Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #666, Potter Panic! Revisiting the HP vs. Christianity Controversies
Show Intro
[Heavy metal remix of show music, featuring Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast, your weekly ride into the Wizarding World fandom. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: And this week, in honor of us hitting our 666th episode, we’re setting Book 4 down for just a week and picking up on real world controversy that was happening right as Goblet of Fire was published in July of 2000, and at issue was whether the series, which was quickly gaining national publicity in the US, was instructing young readers to take up witchcraft, join the devil, and abandon God. We really wanted to do something unique for Episode 666; we’ll never hit this unfortunate number again, so we’ll look back at a key point in Harry Potter history.
Micah: And it’s worth saying we did invite Satan to join us tonight, but he was busy.
Andrew: [laughs] He was busy. I won’t ask you what he was busy with; we’ll just move forward. But before we get into today’s discussion, we do have some exciting news for those of you who love video podcasts: We are now releasing full video episodes on YouTube, so everybody look alive, look alive. And actually, we started this with last week’s episode. So you can visit YouTube.com/@MuggleCast, or just search for MuggleCast on YouTube to find our channel. Please make sure you are subscribed. Check out the videos, give them a like, please comment. We’ll be keeping an eye on the comments there as well. But no matter where you like to Accio MuggleCast, make sure you’re following the show for free and leave us a review in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.
Main Discussion: The controversy of Harry Potter and Christianity
Andrew: So Eric, you led the planning of today’s discussion, right?
Eric: It’s a big one, and in fact, I’m thinking of making available via the show notes the PDF document that compiles over 40 separate primary sources from basically contemporary newspaper clippings at the time, mostly in 1999 and 2000, with some stretching as late as 2007 when we get to some controversy that we’ve actually managed to cover on the show before. But it was a massive task made possible by Newspapers.com, which has digitized all these… I felt like in those movies when an investigative journalist has to go to the library and they do those machines that go through literally old papers.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: It’s just absolutely wild, but I knew for this episode it would be good to hear just what was going on back when this issue was in its prime. And let’s set the scene: As Andrew already mentioned, by the year 2000 Pottermania was in full force, and the first three books of author J.K. Rowling’s series about a boy wizard had finally broken through in the United States, in advance of the series’ fourth written installment. While largely taking the country by storm, the Potter “contagion” and subject matter of the books raised alarm bells across Christian America, and concerned parents, youth leaders, and journalists all began to ask, “Just what are our children reading?” It’s for these concerns that parents had that Harry Potter began to get banned from schools, at one point in the late ’90s reaching number three on the New York Times “Most banned books” list; it would later top that list. Major Christian publications such as Christianity Today, however, actually took a closer look at the series and declared it harmless or even good for children to read. While it does seem, looking back, that a consensus was largely reached by parents, journalists, and the public at large, who’d actually read the books, the issue of whether Harry Potter was safe for children extended through the entire publication history of the seven books, and most notably in the later years – we mentioned this before – but Georgia parent Laura Mallory fought and lost six separate court cases attempting to have the Potter books banned from the school on religious grounds. So we’re going to walk through a sort of timeline of events. We’ve got quotes, we’ve got references, we have our memories on the subject, but first I want to ask what were our own experiences with this controversy? Did it ever come to us? And for this, I specifically want to start with Laura, because you were living in Malloryville. You grew up, what, 30 minutes from where she was?
Laura: Yep. Yeah, and to be honest with you, for the most part this rhetoric wasn’t something that was super prevalent in my community. I will say it was prevalent amongst people who had a certain level of devoutness, [laughs] but I would argue at that point that it had probably less to do with the source material and more to do with a loud minority making a lot of noise and getting some other voices on board. But in general, Potter was super popular with kids. Most teachers and parents were supportive and were just happy to see kids reading. I will say, though, that I did have a couple of friends who came from some of those aforementioned very, very devout backgrounds, and Harry Potter was not permitted in their house or anywhere in their lives. But the thing that I always thought was funny was they were usually totally fine with things like Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia, but we’ll get into, I think, the reasons why those stories were considered okay for people who felt this way – and why Harry Potter wasn’t – a little bit later in the episode.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: I figured if anyone was really up in front of this controversy, it would be you, because the Atlanta Constitution is cited many times. I was finding a lot of articles from Georgia from the ’90s, basically, and just assumed that it would maybe be a more oppressive environment for a budding Harry Potter fan at the time.
Laura: I mean, it was oppressive insofar as it was definitely not cool to work on a website or be on a podcast back then.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: It wasn’t cool in the Northeast either.
Laura: Yeah, but I mean, honestly, most people either liked Harry Potter or didn’t care about it. I really think that cases like these – not to downplay it because it is significant, and it’s also not to say that Laura Mallory was a party of one; she definitely wasn’t – but I think that this is definitely a case where you had a very vocal minority of people trying to exercise some kind of control, and Harry Potter was low-hanging fruit for that, I think.
Andrew: Yes. Yeah, it was so popular at the time; that’s one reason why they were picking on Harry Potter more than Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia. But Laura, those kids who weren’t allowed to read Harry Potter – were they secretly reading it without their parents knowing?
Laura: Well, one friend was. The other wasn’t because she genuinely thought she would go to hell, which was very sad.
Andrew: Aw, yeah.
Eric: No, that was honestly the line at the time; it’s in print all over the place too. And I do want to say before we get to mine and Micah’s experiences – oh, and Andrew’s, too, because you have a little story to tell – this episode is not meant to actually make fun of anyone who was critical of the Harry Potter books, believe it or not. The whole purpose of this really just looks at the reasons that were stated for it and trying to see if there’s merit to it or just what the arguments were. Me, for example – and sorry to sorry to skip you, Andrew, real quick – but I wasn’t in this controversy at all. No teachers come under fire in my school for this. I was 12 at the time; I just cared about Pokémon cards. This missed me. This controversy in the ’90s missed me. It wasn’t until we started doing MuggleCast and the Laura Mallory thing came about 2006/2007 that I was even aware this was an argument. But reading back and looking at these written arguments for why people thought it, it gets serious. It’s not all laughs and buffoonery; these are parents who are really deeply concerned that their children are reading something that will either flat-out indoctrinate them or lead down a slippery slope.
Andrew: And Micah, similar for you. You only found out about it, really, thanks to MuggleNet, right?
Micah: Yeah, I was really only made aware of the controversy by working on the site and doing the podcast. For me, I got a lot more questions about reading a “children’s” book than anything to do with the religious aspect of it. But I was just going to say, I do think it’s important, because we do have a lot of new listeners to this show; we do have a lot of people who are finding Harry Potter in these last, let’s say, five to ten years who maybe weren’t even aware that this controversy existed back in the ’90s. And of course, there is really no successful series that doesn’t have a bit of controversy to it. Today, it has a much different type of controversy surrounding it than it did back in the ’90s. But this is certainly something that was part of the narrative throughout the course of all seven books.
