow, our producer.
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C
They're actual childhood books. Yes. So cute.
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A
So couple background details here. You have just finished reading the books.
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C
Reading all the books and watching all the movies.
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A
Okay. And we'll get into this. But you were not allowed to read them when you were young.
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C
No.
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A
And you've now read them. And so we thought this would be a good opportunity to discuss sort of the themes, the ongoing relevance of this story, the way it's deeply impacted your generation, how Christians think about these stories or don't want to think about these stories. So we're just gonna. It's just a Harry Potter themed thing,
- [01:24]
C
which the Internet asked for. Clearly. Like, when I was posting about all of the books and all the movies, the amount of Holy Post listeners that said something to me about, like, please talk about the books. I want to hear what you think about the books. So.
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A
So we are here to. Please.
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C
Yes.
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A
Okay. I need to disclose my engagement with these stories and books. So I am obviously considerably older than you or Mike.
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C
Much older.
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A
I was much older when these books came out. I have not read the full series.
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C
That's really disappointing. Sky.
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A
Okay. I have seen all the movies.
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C
How so you've seen. You've read the first. How many first two books? The first two.
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A
Let me give you context for why.
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C
So you read the most, like, children's book ones.
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A
And so I read them when I was in seminary.
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C
Oh.
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A
I was married. I was in seminary. I think we went on vacation. It was a summer or spring break or something. We went on vacation.
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C
Was this, like, when they were coming out?
- [02:14]
A
Yes, this is when they were coming out. And I was. You can relate to this. I was just so saturated in doctrine and theology and Greek and Hebrew, and I was reading thousands of pages every semester, and I was like, I need a palate cleanser. I just wanted something escapist and simple and fun. And these Harry Potter Books were, like, the huge craze. This is in the late 90s. And so I got the first two books and I read them on vacation, and I found them delightful and enjoyable and all the things I wanted them to be. But then I had to reenter adult world.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And I just.
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C
You had some other stuff to read.
- [02:51]
A
I had some other stuff to read. My children, however, read all these books. At least two of them I know for sure did. They've definitely seen the movies. They've been impacted by them. So they're a little bit younger than the craziness.
- [03:02]
C
My generation is like the. Like, we were the age of Harry Potter. As the books were coming out, my fiance was, like, waiting at Barnes and Noble for the next one to come out. Like, yeah, there's a certain age group where it's like, these were your childhood to some extent.
- [03:16]
A
Yeah. And I'm a little jealous.
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C
I know. Me too. I'm jealous that I did not get to experience that.
- [03:21]
A
I mean, we, growing up in the 80s, mostly, we had our own pop culture storytelling, like Star wars and all that kind of stuff, which the movies of the 80s, I think, are unrivaled.
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C
We've heard. We've heard.
- [03:32]
A
I know. But we did not have a book series like Harry Potter that captured the imagination of the world and the whole generation.
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C
It was just so universal.
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A
It was big. It was really big. And I'm happy for your generation that you had that. I hold nothing against you, But it's evident that these are endearing stories or enduring stories. Endearing and enduring.
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C
There's a reason that people loved them and continue to love them.
- [04:02]
A
Exactly. So we will get into that in a minute, but I want to begin with why you did not read them. Yeah. Given you are a reader and you love stories and you love children and all this. So let's talk about why. It wasn't until you were in your late 20s, early 30s, before you picked up the Harry Potter series.
- [04:19]
C
So there's kind of two things going on here. One is, like, there was a lot of Christian suspicion or even backlash to Harry Potter as it was coming out. And my family, a little bit is part of that in that there were plenty of people around my parents and people at churches that were skeptical of Harry Potter or very critical of Harry Potter. But my mom was a little different in that it wasn't just the churches we were at said, you know, don't let your kids read or watch Harry Potter. She was a missionary kid and grew up in countries where witchcraft was a real Thing that people used to try and influence the world and was often, like, scary and, you know, potentially violent. Not. Not really with humans usually, but, like, with animals. So, like, she had a sense of what. She had a sense of the reality of witchcraft and did not want to play around with it.
