{"id":22,"date":"2007-07-27T11:54:21","date_gmt":"2007-07-27T11:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html"},"modified":"2007-07-27T11:54:21","modified_gmt":"2007-07-27T11:54:21","slug":"what-civilization-does-harry-p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html","title":{"rendered":"What Civilization Does Harry Potter Create?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Orson Scott Card<\/strong>
\nSpoiler alert: This post reveals the ending of Book Seven.<\/strong><\/em>
\nSo we\u2019ve lived in J.K. Rowling\u2019s moral universe for a decade now, seven volumes worth. Where did she take us, and to the degree that we have been reshaped (or reaffirmed) by that moral universe, what has she made of us?
\nWhat hath Harry Potter wrought?
\nIn a response to my previous post, Janet Zuk wrote: \u201cI also do not think that Harry truly represents a “Christ” figure in the books, and more especially in Book 7. I do however think that there is much evidence that the characters act in the spirit of Christ.\u201d
\nZuk then makes a sound case for this. And we could speculate for a long time about just how much Christianity permeates the moral universe of J.K. Rowling.
\nOne does not have to be a Christian, or a believer of any kind, to have a strong influence from the public religion of the culture one grew up in. Unlike Philip Pullman, for instance, who is so obsessed with Christianity that he spent the third volume of His Dark Materials <\/i> making savage, one-sided attacks on a religion very much like the good old C of E, J.K. Rowling seems to ignore Christianity itself, including only the superficially Christian aspects of Christmas \u2014 the gift giving, the decorations, the bangers, but not much in the way of mangers or angels.
\nIn fact, though, one can see in this, not hostility, but rather a kind of reverence.
\nIf Rowling thought of Christianity as a quaint cultural phenomenon merely, she might have been tempted to have funny stuff from Christian folk culture as well as pre- and extra-Christian European folk culture.
\nFor instance, I can imagine a version of Harry Potter where, right along with the castle ghosts, all the students had funny little guardian angels paired with devils trying to turn them toward right or wrong.
\nAnd along with the portraits on the walls, the Virgin Mary might be popping up in sightings everywhere \u2014 in woodgrain patters on furniture, in figurines found by schoolchildren on the Hogwarts playing field.
\nThere could be a professor of hagiography, teaching students which saint to pray to for particular miracles to counter spells and curses.
\nDo you see how easy it would have been? Now, one could speculate that Rowling\u2019s motive in not<\/i> literalizing Christian folk beliefs in the Harry Potter universe was to keep from alienating Christian readers. But considering how some <\/i> Christian readers responded to the book as it is, one could only conclude that any such aim was only partially successful.
\nIn fact, though, there is no reason to posit some venal motive for Rowling\u2019s choices here. She knew that for most of the worldwide anglophone culture (for she certainly was not thinking of translations of her first book when she wrote it and was thrilled with a 500-copy first printing), witches and magic were part of the cultural memory but not <\/i> a matter of serious belief.
\nWitches were part of Halloween, or of long-past superstitions. It was fun to for her to explain just when the Wizarding World went \u201cunderground\u201d and show wizards and witches as living among us yet blissfully unfamiliar with our ways. Her story was funny and scary by turns.
\nYet she never even approached the line between these lightly-held beliefs and the more deeply-held beliefs of Christianity. This says nothing about what she herself believes about particular doctrines of Christianity, but it says much about what she treats with respect<\/i>.
\nThe result was that most readers were immediately comfortable in the world of Harry Potter and stayed that way. Only a few people in our culture really believe in witches of the Halloween or Salem varieties (and those <\/i> mostly condemned the books). So she could redefine them how she wished.
\nI have had people ask me why, as a believing (nontraditional) Christian, I didn\u2019t show God taking action in the worlds of my science fiction. My answer was simple enough: I don\u2019t take sacred things and make light of them. When I take stories from scripture, I treat the source material with great respect; and, above all, I do not invent cool stuff for God to do in my stories.
\nAs with Lord of the Rings, there might be an offstage purposer (Gandalf\u2019s assertion that certain things were \u201cmeant\u201d to take place), never named or seen; but his hand remains invisible, and the mortals are left to work things out pretty much on their own, with no certainty about what was \u201cmeant\u201d or even fated to take place.