Andrew: It was. So for me, I mentioned I was living in the Northeast; I was in southern New Jersey. And while the books weren’t banned, and there wasn’t an effort to ban them in my school or my state, my fifth grade teacher actually did try to forbid us from reading the books in her class, and I think it was simply because of how popular they were, and for whatever reason the teacher thought they weren’t worth reading. And my mom actually called my fifth grade teacher – Mrs. Degnan, I haven’t forgotten – and said, “Let them read the book!” So plus one for my mom for doing that. But the funniest thing about all of this is that my fifth grade teacher didn’t want us reading the book, but my fourth grade teacher introduced us to the Harry Potter books. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson, read Sorcerer’s Stone to us in class! So she introduces it to us, and then next year, the teacher… Mrs. Degnan was the Umbridge of Haines Elementary.
Eric: We find ourselves locked in a battle not between these old players, the devil and God, but the fourth grade teachers versus the fifth grade teachers…
Andrew: [laughs] Good versus evil.
Eric: … in their curriculum, differences of opinion. This is a tale as old as time. This war will never be won.
Andrew: [laughs] So yeah, I was lucky to avoid the controversy. But down in the south, religion is deeply rooted in everyday society, and…
Eric: Well, I’m glad you mentioned that because…
Laura: That’s global.
Eric: No, it is.
Laura: That’s global for sure.
Eric: There’s an article… okay, one of the early defenders of Harry Potter was Judy Blume, and in a New York Times opinion piece on December 6, 1999, that article that quoted her also stated that there were already book bannings, actual bannings, in Minnesota, Michigan, New York, California – I’ve yet to name a southern state – and South Carolina.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: So this was not just south. This was not just South America… South North America… you know what I was saying.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: These books were being banned in non-“Bible Belt” states as well.
Andrew: That’s all fair. Maybe I should add that… I was saying when I go to the south, at least, I just see religion more deeply rooted in everyday life than I do in New Jersey, specifically.
Eric: There’s a reason it’s called the Bible Belt. However, I did notice, Andrew, you said you were from South Jersey.
Andrew: Yes, well… [laughs]
Eric: South.
Andrew: We do call it South Jersey, but not because it’s down near Georgia or something. It’s just the southern half of the state.
Micah: And you were telling us earlier, you make good use of Bibles when you podcast from hotel rooms.
Laura: Oh my gosh. [laughs]
Andrew: I do, I do. Well, look, sometimes you need to elevate the mic when you’re recording from a hotel room – which I probably will be next week – and if there is a Bible in the hotel room, I’m going to use it to prop up the microphone. I’m not burning it or anything; I’m just elevating the microphone so you could hear me loud and clear.
Laura: You’re like, “Jesus, hold my mic.”
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: Oh, man. You use the book to prop up your microphone, but I’m actually using my microphone box to prop up the next book I brought with me to the shore. It’s Fourth Wing.
Andrew: Oh, okay.
Eric: That’s a completely unrelated thing, but I have a book on my mic. I’m like, “That’s interesting.” So let’s just cover real quickly… we are going to get into specifically what was said, but a lot of discourse is also around the reasons for the controversy. Why Harry Potter? And one thing I do want to point out very early on in this discussion is that the Harry Potter and Christianity debate could fit in the category of a moral panic, where sensationalist journalism – hello, the J word – amplifies a question or a problem beyond its initial stature, and it galvanizes citizens into taking a side. And usually, or historically, this has been done with threats that the safety of them or their children are at stake if they don’t, and just one example of a moral panic would be the so-called Satanic Panic from the early 1980s, where accusations of the existence of a child-abusing cult of parents and teachers were said to be using Satanic rituals and conducting unholy worship en masse, endangering and actively harming the nation’s children. This kicked off right around 1983 or so, and in 1994 – 11 years later – the New York Times had a post that found over 12,000 accusations had been investigated, and there was no substantiated facts that it had occurred. In the meantime, parents and teachers that were accused got life sentences and all sorts of stuff happened. Lives were ruined, and it’s important to show the implication of what the media can do to a problem. As far as I know, no one went to jail for writing Harry Potter – yet – and so I think that this was relatively safer than the Satanic Panic, but the sensationalist journalism, the moral panic thing is a very real human psychological… it’s in our history. It’s in our history, and I think this is the closest Potter came to it.
Andrew: Yeah, I was going to say, I think that it’s… you’re describing exactly what went on with Harry Potter. People were afraid that kids were going to read these books and learn these spells, and then use them out in the real world or become wizards.
Eric: Yep.
Andrew: And of course, none of this ever happened! As much as we maybe wanted to become a wizard. We tried!
Laura: And there’s always something, right? Eric, you brought up Pokémon earlier. There were similar concerns about Pokémon. I don’t know that they were as vocal as the Harry Potter ones became, but there were also… the Satanic Panic really hit Dungeons & Dragons hard in the ’80s as well, and you see that depicted, actually…
Eric: Stranger Things.
Laura: … in Stranger Things, right? So it’s always something. It’s something the young kids are into that certain demographics don’t understand. Because they don’t understand it, it must be bad.
Micah: Right, I was going to say it challenges the norm in a way, and once it does that, and can potentially make people uncomfortable, then they start to come up with all these different ideas about why it’s bad.
Eric: So why Harry Potter? Why do we think, and what are our thoughts there?
Andrew: Well, I think the rise of the Internet was a factor. Harry Potter was coming up at the same time that the Internet was, and the idea of someone trying to get a popular children’s book banned was a very intriguing headline on the Internet where Harry Potter was already so hot, and this was before the social media algorithms that we know and hate today. But thanks to the Internet, we were all checking the news websites. We would go to MuggleNet every day to keep up on the news. Adults would check in on news websites from New York Times, or whoever else, and these headlines were attractive. They probably got clicks. And I think what’s really interesting to me about the Harry Potter backlash and Laura Mallory is that if it weren’t for the Internet, nobody outside of Georgia would have heard about Laura Mallory.
Laura: Right.
Andrew: But she became the figurehead for the Harry Potter panic thanks to the Internet.
Eric: Well, the majority… that is all true in 2005/2006, but in the ’90s, this was being written about on just local papers and groups like Christianity Today; publications had to address the concerns that they were getting from opinions to the editor and letters to the editor and the opinion section of local papers. So people… there was very much a grassroots movement of concerned parents that you hear about doing everything they could in print media to try and raise alarm bells, and then you’re right, by the end of it, they actually had the means to do so via the Internet. I also think that – I think, Laura, you touched on this too – Harry Potter was popular, and anytime something is popular… my dad actually tried to ban Pokémon from me. He wouldn’t let me watch it after school. He said, “Your grades are suffering. You come home, watch Pokémon the animated series. You should be doing your homework.”
Micah: Well, that sounds like because you weren’t doing your homework, not because there’s something wrong with Pokémon.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t a perfect comparison, but anything popular is subject to scrutiny.
Andrew: It was a distraction. Yeah, it was an addicting distraction. I think of Tamagotchis; they were banned in schools.
Eric: That’s right!
Andrew: Pokémon cards were banned in my school as well; they didn’t want these distractions in school. I think maybe getting back to my fifth grade teacher, she saw Harry Potter as a distraction.