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A
Okay.
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C
So to her, Harry Potter was treating something evil and serious as possibly good and definitely kind of flippantly or playfully.
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B
Okay.
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A
Obviously, she. That context is really interesting because it is. It's different than just everyone in my church community is just against this. And I'm going to go along with the flow. She has more tangible experience. Okay. How was that communicated to you and. Or your sister at the time? Were you curious about, hey, mom, why can't I do this? And did she take a sort of. I know everyone's interested. Just stay away. Or was it like, she scared you with. If you were doing it?
- [05:44]
C
She didn't scare us. She didn't scare us. She was. And in fact, when I got a little bit older, it was a little less intense. Like, I remember being at a friend's house and someone was watching Harry Potter and I saw some of it and I was like, I was definitely the kid that, like, couldn't last more than 24 hours before confessing to my sins. Cause I was just like, so did not want to be a bad kid. So I remember telling my mom and her being kind of like, it's fine. Like, it's fine. And I think if I had asked maybe in high school, like, could I read them? I think it's possible she would have been like, I'll read them first. Or, like, we can read them and talk about them together or something. I don't think she would have been, like, super intense fundamentalist. Like, none of it. And in fact, now, like, if my parents were having kids and they were the people they are now, then I think they would have totally let their kids read Harry Potter. They just don't have that same perspective anymore.
- [06:27]
A
Okay. So when you. I assume you've told your mom you've read the books or you're reading them.
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C
She's seen me read them. We've been talking about them. Yeah.
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A
And she wasn't, like, given you the evil eye.
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C
She was not worried at all.
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A
You've betrayed the family.
- [06:37]
C
No, no. And in fact, both my sister and I have had similar experiences. Both of us, to my knowledge. I think this is true of my sister. I think both of us read them because we were marrying men who, like, had read them as kids, and they were very Important to them. And it was like this childhood memory. And so my sister's husband. That's true of, like, he really loved Harry Potter growing up. My sister, when she read them as an adult, I think she reads or listens to the audiobooks, like, once a year now. Like, she really loves them.
- [07:03]
A
So Harry Potter in a year.
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C
Harry Potter in a year.
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A
It's a whole new reading plan.
- [07:07]
C
Harry Potter in a year. Yeah. So my parents are not concerned about it now. They were concerned about it then. But I think it's worth saying, like, there's my specific experience, and then there's just the fact that a lot of. I mean, I remember in college talking to tons of people who, like, were not allowed to read Harry Potter or just there was a whole long list of subjects.
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A
You went to Liberty University.
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C
I did go to Liberty University. But I do think there's a. I
- [07:29]
A
think most people in college are encountering this.
- [07:30]
C
No, no, no, that's true. That's true. But there's a subset of, like, evangelical Christians where both. There's suspicion. And I think this is a good question to ask. Like, I think the concern at the heart of it was not very well thought through, but did have some part of truth of it, which is, is this doing what Scripture condemns as evil? Like, is this painting something scripture condemns as evil as good, that is sorcery, witchcraft. And if it is, you might go the full, like, satanic panic route and go like, Harry Potter is the gateway to your child's practicing pagan witchcraft. There's also the just route of, like, does this trivialize or normalize something that is real and in Scripture is not talked about as can be used for good and can be used for evil. It is talked about as thoroughly evil. Messing with things you shouldn't mess with, trying to have control over things you shouldn't have control over. I don't agree with that, but I do think there was a whole generation of evangelical Christians where these books were really popular as they were growing up, and their parents were either very suspicious or even entirely critical of them for those kinds of reasons. And I do think a lot of those kids, like my sister and I grew up and ended up reading that. It's just like such a generational, cultural significant thing that I think most of the time people ended up being influenced. And even before I read them, I knew so much about the stories from just living in the world, so totally.