\nRowling keeps about the same distance from God that Tolkien did in his great fantasy work. That is, she is willing to have quite astonishing confluences of events that lead to fortunate outcomes. Cynics might call them coincidences, but not so, or not in the pejorative sense. If Harry had just happened to get the want that was the twin of Voldemort\u2019s, we might groan; but instead we are told that the wand chooses the wizard, so the confluence of events is not random coincidence, it is instead the natural outcome of what has gone before.
\nWhen Rowling first told us that it was \u201clove\u201d that saved Harry Potter from Voldemort\u2019s killing curse, I almost gagged. Oh, no! I inwardly cried. She\u2019s going to sink into maudlin banality!<\/p>\n


\nBut as the series went on, I saw that she was doing much deeper. For what seemed at first to be a paean to mother love was something much deeper and more subtle. Rowling was actually setting out to define love, which is far more difficult that many would suppose.
\nWe all use the word love<\/i> as freely as if we knew what it meant. But it includes so many things. We keep treating it like altruism<\/i>, as if any happy result for one who loves denies the unselfishness or sincerity of the love. We can\u2019t make up our mind whether love is a feeling or a relationship or a decision or a commitment or a way of life.
\nRowling tells us it was Harry\u2019s mother\u2019s love that made him impervious to the killing curse and rebounded it onto Voldemort, and then proceeds to show us love in many, many forms.
\nHagrid\u2019s somewhat comical and inappropriate love for dangerous creatures.
\nFirenze\u2019s love that led him to accept exile from the centaurs in order to serve in the cause of thwarting Voldemort.
\nThe fussy, fuddy-duddy, yet absolutely comforting love of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, who easily found room for Harry in their family circle (and I have long shared Patrick\u2019s discomfort that Harry makes no offer to help them financially).
\nThe romantic love of young teenagers, with crushes and snogging, hurt feelings, jealousy, shyness and yearning \u2014 the stuff of which Romeo and Juliet<\/i> was made.
\nThe fierce loyalty of old friends \u2014 James, Remus, Sirius, and Peter \u2014 and the magnitude of the crime of treachery that breaks those bonds.
\nHarry\u2019s love for Dumbledore as a surrogate father (one of several) and yet more than a father \u2014 almost, one could say, the love of a sinner for the priest who judges and alone has the power to absolve and purify him. Harry seeks and follows his counsel rather as Romeo followed Friar Lawrence\u2019s (and sometimes, seemingly, with as disastrous an effect).
\nHarry\u2019s unselfish love for Ginny that insisted that, for her sake, though she gave herself to him, he would not keep her, for he could not be what she needed him to be.
\nHarry\u2019s friendship with Ron and Hermione \u2014 turbulent, childish, yet growing into something fine.
\nSnape\u2019s hopeless yet undying love for Lily.
\nThe love of wicked people like the Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy for their son Draco \u2014 a love that, because it was greater than their devotion to Voldemort, distinguished them from Narcissa\u2019s sister Bellatrix.
\nBellatrix\u2019s worshipful devotion to Voldemort.
\nVoldemort\u2019s absolute lack of love for anyone.
\nIn the end, though, it came down to something as simple as this: Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)
\nHarry Potter\u2019s act in surrendering himself to Voldemort was not, however, a private decision. He was not just sacrificing himself, he was doing so in obedience to Dumbledore. Severus\u2019s memories showed that Dumbledore expected Harry to die at Voldemort\u2019s hand, because only as Voldemort killed him would Harry be able to overcome Voldemort.
\nThis is a vital distinction. If Harry simply decided, as a result of his own reasoning, that he had to surrender to Voldemort in order to save his friends, then what would we have thought of him? I, at least, would have thought him a dolt: Harry\u2019s friends weren\u2019t \u201cdying for him,\u201d they were putting themselves in harm\u2019s way in order to join in the struggle against evil.
\nIt would have been a species of ignorant hubris to appoint yourself <\/i> a sacrifice, when you have no way of knowing that your offering will actually make a difference. Indeed, with Harry dead, what likelihood was there that a casual liar and murderer like Voldemort would keep any promise that he made? Everything he said was a lie, however many traces of truth he might employ in the service of his lies.
\nBut when Harry actually does it, he does so in obedience to Dumbledore\u2019s will. He has received no promise of the outcome. But he knows that the wisest man he knew believed that it was necessary, right, and good for Harry to accept this death \u2014 and so he went willingly enough.