Micah: Right. Just to add on, too, because I do agree with what Andrew was saying earlier about the rise of the Internet and the fact that if I’m somebody living in New York, I could go onto the Atlanta Journal Constitution‘s website and read about Laura Mallory. In fact, I could go onto MuggleNet and read about Laura Mallory. We actually helped to perpetuate some of the celebrity factor of people like her…
Andrew: [gasps] Darn it.
Eric: We made her star rise.
Micah: … who were so adamant against the Harry Potter series.
Eric: This controversy is pre-MuggleNet, though. It is.
Micah: It is, but we didn’t maybe do as much as we could have to fan the flames. Or to douse the flames, I should say.
Eric: So I want to know why… okay, apart from the fact that it was popular and kids who were supposed to be on their video game systems were instead picking up books, which turned a lot of heads…
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: … and one of the earliest pro-Harry Potter statements is, “Isn’t that a good thing, that kids are reading again?” But not when it’s a book about witchcraft and wizardry. And here’s the thing… okay, did J.K. Rowling make it easy? It says sorcery. In fact, some of the titles in foreign languages… it’s right in the title, okay? So that’s a little concerning. But here’s two other reasons why Harry Potter would be targeted: This is a quote from Religion in the News, Spring 2002’s Volume 5, by Richard Peace. He says, “A lot had to do with the authors themselves.” This is in terms of why J.K. Rowling is targeted, whereas C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien get a pass. This was Laura’s question earlier.
“A lot had to do with the authors themselves. [re: Paulson] ‘Tolkien was a devout convert to Catholicism whose religion informed his writing, while Rowling, a member of the Church of Scotland, has not emphasized her religion as a central part of her biography. Tolkien was also a friend and close associate of C.S. Lewis, the well-known Christian writer.’ Indeed, Lewis has assumed the role of patron saint in the evangelical world for the staunch defense of historic Christianity that he expressed in a series of books and articles on Christian apologetics.”
Eric: I think they were called The Screwtape Letters. I could be wrong on that, but I think that’s it. And the other thing, let’s be honest, why do Lewis and Tolkien get to play around with witches and wizards, but Rowling can’t? She’s also a woman. And the interesting thing that Richard Peace points out is that “the word on the fundamentalist street in 2002 was that Rowling herself was a witch of sorts.” So here we get a little old school witch-hunting, I guess.
“Writing in Crossroads and Worthy News in August 2000, Berit Kjos claimed that Rowling had grown up ‘loving the occult.’ Her childhood friend Vikki Potter…”
Yes, that Potter.
“We used to dress up and play witches all the time. My brother would dress up as a wizard. Joanne was always reading to us… we would make secret potions for her. She would always send us off to get twigs for the potions.”
So not only is she a woman, and women… okay, is this childhood play?
Micah: [laughs] So because you had an imagination, you’re a witch.
Andrew: Right, right, and wanted to dress up.
Eric: That’s what this… and also because you’re a woman, because women are witches, they all are in league with the devil, right?
Andrew: And the potion made her a great writer, ooooh!
Eric: Ooh! Wait, are you saying potions work?
Andrew: [laughs] Yes, yes, I am saying potions work.
Eric: Oh, we’re going to talk about that. So before we continue the discussion, and especially focus real quickly on “Why Christians?”, let’s hear a word from our sponsors.
[Ad break]
Eric: And now we’re going to ask the question: Why Christians specifically having trouble with Harry Potter? And actually, the answer to this is summed up very easily, I think, and succinctly but intelligently, by Michael Maudlin in a September 2000 Christianity Today article titled “Virtue on a Broomstick.”
Andrew: He said,
“These Christian protesters are newsworthy only because in our culture there is so little debate about what is good for our kids. Christians often serve as the cultural superego. In a morally chaotic world, it has become our task to voice objections to moral deviance, and it is the mainstream culture’s job to tell us why we are ‘uptight,’ ‘ridiculous,’ and/or ‘bigoted.’ Along comes a popular children series about witchcraft and journalists scurry to their Rolodexes, looking under ‘F’ for ‘frothy fundamentalists’ to get a good quote. Thus when a relatively small number of Christian parents ask that their kids’ schools not read Harry Potter, we read about it in all the major newspapers.”
Eric: Boom, media sensationalism.
Laura: Yeah, I agree.
Andrew: You can always find somebody complaining about something, and when it’s something as big as Harry Potter, it grabs eyeballs, referring to these journalists hitting up their Rolodexes. One day on the Today Show: “Is one glass of wine actually bad for you daily? More in ten minutes,” and then the next day, it’s like, “Oh, actually, wine is great for you.” It’s just all these headlines trying to capture your attention and make you think that you shouldn’t be consuming whatever you’re having.
Eric: For the MuggleCast episode explaining to our young listeners what a Rolodex is, sorry, it’s not this one.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: But regarding the quote about Christians being the superego, I do think that they are kind of, in that way, put into that box, and I think there’s a fair point to be made that in a essentially godless world, people who were raised but no longer practice still care about what Godful people are thinking and saying, and so maybe for that reason, this blew up as well.
Laura: Yeah, perhaps. I think it’s also important to note… I mean, we of course all have a particular lens just based on our geography and what we grew up around and the media we were exposed to, but religious concerns about Harry Potter didn’t just come from those in the Christian faith. It’s not as heavily reported on, but certainly there are other religious backgrounds that raised their own concerns and objections; they just didn’t get this level of coverage.
Andrew: That’s an important point to bring up.
Eric: Okay, so now we’re going to talk about what were the actual arguments that were being said, and this is… we’re going to have a series of more quotes, but hopefully you’re as hooked as I am on this discussion. I think the big argument I came across with the most while researching is that because Harry Potter is about a wizard, a boy wizard, it’s bad because it’s going to make children want to do witchcraft and the occult, and that is against God. It could lead to demonic issues, and/or the books will make children vulnerable by downplaying the real world danger of sorcery itself. Here’s a quote from Jackie Komschlies in “The Perils of Harry Potter,” Christianity Today, 10/23/2000. She argues that reading the books about wizardry will leave a positive impression on kids that’s synonymous with writing a book about drinking poison and making it sound cool. She says,
“Regardless of how magic is portrayed in the series, we need to remember that witchcraft in real life can and does lead to death – the forever and ever kind.”
Laura: Ah, so she thinks it’s propaganda.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: But I think if you actually end up reading these books, and maybe kids don’t really think as deeply or read between the lines – which I think is something we’re experiencing here on MuggleCast; we’re getting different meanings out of the books and what happens than we were kids – but I think if you actually read the books, especially as an adult, you realize there’s consequences for creating potions, spells, using spells inappropriately. It’s not like all this stuff is perfect and works out in your favor; there’s always consequences to what you do. And I mean, that’s what happens in every story. There’s consequences to your actions, not all good.
Micah: I’m curious about the dangers of real world sorcery.
Andrew: Well, that comes back to people thinking magic actually is real; sorcery is real.
Eric: Right. Let’s keep reading from our sources.