- [08:47]
A
Okay, so let's talk a little bit before we get into the books themselves, more about the evangelical Satanic panic kind of dynamics of this. Why do you think Christians reacted to the Harry Potter. Some Christians reacted to the Harry Potter books and their use of magic, sorcery, whatever, but don't react to other fictional uses of magic. The ones that come to mind immediately, obviously, are the Narnia books, the Tolkien Lord of the Rings books, even Star wars, which I know you don't know that much about, but, I mean, it's a space fantasy, but it's very mystical.
- [09:24]
C
There's other powers.
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A
Totally. And I mean, whole religions have been built off of that, but I have not heard Christian families from the more fundamentalist end of the spectrum react to those depictions of magic. Here's one hypothesis. Tell me if you think I'm wrong.
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C
Okay.
- [09:41]
A
I think it's maybe two things. One is just the. The sheer popularity of these books, I think, freaked some parents out, like, totally. When. When your children are begging you to do something because everyone's doing it and it involves magic that sends up yellow, if not red.
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C
Totally, totally.
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A
But then secondly, the Harry Potter story is sort of set in the real world.
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C
That's what I was gonna say. Yeah.
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A
Is that what makes it especially problematic for some folks?
- [10:06]
C
I think it's a combination of one. Unlike Tolkien or Narnia, this is just not only set in the real world, but it starts out with a kid who's living a normal life and then discovers there's this whole other world of magic, which is a pretty common trope. Right. Like, everyone loves a story about a kid who thinks they're just normal and their life is sad, and then it's like, oh, actually, you're super special and you have special powers. There's so many stories.
- [10:30]
A
It's a very common literary trope. Yeah.
- [10:32]
C
But I do understand at least why some parents might have gone, well, what if my kid goes looking for something like this in our world and does find people who will lead them down a scary path? That's not the Harry Potter path. That is like a world where magic is really dark and scary and real. And I do think the part of this that I really agree with is the part that says, hey, in our real world, not in this fantasy world, in this book, but in our real world, you can't just treat other forces or magical forces or spirits, whatever you're dealing with, as if it's neutral and you can play with it safely and then be done with it. No, there's real power there, and you should be cautious not thinking that those powers are so great, that they're greater than Christ. No, Christ has defeated the powers and principalities on the cross. But I do think there's some wisdom in going like, we just don't mess with that stuff in the real world. So I think one, it's like this felt too close to something, a path their child could actually take. The other, honestly, I think bigger reason is those other examples, Star wars, this is less true of. But Tolkien and Narnia, those are older stories and they're written by people that we think of as very famous Christians. So it's like a Christian wrote it, so it must be saved. And they come pre satanic panic. So I just think they're older stories that are less easily intertwined with the, you know, 70s, 80s, 90s, satanic panic. If you're a, you know, evangelical Christian parent in that era, you might still have some concerns with, with Tolkien or with Narnia. I knew some parents who were like, anything with magic, we're not doing anything with magic. But those are older stories. So to you, you're like, it's a little safer than this new thing, especially if my kid gets in, in the first book. And I don't know where it goes. Like, maybe it goes in a really dark direction. And I. I knew some parents who just. It was scary and they were like, I don't want my kid to see as much scary stuff at the age they're at. So I do think that's part of it. I don't think it's totally consistent, but I do think there are some reasons why it might be different. But speaking of the inconsistency, one of the reasons that I have never read or watched any of the Lord of the Rings until quite recently is because as a kid, I thought it was really silly that I was allowed to read Lord of the Rings but was not allowed to read Harry Potter. So sort of in protest, I just decided to not read any of them either. Because in the context I was in, it was like, Lord of the Rings was very popular and a lot of people were really into Lord of the Rings. And it was a little contrarian of me to just be like, I'm not going to read it. But I did sort of think, like, if I'm not allowed to read one thing with magic, why should I be allowed to read something else with magic?