\nAlong the way, he had the closest thing we can imagine to the ministration of angels \u2014 not as cutely literal angels like the broomstick-riding witches, but real people from Harry\u2019s life, returning in spirit to comfort him on his way to offer his life to the enemy.
\nHarry does not know Dumbledore\u2019s plan; he has spent half the book doubting Dumbledore. Yet despite all doubts, he surrenders himself to Dumbledore\u2019s will.
\nHe makes Dumbledore, therefore, his purposer: It is by following Dumbledore\u2019s will, not his own, that he will give his life, and his death, meaning.
\nWho Is God?
\nIt would be easy enough to say that God, in the Harry Potter series, is that which saved Harry in the first place: \u201cGod is love.\u201d
\nBut Rowling takes the stronger tack, for a fiction writer: She puts a human character in the role of purposer.
\nLike Tolkien with Gandalf, Rowling makes it clear that Dumbledore is mortal; only when Dumbledore dies, he stays dead. Yet does he? His portrait is still giving orders to Snape, which can\u2019t be the usual way with those portraits of former headmasters, or they could simply have left a dead headmaster in charge. Dumbledore\u2019s portrait, at least when it is talking to Snape, is still plotting and planning, still giving other people missions to fulfill, and not just continuations of old missions \u2014 Dumbledore reacts to new events. His soul is still present in these actions, not just his image.
\nIf we had any doubt of this, it should be dispelled by Harry\u2019s interview with Dumbledore after Harry is dead. Dumbledore is dead, after the flesh, but he is still the primary purposer of this story. The actions of human beings take on meaning and importance only in relation to his plans, and whether they support or wish to thwart them.
\nYet, because Dumbledore is literally not<\/i> God in the story itself, Rowling is free to make him vivid and individual. She is liberated from the awe that would be owed to a literal God-character. Dumbledore has a past; he made mistakes; he is fallible; he does not know the outcomes either, but only guesses (though his guesses are usually very good).
\nThis kind of complex yet illuminating expression of theophany is a far cry from what is possible in \u201crealistic\u201d fiction, where writers are reduced to the \u201cGod\u201d of A Prayer for Owen Meany<\/i>. Unable to remove the acts of God from the real world, John Irving was forced to leave God incomprehensible or ironic.
\nRowling, by contrast, was able to make the relationship between God and man into an intimate yet uneasy child-parent experience. Harry looked to Dumbledore for answers, for help, for rescue, and sometimes received it (as when Dumbledore gave Hermione the idea for how to undo the disastrous events of a very bad day), but often did not.
\nBut to Harry, God was real, personal, tangible. He did not have to worry about the existence of God, he only had to worry about whether he could or should trust him and obey him.
\nThe result is that the God of A Prayer for Owen Meany<\/i> is distant and repellent; what beauty there is in the ending (and it has great beauty) comes from Owen\u2019s faith, not from the unspeaking and, in some senses, unspeakable God that he has tried to serve.
\nThe fantasy novel, by not dealing with a particular God from a particular real-world theology, and instead having a mortal stand-in for God, is able to make God more real and emotionally compelling. It\u2019s one of the reasons we write fantasy when we want to tell the truth about something that matters. Unlike Irving, Rowling did not have to deal with her readers\u2019 preexisting attitudes toward the God of Harry Potter, because that God was not God at all. We discovered Dumbledore as a man and only gradually saw him become a god-figure.
\nThis happens more often than we think in the literature of the fantastic. Isaac Asimov, for instance, who believed himself to be an atheist, nevertheless had god-figures in most of his novels: Hari Seldon, R. Daneel Olivaw. Purposers show up again and again in Romantic storytelling (of which fantasy and science fiction are the current incarnation), and for good reason: Without them, the heroic story is much harder to bring off.
\nAt the very least you need a foreseer \u2014 the Bene Gesserit Witch who examines Paul Atreides at the beginning of Dune <\/i> and lays out, in effect, precisely the miracle that he would need to perform before he could become Muad-dib.
\nHow Harry Decides<\/strong>
\nBut the spiritual burden of Rowling\u2019s tale is not borne by Dumbledore alone (for what mortal could bear it?). We have something else going on, which may or may not be as explicitly connected with any existing religion as Dumbledore can so easily be.
\nHarry makes intuitive, instant decisions that are invariably wiser and better than the actions that he plans and puzzles over. Time and again he acts rashly, on impulse. When he\u2019s young, the impulse merely reveals magic that he hasn\u2019t learned to control, as when he frees a snake from its confinement. Later, though, these impulses are always moral choices: What is good for Harry vs. what is Good.