Andrew: So John Andrew Murray of Teachers in Focus wrote,
“By dissociating magic and supernatural evil, it becomes possible to portray occult practices as ‘good’ and ‘healthy,’ contrary to the scriptural declaration that such practices are ‘detestable to the Lord.’ This, in turn, opens the door for kids to become fascinated with the supernatural while tragically failing to seek or recognize the one true source of supernatural good – namely God.”
Eric: I don’t have an issue with this argument at all. I think that honestly, sorcery is portrayed as good, or at least, not all morally wrong in Harry Potter. Well, there’s a quote from Phillip Scott that delves into this further. Laura, you want to take it?
Andrew: Okay, but let me just say quick, I mean, magic is also used in bad ways in the Harry Potter books with enemies.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Eric: And Star Wars and other such.
Laura: I mean, and there’s magic in the Bible. That’s always kind of the issue that I take with this argument, is I’m like, “Wait a second, it’s okay there, but it’s not okay here? Okay.”
Eric: So when Jesus waves his wand and turns water into wine…?
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: That’s okay.
Laura: Well, he didn’t have a wand; that’s why it was okay.
Eric: Yeah. Well, there’s that.
Micah: When Moses parted the Red Sea with his staff.
Eric: There you go. It’s like Lucius Malfoy’s staff; it’s got his wand in it.
Laura: But let me go ahead and share this quote from Father Phillip Scott. So he was quoted in an article titled “Harry Potter, Agent of Conversion” by Toni Collins in the Catholic Culture in Envoy magazine in 2001. He says,
“It’s not pleasant to contemplate, but there really are people out there who practice witchcraft, who cast spells and perform rituals, and who see results. J.K. Rowling writes as if their powers can be channeled into good, and that is the great danger of her books. Rituals and spells and brews are used by witches in the real world, and they work because of the power of evil spirits. As such, they can never lead to good. Portraying these innately evil practices as if they can be harnessed for good is a dangerous lie.”
Eric: To this I’ll say whenever you do something like tarot, those things are based on practices that involve tapping into energies, and so the fundamental practice of Wicca as a religion and other such similar pagan religions or rituals are all exactly the kind of rituals that Christians are against or that the Bible is against and says is literally not of God. So the cause for alarm here, I think, can be completely understood in that “There’s no good sorcery” is what these people are saying.
Laura: Well, I think about it this way – and obviously, I disagree with the reasoning here – but if you truly believed that magic was a real thing and was bad, it makes complete sense that you might buy into this kind of argument. I can say that I think it’s unfounded and wrong and lacking in any kind of substantive logic, but I can’t argue with the way someone feels. If somebody gets the heebie jeebies about anything that they would consider to be dark magic or dark sorcery, there’s nothing that I can say to that person to not make them feel that way. So I disagree with it, but it makes sense. And I will say, I do think that oftentimes in cases like this, the loudest and most prevalent voices who are leading the movement are more on a power trip than they are a crusade to prove some kind of moral point. Maybe it starts out that way, but I feel like oftentimes it becomes more about their power and influence and perception. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, you get addicted to all the attention, I think, and you can monetize it.
Eric: Right. And I don’t know what to say about if these people are attention-seeking, but leaders of their church, Baptist activist Jon Watkins said,
“Satan is up to his old tricks again and the main focus is the children of the world. The whole purpose of these books is to desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult.”
Sounds kind of alarmist. Terry Horn, a pastor of the Dream Center Church in southwest Washington, DC, he said,
“This stuff is as dangerous as drugs and alcohol in a kid’s life – it’s habit forming and very, very dangerous, and a lot of folks don’t see it.”
And Reverend Gene Hilton of the Spirit of Prophecy Ministries in Stuart, Florida, said,
“Let’s just say I was curious about the pornography scene and started doing research by reading smut. Even if I’m just looking, there’s something there that could happen, demonically, to make me want to go deeper.”
So the whole slippery slope argument of the occult, combined with the fact that sorcery is being branded about as good, you can actually see where at least there’s some idea of concern that is legitimate coming from here. But I would question, really, how many of these people read the books?
Micah: I want to know what Gene’s reading.
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah.
Eric: Wow.
Andrew: I don’t remember an adult scene.
Laura: Hey, I will say, for those of us who were into fanfiction, the pipeline…
Micah: Oh, maybe that’s what Gene came across.
Andrew: Ohh.
Laura: Yeah, the pipeline from Harry Potter to Harry Potter smut fanfiction is… [laughs]
Eric: This may be my error in quoting it, but no, he’s trying to… it’s like drugs and alcohol. When you say, “Reading Harry Potter is like drugs and alcohol.”
Laura: Right.
Eric: “Reading Harry Potter is like pornography, reading Harry Potter is…”
Andrew: Ohh.
Eric: That’s what they’re saying.
Laura: It’s like a vice, yeah.
Micah: I mean, can we really argue against that? We’ve been doing it for 19 years.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Eric: Well, right! There are some points here where we’ll think, “Yeah, that’s right.” There’s one more thing I wanted to draw attention to before we move on to the other big thing, but Micah, do you want to take this quote here real quick?
Micah: Yeah, this was in addition to the quote that Laura read earlier. It says,
“Rowling further confuses the issue by portraying witchcraft not as a moral issue, but as an issue of heredity. In Rowling’s world, the ability to practice witchcraft is inherited. But in reality, you don’t need to possess a particular bloodline in order to make witchcraft work. All you have to do is tap into evil spirits, turn over your will, and leave Jesus Christ for the world of the occult.”
Eric: So I actually think this is also an interesting point in that kids who may be unsuspecting or like, “Well, I wasn’t born into a wizarding family; I can’t be a wizard,” but in the real world, pretty much anybody can choose to engage with evil spirits. Just ask the Milton Bradley company, who’ve been selling the Ouija boards for ages.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: But yeah, so it’s kind of… immediately, even at this stage of the discussion, I’m like, “This is more complicated than I thought.” I thought that there wouldn’t be this variety of issues. And here’s the funny thing: Just like a spectrum exists for pretty much everything in the world, there’s also people saying that the Harry Potter books aren’t religious enough, so here’s this section of the discussion. December 1999, Christianity Today – a really good publication, it turns out; great articles – published an article from “Focus in the Family” saying,
“The spiritual fault of Harry Potter is not so much that Rowling is playing to dark supernatural powers, but that she doesn’t acknowledge any supernatural powers at all. These stories are not fueled by witchcraft, but by secularism.”
And so if you think about it, there is actually no God or the devil as a character in Harry Potter, and that could lead some interpretation, including incorrect interpretations, of what role God or the devil would play in the books. And if you want to say it’s fiction, okay, to that I posit, well, if they’re religious, these people believe that there’s God and devil in reality. And so to not feature God or the devil or explain to children what those characters’ roles are in the book is actually to, again, have a slippery slope. Does that make sense?