- [12:53]
A
All right, all right. You're pointing out the hypocrisy of your parents and their rules and regulations.
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C
I love my parents, and they were doing the best they could.
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B
Okay?
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A
I mean, we could go down this road for the whole hour. But I don't want to my hang up. And we've talked about this, and there was a clip that we did on Instagram from a live show where someone was asking me about, oh, yeah, witchcraft and all that kind of stuff. The thing that I find inconsistent is not that you're forbidden from reading Harry Potter, but you can read Lord of the Rings. It was more the lack of imagination.
- [13:25]
C
Yeah.
- [13:26]
A
That I think a lot of Christian communities fall into, where if something is explicitly witchcraft, sorcery, you go, well, that's obviously bad. There are so many other things that are horribly anti Christian, or if you want a personification of evil, satanic that many Christian communities are absolutely fine with.
- [13:49]
C
Totally.
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A
And that's the part going back to the Godfather. One of my favorite narratives, I think it's in part two. He says, you keep your friends close, you keep your enemies even closer. And it feels like the enemy of the church has kept us so close that we can't even recognize the way that dehumanizing immigrants or racism or neglecting the poor or the relentless pursuit of power and control are profoundly anti Christian, even satanic. But we give those things a pass. But a Ouija board or a Harry Potter book, it's like, oh, you know, your hair's on fire. And for me, the essence of magic as forbidden in scripture is that it's a. It's an attempt to seek control.
- [14:35]
C
Yep.
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A
It's an attempt to seek control over spiritual forces to get the outcomes you want. I grew up, at least in my high school years, in an evangelical subculture that by that definition, was saturated in magical thinking and an attempt to control God. Yeah, we tried to control God with prayer. We tried to. I mean, this is why I said the prayer of Jabez. The book, not the actual prayer, but the book is essentially divination. It's say these magical words and God will give you what you want. The prosperity gospel, the sexual prosperity gospel, purity culture. If you keep your morality and these boundaries, God is obligated to give you these blessings in your life.
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C
Totally.
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B
All of that is magical thinking that
- [15:12]
A
is biblically the equivalent to what is forbidden in the Old Testament. So that's where I was like, well, everyone's getting so upset about Harry Potter, but they're not upset about these other forms of magical thinking that permeate American evangelicalism. That's the part that I was like, totally, totally.
- [15:29]
C
I also think the more that I have watched Christians have bad interpretations of various stories, whether it's books or TV shows, or movies, the more I realize, like, oh, we're bad at reading the Bible, so we're bad at reading stories. We're bad at reading stories, so we're bad at reading the Bible. In both cases, it tends to be this, like, very wooden, on the surface interpretation of things that doesn't pay attention to genre or to underlying themes or to different symbolic features. Just says, I have a checklist of things. This one checks one of the bad things, so it must be bad. Without asking. To your point, there are a lot of people I remember from high school into college who are not allowed to read Harry Potter or anything with any magic, but read so many Christian romance novels that taught truly horrendous things about men and women, about marriage, about sex, about bodies, that some were quite explicitly the sexual prosperity gospel or something like that, or were really shaming of people's bodies or experiences or, you know, just taught really, to your point, like, very satanic things. But that was fine because on the surface they're Amish and they didn't have sex before they had. Before they got married. And they like, they checks all the boxes. So it's fine. This checks some external red flags. And so it's not fine without asking, but, like, what is it actually saying about humans as creatures and human communities and our relationship to each other?
- [16:53]
A
It reminds me of. Of Samuel's words about David, where man looks at the external appearance and the Lord sees the heart. We stop at the external appearance. Oh, this is magic and sorcery. It must be bad. Oh, that's Amish and Christian and sexually pure. It must be good. And we don't look beyond the surface to see. I mean, even scripture tells us Satan masquerades as an angel of light. Do you think he is so stupid to try to ensnare the world with something that's easily identified as evil? Or is he going to masquerade as something godly, righteous, good and pure, and under the surface realize it's full of depravity and dehumanization and power and control and fear and anger. Like, that's the lack of imagination and ability to go beneath the surface. That takes too many of these conversations. Okay, let's talk about the actual story.