\nLook at the pattern of Harry\u2019s moral choices. The morality is situational, but Harry shows almost no scruples about breaking rules when they become meaningless or downright wrong.
\nMost of the time, the rules are those of the school, set down to maintain safety and good order. These are good rules, but not deep <\/i> rules. Forbidding the students to leave their dormitory after a certain time definitely protects both students and school; but it carries very little moral freight, and readers are untroubled when Harry and his friends break those rules to achieve a higher purpose.
\nBut Harry also lies \u2014 in fact, he is every bit the liar that Snape accuses him of being. He lies to cover up what he\u2019s doing. He lies to protect other people. He lies to protect himself. He even conceals things from Dumbledore.
\nBut lying, too, is one of those vast grey areas of morality. When a Gestapo officer asks you whether you know of any Jews hiding in your neighborhood, it is lying to say that there are none that is the righteous act, and it is telling the truth that would be a mortal sin.
\nHarry\u2019s lies are rarely at that level of moral clarity \u2014 and there are lies that he comes to regret. But by and large, Rowling\u2019s world is pretty amoral about lying. It is only what a lie is used for that determines its moral value. Voldemort\u2019s lie about Harry\u2019s actions just before Voldemort killed him is a vile one and we hate him for it (though we also relish knowing that Harry is not as dead as Voldemort thinks he is). But it is not Voldemort\u2019s lies that make him evil; they are not in the moral Sorting Hat.
\nHarry\u2019s decisions that matter<\/i> are impulsive acts like seizing the opportunity presented by the Tom Riddle\u2019s dead diary \u2014 Harry tucks an article of clothing in it and gives it to Lucius Malfoy on the hope that Malfoy will discard it by giving it to Dobby. It works out exactly <\/i> as Harry planned. But it was not, really, a plan. It was an impulse, a spark of an idea that could not be contemplated. It had to be acted on without consideration.
\nEven when dealing with Kreacher, Hermione\u2019s sermon about why Kreacher is the way he is prompts Harry to speak more kindly and civilly to the house-elf that betrayed Sirius Black \u2014 but they needed something from him, and such civility was not, in itself, transformative.
\nInstead, what won Kreacher over was the impulse<\/i>, not thought out at all, to give Kreacher the locket. Dead as a horcrux, it still had power as a symbol of the family that Kreacher served, and Harry\u2019s act of kindness and acceptance \u2014 his impulsive act<\/i> \u2014 transformed the house-elf to an unpredictable degree. Harry could not have imagined that the locket would mean as much to Kreacher as it did.
\nSo, like the third son in so many fairy tales, a seemingly trivial, impulsive act of kindness made all the difference in that portion of the tale: Harry won an ally where he had previously had an enemy.
\nWhere do these good impulses come from?
\nWe know the source of Harry\u2019s parseltongue \u2014 that came from Voldemort\u2019s backfiring curse in Harry\u2019s toddlerhood. We know why Harry feels a link with Voldemort, and even why Harry\u2019s wand chose him. But we are never given any source for Harry\u2019s impulsive acts of kindness than … Harry himself.
\nThis is not really compatible with at least some branches of traditional Christianity. Harry\u2019s virtuous impulses are not depicted as coming from any outside source. Rather they are expressions of what Harry really is, deep in his soul, untainted by what he might talk himself into through conscious thought.
\nHarry makes many mistakes through ignorance, anger, impatience, and his inability to abide tyranny or unfairness. But the decisions and actions that matter most in his story are the ones he makes from the heart, in the instant, even when they look completely wrong: For in Rowling\u2019s moral universe, actions born of love, loyalty, and generosity cannot, or at least do not, turn to evil ends.
\nSo the reader of the Harry Potter series comes away with what message? That we must act according to our intuition?
\nNot at all. Harry\u2019s intuition is repeatedly wrong. He\u2019s wrong a lot<\/i>. This is not the Force, where he needs to close his eyes and leap into darkness. He is expected to analyze; he is held accountable, sometimes at least, for his mistakes.
\nRowling makes a point of telling us when Harry\u2019s impulsive actions are important<\/i>: She frames them by telling us just how impulsive they are, by making sure that Harry has no plan in mind and could not say why he does the thing he does.