Micah: I would disagree with that, though, because I do feel like you have a God-like character in Dumbledore, and you have a devil-like character in Voldemort, and you have a Jesus-like character in Harry, and we see him resurrected in King’s Cross and come back to life to finish the Battle of Hogwarts. So there’s definitely some undertones here that were either these comments were made prior to Deathly Hallows and some of the other books being released, or these things were conveniently ignored when these people were making these arguments.
Eric: That’s an interesting point, both that it was early; some of these were… not all the books were out, so Harry was not as much a Christ figure. But I think it’s worth saying that there were some Christians defending the books, including a woman named Connie Neal, who I’m going to shout out a bunch, but she had an early book – I think it’s 2001 – called What’s a Christian to do with Harry Potter? And she was actually using the Harry Potter books to teach her children about religion and Christianity. And there are certain symbols that she took from the books, like Harry’s scar, for instance; she likened it to Jesus’s crucifixion scars. The sacrificial death of his mother; the death of Christ for our sins. So there was actually enough, even in the earliest books, to really actually latch onto and say this could be good for teaching religion. So Micah, your point is correct, for sure.
Andrew: And I just hate his premise, though, still, that… I don’t like the premise that we have to include religion in the books. I mean, isn’t that to say every book needs to include religion to some extent, or else my kids aren’t allowed to read it?
Eric: Well, C.S. Lewis did because Aslan…
Andrew: I’m not just talking about fantasy, though. I’m just talking about… where do you draw the line, then? Why does Harry Potter have to…? I guess it comes back to it being so popular that they’re looking to get some lessons out of, teach their kids religious lessons…
Eric: Well, and about sorcery, right?
Laura: Yeah, but they observe all the Judeo-Christian holidays from Book 1, so it feels like a lot of selective reading is happening here. But Eric, I appreciate the quote that you just shared, but I also appreciate an earlier point that you mentioned about this really being a spectrum, just like everything else in life. And to that point, Nicole in our Discord shared, “I would consider myself a devout Catholic, and I have introduced the books to my step-kids. I didn’t realize their mother became a born-again Christian, and she is totally against the books and won’t let them read them at her house, so it’s crazy that it varies so much even among Christianity.” So you’re going to find people of all thoughts.
Eric: Yeah. Well, here’s a retraction we had from God’s World Book Club. Micah, do you want to read it real quick?
Micah: A division of the organization that owns World was withdrawing the Harry Potter books from its catalog, and they went on to say that “We reviewed and recommended the Harry Potter books as wholesome, good-versus-evil fantasy in the spirit of Tolkien and Lewis.” The full page announcement said,
“However, the fact that the books are not Christ-centered and further evidence that they are not written from a perspective compatible with Christianity have led us to retract the books. We sincerely apologize for offense given and thank our customers for contributing to the discussion that led to this decision.”
Feel like that’s like a little thing you would hear at the end of a commercial, like a disclaimer. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. Okay, so if this is God’s World Book Club, I understand why they want to take back the book if they don’t think it’s godly enough. [laughs] But to the general masses, this expectation that there needs to be more God and religion in it, or more explicit God, Jesus, and the devil in it, is absurd.
Eric: Well, here you go. You know what Laura Mallory’s official argument was, was that the books actually infringe on freedom of religion by pushing religion, by pushing Wicca specifically, so that’s the opposite argument as the one that God’s World Book Club is making. It’s kind of wild. But we have to take another break right now, and we’re going to get to two more reasons why folks were miffed about Harry Potter after these sponsors.
[Ad break]
Eric: Okay, this one, I think, might get the most traction with me as far as an argument for banning Harry Potter on religious grounds…
[Andrew gasps]
Eric: … and it’s that the series is intentionally demonic. And I have one primary source from this, and it’s the article we mentioned further, “HP Agent of Conversion” by Toni Collins. Here’s an excerpt. I think this will blow your mind, because it blows mine.
“Rowling then presents a perversion of Catholic theology when a unicorn is killed just before the climax of the first book. ‘The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price,’ writes Rowling on page 258. Drinking blood will keep us alive?”
Andrew: [in a demonic voice] Yes.
Eric: “When I first read this, I wondered if we were about to see a Catholic metaphor that might redeem the entire book. The next phrase kept my hope alive, ‘You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself.’ Yes, I thought, we are about to see a Eucharistic analogy, but then my eyes traveled to the next line on the page: ‘You will have but a half life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips.’
I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach. It isn’t the crime of killing the pure and defenseless unicorn that curses, but the act of drinking its blood. What a horrendous twisting of the biblical promise that drinking the blood of Jesus, who is the purest of the pure, will bring us eternal life. The antithetical notion that a pure creature’s blood will bring us a ‘half life, a cursed life’ is a slap in the face of Catholics.”
Eric: Reading this excerpt, eh, it kind of seems like Rowling was trying to subvert the Eucharistic thing, don’t you think? A little bit?
Laura: No.
Eric: No?
Laura: No. I don’t… this takes place in a fantasy world with an autocratic psycho who wants to get back at a child for banishing him when he was a baby, and he’s going to do anything he can to build himself back up. And unicorns are presented earlier on before that happened as just this pure creature, so I really feel like it’s more rooted in the fantasy world and less to do with trying to subvert religious imagery, especially given how religious we know Rowling is herself.
Andrew: And I was talking about consequences earlier; this is another lesson in consequences. You drink the blood, you’re going to have a cursed life. You’re going to live forever, but you’re going to have a cursed life. This is a book about choices. This is a choice you can make here.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another thing worth mentioning is that last year, Nicolas Flamel celebrated his 665th birthday, and that’s in Book 1. For people who had just read Book 1 in the late ’90s, they would realize that Nicolas Flamel is 666 years old. Same number as our episodes!
[Laura laughs]
Eric: And why? Why, honestly? Nicolas Flamel, it’s not really… that was so long ago; nobody knows exactly when he was born. I looked it up; it said 1330. According to a timeline of Harry Potter, Nicolas Flamel should be 661, not 666, but the idea there is it’s probably closer to when Rowling was actually writing Book 1, and only later was it set in the early ’90s.
Andrew: And speaking of Flamel, there’s a big lesson in Sorcerer’s Stone about living forever. It’s in the title. And I think one of Rowling’s messages was living forever, as a lot of kids might want to do when you’re young – “Oh, living forever sounds amazing” – it’s not all it’s chalked up to be.
Eric: Well, and that’s the interesting thing, because religion is all about eternal life. Religion is all about eternal life in Christ and in God and going to heaven to live forever, versus hell, which is just nothingness. So I think that what people were picking up on is actually the symptom of the beginning of a fantasy world being built which would touch on some of these same similar tenets, but too early for them to really explain the significance of where Rowling was going with it. I think that these arguments which were all happening were too soon, because by Book 7, I don’t think you’d make this argument, even though Laura Mallory did.
Micah: Right, and for me, if I was making the argument that the series is intentionally demonic, I would focus on the fact that Voldemort was resurrected through cult-like means and tethered himself to this world by actively killing other people and attaching parts of his soul to objects of worth. That has never been brought up. And apologies, I didn’t read all 80 pages that you pulled together, Eric…
[Eric laughs]
Micah: … but in most of what I saw, nothing about Voldemort really is brought up.