- [17:49]
C
Yeah, the.
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A
The journey of Harry through these seven novels.
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B
What are some of the themes that
- [17:56]
A
jump out to you that you think are actually consistent with Christian doctrine, theology, or virtues?
- [18:04]
C
So there's a really obvious one that I. I feel kind of bad, but I did like, guess the ending of the last book because I knew so many Christians had said this was a Christian story. So putting that together, I was like, well, I know the main themes of the Christian story.
- [18:17]
A
So spoiler alert.
- [18:18]
C
So spoiler alert. I mean, it ends with literally like the hero of the seven books willingly sacrificing himself. I mean, in his case, you know, believing that's the end, he will fully sacrifice his life for the sake of his wider community, for the end of their like, suffering and the domination of the like evil personified in the story, and then is resurrected. And it's by the power of love. Like that deep sacrifice for people he loved brings him back to life and provides protection very tangibly for them. So you just don't. Like we were talking about this earlier, you don't get stories where sacrifice on behalf of others is deemed honorable and good and valuable without Christianity. We assume that's just a human story and Christianity is one powerful example of it. And we really struggle to understand how much we have lived in a world saturated with that story. And to the point where we think that's just normal and expected prior to the actual death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Like that was dishonorable. To sacrifice your life for other people, like for you to experience suffering and pain and bodily suffering in particular was humiliating, was dishonorable. And now we live in a world where it would make sense for an author to end this epic story with all the highs and lows, with not only end, but actually begins the story with the sacrifice of his mother for him, ends the story with his sacrifice for his larger community and, and that has this like widespread long term effect on the ability for that community to flourish.
- [19:50]
A
I think you might be able to make some, even Paul mentions this in his writings. You can make a case that the idea of sacrificing yourself for your loved ones, for your clan, for your family is a virtue that predates Christianity.
- [20:04]
C
Yes.
- [20:05]
A
The unique Christian contribution is the idea that someone of superior status and power would sacrifice themselves for the weak, for the lesser, for the lesser or for their enemy. That's the profoundly changed, the huge change that Christianity introduces, elevating those below you,
- [20:20]
C
which shows up in that last book. There's multiple characters that you think, first of all, there's multiple times in the book, and I think this is actually a really Christian idea too, that you think, you know, who's a good guy and who's a bad guy. And then it's more complicated than that. And this is where some Christian parents in the 90s might have thought, like, that's not good. There are good guys and there are bad guys. But actually the Christian story says not only that we are all made in the image of God, but also fallen, but also that sometimes we don't make good judgments about who is. Like, ultimately, I mean, the wheat and the tares. Right. Like, we're not able to in this life, fully know, fully judge a person's life. In these books, you see people that you kind of would assume by external characteristics are just irredeemable, evil bad guys, and they turn out to not be, but even the ones who make lots of poor decisions, who do lots of harm to other people in the end, Harry's death is for them, too, which is another, like, uncomfortable part of it, you'd think there. And we have other stories like this where it actually draws upon an older human story than the death and resurrection of Christ that says that's how the world is. It's just good pitted against evil. We have lots of stories where that's true. And the goal at the end is just the good defeats the evil. And there's just like it's done in this story. One of the more Christian themes is, like, people are changed by his sacrifice. Even the people who thought they were on the side of the bad guys, some of them are defeated, like, truly, but some of them are saved by that and are also changed by his sacrifice.
