19AR24-22

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AR 24:22 - Harry Potter vs. ... the Bible?

In this issue:

CULTURE - has the "foundational text" choice of young Americans changed?

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER - its chickens come home to roost

Apologia Report 24:22 (1,430)

May 29, 2019

CULTURE

"How the *Harry Potter* books are replacing the Bible as millennials' foundational text" by Tara Isabella Burton (Religion News Service, Apr 25 '19) -- a "foundational text" is a book that "nearly everybody knows [and] references it in our daily lives. We use its complicated moral systems to define our social and political stances and to understand ourselves better. Once we have read it, and learn the lessons considered therein, our political attitudes alter, making us more welcoming and more caring to outsiders. ...

"Hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people have written their own narratives in response to these foundational myths. ...

"It may seem flippant to talk about J.K. Rowling's behemoth young adult fantasy series as a foundational myth that threatens, at least among millennials and Gen Z, to replace the Bible. But the numbers bear out its place as mythical bedrock. Sixty-one percent of Americans have seen at least one *Harry Potter* film. Given that just 45% of us (and a barely higher 50% of American Christians) can name all four Gospels, it's no stretch to say that Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are better known in American society than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

"For politically progressive millennials in particular, *Harry Potter* is more than a book series. It's an entire theology. While they rarely deal with questions of God explicitly, or propose a metaphysical theology per se, their explorations of good and evil are nothing if not cosmic. ...

"And when it comes to millennial religious 'nones,' its moral teachings are certainly no less known or espoused than the Good Book's. ...

"Numerous studies have tracked a direct correlation between a budding political liberalism - particularly pro-immigrant stances - and the *Potter* books. ...

"The difference, of course, is that *Harry Potter* makes no ontological truth claims. It advertises itself clearly as a work of fiction. Yet, for many nominal Christians as well as for the religiously unaffiliated, it functions as a paramount sacred text." Burton briefly relates this to the rise of "fandoms" related to Star Trek and Star Wars.

"The Reformation, in other words, thrived on the symbiosis between the ferocious demand for Luther's controversial tracts and the new printing technology.

"The rise of *Harry Potter* and modern internet culture is no less intertwined. ...

"*Harry Potter* grounds many millennial nones' moral, political and ethical systems.

"The fact that the *Potter* series does not pretend to be anything more than fiction says a lot about what we require from our foundational texts. ...

"This reflects broader trends among religiously unaffiliated Americans and among American Christians, a record low number of whom - just 30% - now see the Bible as the literal word of God. Another 14% frankly call it fables.

"Fewer and fewer of us need to believe in a text in order to take it, well, as gospel." <www.bit.ly/2YHmh8C>

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SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER

"The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center" by Bob Moser (The New Yorker, Mar 21 ‘19) -- "The [March 14th] firing of Morris Dees, the co-founder of the S.P.L.C., has flushed up uncomfortable questions that have surrounded the organization for years." Moser, a former writer for the SPLC, recalls that "the Law Center" - once a renowned secular arbiter of justice and morality - "had a way of turning idealists into cynics."

In recalling the office environment there in early 2000s, Moser describes a number of things that came as a "surprise." In particular, "nothing was more uncomfortable than the racial dynamic that quickly became apparent: a fair number of what was then about a hundred employees were African-American, but almost all of them were administrative and support staff - 'the help,' one of my black colleagues said pointedly. The 'professional staff' - the lawyers, researchers, educators, public-relations officers, and fund-raisers - were almost exclusively white. Just two staffers, including me, were openly gay.

"During my first few weeks, a friendly new co-worker couldn't help laughing at my bewilderment. 'Well, honey, welcome to the Poverty Palace,' she said. 'I can guaran-damn-tee that you will never step foot in a more contradictory place as long as you live.' ...

"'And you call yourself a journalist!' she said, laughing again. 'Clearly you didn't do your research.'

"In the decade or so before I'd arrived, the center's reputation as a beacon of justice had taken some hits from reporters who'd peered behind the façade. ...

"[I]t was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we'd become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam."