Eric: And he’s the supreme evil, so you would think that there would be more comparisons. I do remember that his one quote of – it’s Quirrell, actually – saying, “I realized when I met Voldemort that there is no good and evil, only power and those too weak to seek it.” We all know the Ian Hart performance of it in the movie. But that out of context sounds like a bid to do evil. “Don’t worry, kids, there’s no real evil! It’s only weak fools that don’t want to seek power.” And yeah, okay, completely out of context, that quote is damning, but in context, absolutely not. The bad guy is the one saying that, so it’s not meant to… I think this comes down to parents not trusting their kids to know the difference when a bad guy says something and is advocating for something. That doesn’t mean the book is advocating for it.
Laura: Right. And again, that takes us back to it just really making it seem like a lot of these vocal opponents didn’t actually read the books, or at least read one book in its entirety.
Andrew: And then there was the argument that the series is generally immoral.
Eric: This is my favorite.
Andrew: Okay.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: Because can we refute this?
Andrew: Well, we might be… well, you know what? Actually reading this quote, I was like, I feel like this sounds like us on MuggleCast sometimes.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: So for example, Harry can lie and cheat and is rewarded for it. The Harry Potter: Agent of Conversion article says,
“Much like some American college football heroes, Harry receives not a lick of punishment precisely because he’s such a great athlete (Book 1’s Remembrall scene). Even the points that Harry and his friends lose for their school house during the course of the first book are handed back to them with bonuses at the end, and enough so that their house wins the coveted school cup. What’s the overall message here? If you’re cute enough, talented enough, strong enough, or clever enough, you don’t have to worry about following the rules in your little corner of the universe. This is hardly teaching the difference between right and wrong.”
Eric: Fair.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, listen, sounds like this person might have some beef with Dumbledore. They could belong on this panel.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, this is a Dumbledore problem, sir.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: Look, I like this argument because it’s like, “Forget about trying to prove that the books are evil, and just say they’re immoral because Harry lies and cheats his whole way through all seven books.” [laughs] And I’m like, “Where’s the lie?”
Andrew: Lies, cheats, breaks rules…
Micah: Yeah, but he gets detention. It’s not like he’s not punished at all.
Eric: [laughs] Only the worst teacher gives him detention!
Micah: Not always. I mean, think about it: He’s had to make a couple trips into the Forbidden Forest. He’s done detention with Snape. He’s done detention with Lockhart. He’s done detention with Umbridge. He doesn’t always get off scot-free, but then there’s also instances where he’s able to skate by based on his name. But I don’t know. I don’t fully agree with this; I don’t think he gets a free pass every time.
Andrew: No.
Laura: Also, who cares?
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Eric: These parents…
Laura: I’m sorry, but if you’re reading seven books about a character who never puts a toe out of line, that’s going to be really freaking boring. And that’s also not how people are. People are complicated; people do lie and cheat their ways through some things sometimes. [laughs] That’s also part of growing up and learning how to push boundaries and when it’s appropriate to do so. I just… okay, I guess if you want to be mad that a book about a teenager portrayed that teenager acting like a teenager, go off, I guess.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, some people bring up Edmond in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, who betrays his siblings and stuff. But I think ultimately, these characters sin so that they can repent and be forgiven. That’s the whole… you’re supposed to see people make mistakes.
Andrew: You learn from those mistakes.
Micah: Hey, it was some good Turkish Delight. Let’s be real.
Eric: There is no good Turkish Delight.
Micah: There isn’t a person on this panel that wouldn’t have gone for that.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Okay, fun story about that. After I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a child…
Micah: You tried it. [laughs]
Laura: … I insisted to my mom, you have to get me some Turkish Delight. This sounds amazing. I want some.
Andrew: Aww.
Laura: She got it for me, and it was awful. [laughs]
Eric: It’s bad. It’s really bad. It’s the greatest trick C.S. Lewis ever pulled, was making us think Turkish Delight could be good. I thought it would… it looked in the movie like funnel cake; I thought it would be fantastic. It is not funnel cake. Apologies to anyone who likes Turkish Delight who’s listening. [laughs] So now that we’ve covered, and also… we’ve covered all of those reasons why parents were complaining, and it’s true, too; even the teachers at Hogwarts “wink and nod at Harry’s lies, and his power grabs.” That’s from Salina, Kansas Journal in 2005. But for these reasons and more, as we said, the Harry Potter books topped the American Library Association’s banned books list in the year 2000, so it really was the most banned book in America. This book that made our lives and changed our lives, and has given us so so much, was the most Banned book.
Andrew: We’re such baddies. We’re such baddies.
Eric: We’re so badass.
Andrew: So were there reasons for all these bans? Was there ever any evidence suggesting that kids actually converted to paganism or participated in witchcraft? Yes! No. An AP article on November 10, 2001 – that is the release of the first Harry Potter movie – I’m going to quote from now:
“Though more than 50 million copies are in print worldwide, there has been no evidence of widespread conversions to paganism or witchcraft. Andy Norfolk of the London-based Pagan Federation said the books have created no serious interest in his movement because they don’t appeal to older people seeking spiritual options who ‘see the Potter books as rather uncool.'”
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: See, if I were him, I’d be sad. I’d be like, “Wait, wait, this backfired. I want the books to make the kids interested.”
Micah: But this was 23 years ago, though, Andrew. A lot has changed since then. We have a huge Harry Potter fan community where people dress up as witches and wizards, they go to conventions, they cast spells at each other…
Andrew: But did they convert to paganism or witchcraft?
Micah: Well, maybe not paganism, but you could argue witchcraft. I’m just saying.
Andrew: The stuff Harry Potter adults are whipping up these days are cool-looking cocktails. They’re not putting together any other potions.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Oh, man. Yeah, so we mentioned before Connie Neal. I think she really needs to be celebrated. All the best quotes are hers that I came across, and I wanted to wrap up our main segment here with a quote from her. And by the way, she did write two books on Harry: First was What’s a Christian to Do with Harry Potter? in 2001, and the second one that she wrote later in 2008 is The Gospel According to Harry Potter, where she incorporated all the lessons she taught her kids based on Harry Potter. So the quote in a Q&A article is the question, “What fascinates you most about the Harry Potter books?” And her answer was,
“What fascinates me most is it’s about human beings trying to win the battle of good and evil, and the beauty of the spiritual struggle. When you play the game Boggle, the beauty is discovering what words others find. No matter how hard I look, I will never see what you see. And what fascinates me is the richness that comes out of a shared discussion of a good book.”
And I think Connie’s just put the epilogue on 19 years later of MuggleCast, honestly.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: But we’re not ending.
Eric: No, we’re not ending. That’s not a secret way of saying we’re ending. But great discussion about a book from different perspectives, that’s us, you guys!
Andrew: Yeah, for sure. We had one complaint similar to this, one critic from the HP Agent of Conversion article that the series is generally immoral.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: Well, we’re generally immoral, so if the shoe fits…
Andrew: That’s true.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. So a lot of what we’ve discussed in our main discussion was all from ’99 and 2000, but as we know, we started this podcast in 2005, and we touched on this with the Laura Mallory controversy. So Laura, I want to ask, how did this unfold, and what was that all about?