- [21:44]
A
Right. And this is another theme of scripture that I think comes out really clearly in the Old Testament. You even see it in some of the New Testament with the apostles. But there are very few characters depicted in the Bible that are just good or just evil. Right. They're complicated, messy, flawed, totally people. And many of them grow and develop over time and learn from their mistakes or change. And just the story of Israel, you think, oh, this is God's chosen people as covenant people. He rescues them from slavery. They're the good guys. Keep reading.
- [22:17]
C
It gets pretty rough.
- [22:18]
A
It gets pretty rough. So that. And one thing I do appreciate about what. What J.K. rowling did with these books, you can even see it in the way they're sitting here. The early books are short, and they keep getting longer and longer and longer, and the stories get more nuanced and more complicated and. And it follows the moral intellectual development of the kids in the story.
- [22:37]
C
Totally. The first two read like children's books.
- [22:39]
A
Exactly.
- [22:40]
C
The further you get in. I remember having a certain point, I forget which one it was in. I think it was probably. I think it's probably the fourth one that I had a moment where I was like, oh, it got dark. Like all of a sudden it's not like, oh, there's risk but you'll be okay. It's like, no, a kid dies.
- [22:56]
A
Oh yeah, it gets dark.
- [22:57]
C
It gets really dark.
- [22:57]
A
It's the one with the tri wizarding thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
- [23:00]
C
The Goblet of Fire.
- [23:01]
A
Yeah, right, so. And I know she's been interviewed about this and talked about it a lot. You start with an 11 year old Harry, and then by the end he's 18. We change, we develop, we understand the world's not just white hats and black hats. It's more complicated. We start to get that more adult vision of the nuances and complexities that comes out in these stories. Which is why as the books were being released, kids were growing with the books. It made a little bit more sense. Today you could be 10 years old and pick up the whole series and read the whole thing. I wonder how that affects younger kids differently.
- [23:34]
C
I've heard from so many like parents who are my age with small kids or a little older than me with, you know, older elementary kids. And they're like holding off on them, like, which I think it's also kind of nice, like you said before, to have this like coming of age kind of thing. Like, oh, I'm finally old enough to read the third one. I'm old enough to read the fourth one. Like that's a cool way to not only grow with the books but to like, we have so few rituals, you know, for marking time for a kid growing up. That's like a nice way to kind of go like, okay, you're old enough now for this one.
- [24:02]
A
Well, with the movies it's a whole different thing because I was like I said, I only read the first two books. So I followed the movies as they were released and I was surprised how dark they got.
- [24:12]
C
They get dark.
- [24:13]
A
They get really.
- [24:14]
C
They get like visually dark.
- [24:15]
A
You know, some of the movies I ended up watching on long flights and. Cause my kids were too little to see some of the later movies. They're very dark. I was like, man, this is not what I was expecting because this gets really weird. Let's talk about the dynamic of community and friendship in these books because I'm trying to figure out is Rowling appealing to Universal or long standing values around community and friendship or is this set very much in late 20th century, early 21st century values and morals?
- [24:58]
C
Say more about that.
- [24:59]
A
Well, I'm thinking if these books had been written 100 years earlier, I'm not sure you get Hermione in there.
- [25:05]
C
Oh, true. You don't get who.
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A
Hermione.
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C
Okay, you got it. Yeah. The beginning.
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A
Hermione. Hermione. Hermione.
- [25:12]
C
Hermione.
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A
Hermione.
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C
Hermione.
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A
Whatever.
- [25:13]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you're totally right. There's totally an era where you don't get it.
- [25:17]
A
I think it's just a bunch of boys.
- [25:18]
C
Totally.
- [25:19]
A
100% at a boys school. Right? That's kind of. But there's. There are dynamics between boys and girls in these books that seem very, very contemporary.
- [25:28]
C
Yeah. While also acknowledging the history like Hermione brings up a lot various gender dynamics that kind of are inherited by. This probably doesn't really come out in the movies, but in the books there's more. You see more of her both dealing with her being a girl and expectations.
- [25:45]
B
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