Back to the present, "the Los Angeles Times <www.lat.ms/2VZ5n3E> and the Alabama Political Reporter <www.bit.ly/2Xespov> reported that Dees's ouster had come amid a staff revolt over the mistreatment of nonwhite and female staffers....

"The staffers wrote that Dees's firing was welcome but insufficient: their larger concern, they emphasized, was a widespread pattern of racial and gender discrimination by the center's current leadership, stretching back many years. ... One of my former female colleagues told me that she didn't want to go into details of her harassment for this story, because she believes the focus should be on the S.P.L.C.'s current leadership. ...

"The controversy erupted at a moment when the S.P.L.C. had never been more prominent, or more profitable. ... [N]one of that has slackened its constant drive for more money. 'If you're outraged about the path President Trump is taking, I urge you to join us in the fight against the mainstreaming of hate,' a direct-mail appeal signed by Dees last year read. 'Please join our fight today with a gift of $25, $35, or $100 to help us. Working together, we can push back against these bigots.' ...

"Upon graduating [from the University of Alabama], in 1960, Dees teamed up with another ambitious student, Millard Fuller, who'd go on to found Habitat for Humanity. They opened a direct-mail business in Montgomery, selling doormats, tractor-seat cushions, and cookbooks. 'Morris and I, from the first day of our partnership, shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money,' Fuller would later recall. 'We were not particular about how we did it.' While running their business, the two also practiced law. In 1961, they defended one of the men charged with beating up Freedom Riders at a bus terminal in Montgomery. According to Fuller, 'Our fee was paid by the Klan and the White Citizens' Council.'

"In the late sixties, Dees sold the direct-mail operation to the Times Mirror Company, of Los Angeles, reportedly for between six and seven million dollars. But he soon sniffed out a new avenue for his marketing genius. In 1969, he successfully sued to integrate the local Y.M.C.A., after two black children were turned away from summer camp. Two years later, he co-founded the Law Center, with another Montgomery attorney, Joe Levin, Jr. He volunteered to raise money for George McGovern's Presidential campaign, and, with McGovern's blessing, used its donor list of seven hundred thousand people to help launch the S.P.L.C.'s direct-mail operations. ...

"A decade or so later, the center began to abandon poverty law - representing death-row defendants and others who lacked the means to hire proper representation - to focus on taking down the Ku Klux Klan. ... Along with legal challenges to what was left of the Klan, the center launched Klanwatch, which monitored the group's activities. Klanwatch was the seed for what became the broader-based Intelligence Project, which tracks extremists and produces the S.P.L.C.'s annual hate-group list.

"The only thing easier than beating the Klan in court - 'like shooting fish in a barrel,' one of Dees's associates told Egerton - was raising money off Klan-fighting from liberals up north, who still had fresh visions of the violent confrontations of the sixties in their heads. ...

"The annual hate-group list, which in 2018 included a thousand and twenty organizations, both small and large, remains a valuable resource for journalists and a masterstroke of Dees's marketing talents....

"[T]he center continues to take in far more than it spends. And it still tends to emphasize splashy cases that are sure to draw national attention. ...

"For those of us who've worked in the Poverty Palace, putting it all into perspective isn't easy, even to ourselves. ... [A]ll the time, dark shadows hung over everything: the racial and gender disparities, the whispers about sexual harassment, the abuses that stemmed from the top-down management, and the guilt you couldn't help feeling about the legions of donors who believed that their money was being used, faithfully and well, to do the Lord's work in the heart of Dixie. We were part of the con, and we knew it. ...

"'The S.P.L.C. - making hate pay,' we'd say. ...

"It wasn't funny then. At this moment, it seems even grimmer. The firing of Dees has flushed up all the uncomfortable questions again." The New Yorker, Mar 21 '19, <www.bit.ly/2VPoMUC>

Incredibly, "As of the fiscal year ending October 31, 2018, the SPLC had $518 million in total assets" <www.bit.ly/2wyNeix>

For more about the SPLC in our past issues, such as their attack on Focus on the Family/FRC and other conservative organizations by labeling them as "hate groups," see <www.bit.ly/2Mha20Y>

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