Laura: Oh my gosh. I mean, you mentioned it a little bit earlier, but Laura Mallory was a concerned mother who launched several attempts to get the Harry Potter books banned from school libraries, particularly at her children’s school, but also in the full district. And if I recall correctly – it’s been over 20 years – she was definitely trying to push the argument for a while that Harry Potter being present in school libraries violated separation of church and state because it was allowing public schools to promote witchcraft as a religion. [laughs] So that was one of the arguments that she took. Of course, she presented a lot of the same rhetoric that you heard in today’s episode, and she was just kind of cringe, honestly. And I think the thing that is so funny reflecting on this is I feel like she got way more national notoriety than she did local notoriety. I always just kind of felt like, “Oh, yeah, it’s just this kooky lady who just happens to live 30 minutes away from me.” Because again, I think the powerful thing about Potter is it may have been the most banned book in the year 2000, but that didn’t stop the fervor. In fact, if anything, I think it drove the fervor further. Because yeah, you could try to ban it in public libraries and schools, but that wasn’t stopping kids from getting their parents to buy it for them or borrowing it from their friends, so it just really wasn’t something that could be contained. And Laura Mallory obviously grappled with that, hence why she tried to levy the case six or seven times.
Eric: Yeah. One of our sources is a timeline of events, and essentially, she challenges the book at J.C. Magill Elementary and all Gwinnett County public school libraries; the elementary review panel says the books have merit and should be available. She then appeals to the school board of Gwinnett County; the hearing officer recommends the books stay. Then there’s a school board holding another hearing. She then appeals to the… yep, after their unanimous ruling, she appeals to the State Board of Education for Georgia. Funny enough, state results of board things are public, and so I looked it up, and here is the official ruling of the Georgia State Board of Education.
“Appellant’s case suffers from the fact that she did not present any evidence to support her allegations.”
This is after two years of trying to get these books removed.
“Her evidence consisted of unverified hearsay that she obtained from the Internet.”
Oh my God.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: “The Local Board could discount all such unverified documents. She did not introduce any evidence concerning the tenets of Wicca, nor did she point out specific examples of text within the books that constitute the promotion of Wicca. In effect, then, her allegations remain bare allegations. Although Appellant may claim that the school system similarly failed to present any hard evidence to support its case, the school system did not need to present a case if Appellant failed to present one since she had the burden of proof as a challenging party.”
Yada yada yada, yada yada yada.
Andrew: Yeah, too much legal jargon.
Eric: “Based upon the foregoing, it is the opinion of the State Board of Education that the Local Board did not abuse its discretion in deciding not to remove the Harry Potter series of books from the media centers of its schools because Appellant failed to establish that the books promoted the Wicca religion.”
So after two years of fighting, the court found that she didn’t present evidence. And I’m sorry, when you make a claim, it should have to be backed up, and that just wasn’t the case, apparently.
Laura: No, it was all rhetoric.
Andrew: She should have written a memoir in a book about all this. I mean, that’s her big mistake. She spent years working on this case, all for what? For us to talk about it. I mean, we’re getting played right now. She’s going to hear about this episode; she’s going to be like, “They’re still talking about me? I live rent-free in their heads.”
Micah: [laughs] Oh, wow.
Laura: She really should have written a memoir. Accio Book Ban.
Micah: Mischief Mallory. Oh.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: There was that time we called her.
Andrew: Yes.
Micah: There was.
Andrew: Well, we did want to offer a couple of flashbacks in light of today’s discussion. Eric just mentioned we actually called her not once, but twice.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: We tried on Episode 58 back in early October 2006, and then the following week – Episode 59, “Time to Talk Time” – because we were sent to voicemail last week, we decided to call her again. So here’s part of that.
[Audio clip plays]
Andrew: Guys, last week we tried to give Laura Mallory a call, and we asked if maybe…
Jamie: Did we?
Andrew: Yeah, we did. And no answer; we got the voicemail, said, “Your call is very important to us,” Ben left a message, asked for her to call us back and no response, so…
Laura: Imagine that.
Andrew: So you want to giving her a call one more time? We’ll give her a call one more time and see if maybe she answers this time.
[Audio clip pauses]
Andrew: I’m just going to pause for a second. Why did I sound drunk, half-asleep, like I was trying to impress a girl?
Eric: You did sound like you were trying to… but you know what? I sounded very pretentious in early episodes too.
[Audio clip resumes]
Jamie: Andrew, Andrew…
[Phone rings]
Jamie: Just be polite, whatever you do.
Answering Machine: Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.
Andrew: Oh, jeez.
Answering Machine: Laura Mallory is not available. At the tone…
Andrew: That’s a different number.
Answering Machine: … please leave a message. When you are finished recording, please hang up, or press one for more options.
Laura: Is that her cell phone?
Andrew: Yeah. Shhh! [leaving message] Hi, Laura. This is Andrew Sims from MuggleCast. I just wanted to ask you a couple questions about your concerns with the Harry Potter series. You talked to my associate, Ben, last week. Well, he left you a message on your phone at home and he said – well, in your voicemail it says that your call is very important to us, but unfortunately, we didn’t get a call back. So we’d like to have a small interview with you on our show. It gets about a million listeners a week, so it’d be a big-time interview. So give me a call back. The number is 609-668… Thanks. Bye.
[Audio clip ends]
Laura: [laughs] Amazing.
Andrew: My favorite part of that call – and you guys probably couldn’t hear it – but you can hear the slap of my flip phone closing, the Razor, boom, to hang up. I miss that satisfaction of flipping that phone closed.
Micah: How did we get her cell?
Andrew: A phone book? I don’t know. Laura lived nearby, so there was that. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, white pages.
Andrew: But then it’s shocking that the topics that we’re talking about today still come up in schools and states. In 2019, a Catholic school in Nashville banned the Harry Potter books. A pastor at the school said at the time,
“These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.”
And then the pastor added that they consulted several exorcists in the US and Rome who recommended removing the books.
Eric: So Andrew, what did you do with this knowledge?
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: So September 9, 2019, Episode 433, “Gettin’ Figgy.” It was our first episode of our last Order of the Phoenix Chapter by Chapter reread. We called the school for some answers.
Eric: We did, or you did? You have kind of a habit of calling these people up.
[Audio clip plays]
Andrew: We need to call the school.
[Phone dial sound plays]
Pre-recorded voice: Thank you for calling St. Edward School…
Andrew: Now, of course they’re not going to answer, because it’s a Sunday night.
Pre-recorded voice: … to leave a message, wait for the tone. When finished recording, press pound for more options. Record at the tone.
Andrew: Hi, my name is Andrew Sims. I’ve been a longtime Harry Potter podcaster, and for two decades, we’ve been trying to get these darn spells to work in J.K. Rowling’s books. According to a pastor at your school, it sounds like you’ve been able to get these spells and curses to work. I’d love to know how; Accio would be so helpful. Please call us, 1-920-3-MUGGLE. A Muggle is a nonmagical being, so it is safe for you to call. Unless you’re a witch or wizard, in which case it might not be safe. But thank you. And PS, please put the books back in your library. Okay, bye.
[Audio clip ends]
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: Ah, that was great.
Micah: That was awesome.
Eric: Andrew, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect phone call.
Andrew: [laughs] “That was a perfect phone call.”
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: No.
Andrew: No, that was funny. That was really funny. It was a great way to play it, like, “Tell us how the spells work; we’ve been trying forever!”
Eric: But 2019! 2019!
Andrew: That’s scary. That was only five years ago, not even.
Eric: That’s 20 years after the same controversy with same talking points was told… in fact, and we heard from our listener, Kyle, who is the inventor of Quizzitch, who first came on the show because he transformed his classroom into Harry Potter, and guess what? He volunteered during this episode planning that “This topic directly impacted me, because somebody called the principal at my school after my classroom transformation and demanded that I be fired for promoting witchcraft in school.”
Andrew: Wow.
Eric: This stuff is still happening. This is still going on.
Andrew: Well, I wanted to wrap this up by asking what lessons can we learn from this backlash over Harry Potter from conservative Christians and the media coverage of it all?
Eric: Partly, if learned on time, I think this would have been really informative and demonstrative for how the media basically operates today, on every front. Sensationalist journalism, headlines that stoke fear… this is the stuff that sells. And I think it would have been a little bit of a caution, because there was an overwhelming majority of parents who actually did read the books and supported it, even Christian parents, so I think that it’s important to know again – what Laura was saying exactly – it’s a minority. For instance, still in Atlanta, Georgia, there is a poll that was done from the state constitution in September of 1999 that said, “Should the Harry Potter books be banned?” 3,500 people responded. 93% said “No,” and that was among parents who’ve read the books. So again, it was only ever 7% or less that were fighting this, and then much less as you spread out from that area.
Andrew: And I think another lesson here – we’ve touched on this a little bit – is that the media will give a platform to anyone crying foul over anything, especially if it’s popular. They might see an opportunity to become a figurehead of the revolt, and as we’ve seen in the media over the last ten years, and increasingly so, there’s money in being contrarian. There’s money in being on the opposite side.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, this is just me reiterating what I said at the top, but in my personal experience, even though I did grow up in the Bible Belt, most people weren’t thinking and talking like this about Harry Potter. Again, I knew a few people personally who held these views, but the vast majority of kids my age loved Harry Potter and their parents were just happy they were reading.
Andrew: And speaking of that, I think children did take the right messages from these books. There have actually been studies looking at this…
Laura: Yep.
Eric: That’s right.
Andrew: … and Harry Potter made a positive impact. I think Harry Potter taught empathy; was that the study? Is that what the study showed? Something like that.
Eric: I think so.
Andrew: And kids got the right messages that there was good and evil in the books. Harry made the right choices, the bad guy loses at the end of the day, and [imitating Dumbledore] it is our choices, Harry. And no one turned out bad. No kid who read it became a witch or wizard, unfortunately.
Laura: And you got a resurrection arc, too, so what more can you want?
Micah: It’s a win-win. I think it comes down to, though, parents have the ability to control certain things when it comes to their kids, and that’s their choice, but when you’re trying to extend that influence into other people and restrict other people’s right to read what they want, that’s where the problem arises. And we were talking earlier about the media piece of this; I’m starting to wonder, too, as J.K. Rowling wrote the later books, particularly with Order of the Phoenix and the role that the Daily Prophet was playing, could some of that have been influenced by her own experience going through this and much of what we’ve just covered in this last episode?
Eric: To make it a little bit more explicitly pro-Christian?
Micah: No, just a lot of the themes that were discussed when you were talking earlier, Eric, about how the media can be used to a specific end, and can… if you look at a lot of what we’ve just discussed here, maybe it was the fact that she was impacted in such a way. I’m not sure that she really cared at the end of the day, but just the way the media can take certain viewpoints and elevate them without a whole lot of basis of fact.
Eric: Yeah. I think that the series wasn’t written in a vacuum, and I think there are examples of the later books being affected by the earlier books’ reception.
Micah: And I’ll just say, because I think it’s important that in this particular instance, we’re looking at her really being canceled by what some would consider to be the right, at least, and how she’s perceived it, and if you’ve ever listened to “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” and now she’s on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, 20 years later, in saying that she’s being canceled by the left. And those are her words, not mine. I’m not pigeonholing any particular person into different facets or politics, but she’s come full circle, too, in that way.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: But ultimately, it’s been really, really fascinating to look at all of this old stuff that was printed. There’s a long quote in the Omaha World Herald by Rainbow Rowell on October 25, 1999. I won’t read it, but it’s a huge support of Harry Potter. I mentioned there’s a Judy Blume article in The New York Times, which says along with Rainbow Rowell, reading is so important, and this series is what’s making children who would normally be on their PlayStation read. You know what we were reading about? What lessons that we took from Harry Potter? How to be inclusive, how to be supportive, how love and choices and we can always have a choice. All of that was all really good stuff that I think really made us into good people.
Andrew: Well, thanks, Eric for organizing this discussion today.
Eric: Yeah, it was fun.
Laura: It is fascinating to dig in on the history and the origin of everything.
Andrew: And listeners, if you have any feedback about today’s episode, you can contact us by emailing or sending a voice memo that is recorded on your phone to MuggleCast@gmail.com, or you can use our phone number, which is 1-920-3-MUGGLE; that’s 1-920-368-4453. Laura Mallory, call us! Nashville school, call us!
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: We’re still waiting for a call back. And next week, Chapter by Chapter returns with Chapter 34 of Goblet of Fire, “Priori Incantatem.” And we’re actually going to be skipping Quizzitch this week; it will return next week, but a reminder that the show is brought to you by Muggles like you. Great, smart Muggles like you. We do not have a Ministry of Magic running this show; we’re just everyday Muggles putting together this podcast, flying by the seat of our pants like we’re Hagrid inventing Blast-Ended Skrewts. But that means we need support from listeners like you, so you can help us out in a couple of different ways. If you’re an Apple Podcasts user, you can subscribe to MuggleCast Gold, which gets you ad-free, early access to MuggleCast, plus two bonus MuggleCast installments every month. And there’s also Patreon.com/MuggleCast; you get all the benefits of MuggleCast Gold, plus – the window has now closed – but patrons are going to be getting a MuggleCast 19 Years Later T-shirt if they’re at the Slug Club level. You also get access to our livestreams, our planning docs, the chance to co-host the show one day, a personal video message from one of the four of us; you’ll also be able to participate in the MuggleCast Collectors Club! We have the new stickers. The designs are in; they are awesome. We’ll reveal them soon. And we have lots of other benefits, too, over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. We couldn’t do the show without your support, so thank you, everybody. Visit MuggleCast.com for transcripts, social media links, our full episode archive, our favorite episodes, and more. Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: Bye, everyone.
Laura: Bye, y’all.
Eric and Micah: Bye.