\nThis is in clear contrast to Harry\u2019s moments of cleverness or desperation or any of the other sources of his decisions. When Rowling tells us that Harry doesn\u2019t know why he\u2019s doing something, but nevertheless does it, the action is (at least as far as I remember) generous and good, and while in the short run it might have harsh consequences, in the long run it redounds to the good, not just of Harry, but of the world he was born to rescue.
\nThere are those who might have thought of these moments as \u201cinspired,\u201d which implies an external source \u2014 something acts upon the character to inspire him.
\nBut I have seen no justification in the text for such a belief. Harry\u2019s is not inspired<\/i>. These choices do not come from outside him, the way Dumbledore\u2019s instructions do; nor do they come from his physical nature, like his attraction to Cho and, later, Ginny.
\nThese impulses are Harry\u2019s own soul taking control away from his mind and his body. These are the moments when we see best who Harry really is.
\nAnd, as is made explicit in Harry\u2019s dead-time conversation with Dumbledore, it is precisely Harry\u2019s soul \u2014 who he really is, the nature revealed by those loving, generous, even extravagant impulses \u2014 that ultimately triumphs over Voldemort\u2019s miserable, sick, wizened, and subdivided soul.
\nSo when we emerge from the Harry Potter series, what have we become? What does the community that holds this story in its memory recognize as virtuous, noble, of good report, praiseworthy?
\nActing on the impulses of love, without calculation or self-interest.
\nAnd since it is precisely this virtue that must be present in any community for it to endure and thrive, the Harry Potter novels have, in their way, buttressed western civilization at a time when it was sorely in need of this moral principle.
\nHarry Potter surrenders himself to the plans of God and accepts his own sacrifice because he trusts that it is right, and because he is strengthened by a knowledge of the love of his beloved dead.
\nHarry Potter\u2019s soul is ready to triumph over evil because he has repeatedly acted on the impulses arising from the love in his soul.
\nAnd we are going to move forward into the next decades with millions of our young people infused with this moral worldview, shaped by it, or reinforced in it.
\nIn practical terms, this bodes well for us, just as it boded well for us that Frodo, Sam, and Gollum were embraced by the generation before.
\nWhat did you weep for at the end of this book? I was touched by the death of characters we loved \u2014 Dobby most of all, perhaps because there was time to mourn him.
\nBut the moments when the tears flowed and I had to stop reading aloud were the moments of approbation, when Harry\u2019s virtues were recognized by others. I wept when the headmasters in the portraits applauded him.
\nI wept most powerfully, in other words, for joy.
\nCall this worldview Christian if you want. I am uninterested in the question of which, if any, existing religion the Harry Potter series affirms.
\nWhat matters to me is that, to the degree that readers believe in and care about this story, and internalize it, they will be reinforced in their noblest impulses. They will honor love and generosity where it occurs. They will know, whether or not they consciously saw it, that what made Harry Potter great was not his heroic deeds per se, but rather the quick, quiet, unplanned actions that revealed his noble soul.
\nIt is the true, deep Harry Potter \u2014 the one invisible to Snape and, most of the time, invisible to Harry himself \u2014 who prevailed against Voldemort. It was no trick of magic, no coincidence of wands; it was not the result of the bond between Harry and Voldemort; it was not the result of his mother\u2019s love and sacrifice.
\nOr rather, it was all these things, but they would not have been enough without the virtue inherent in Harry himself.
\nThis is hardly a picture of sinners in the hand of an angry God, or of fallen man. Harry is not made <\/i> good by some outside divine force, not according to the text of this book. Harry\u2019s goodness is who he really is.
\nAnd we, because we embrace these books, are made better because we have the memory of being Harry Potter, and making his choices, and carrying out his acts, and being blessed for it, receiving honor and then, more importantly, receiving the joy of being able to create, with the woman he loved, a home for children they could raise together.
\nThe Harry Potter series is a handbook for building and maintaining a civilization worth living in. That\u2019s what the moral universe of fiction does, at its best.
\nI can\u2019t really predict whether the Harry Potter series will endure for decades or centuries.
\nBut I can tell you that I want to live my whole life in a civilization composed of people who cried for joy as much as grief at the end of the Harry Potter books.
\nI wish the same to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Orson Scott Card Spoiler alert: This post reveals the ending of Book Seven. So we\u2019ve lived in J.K. Rowling\u2019s moral universe for a decade now, seven volumes worth. Where did she take us, and to the degree that we have been reshaped (or reaffirmed) by that moral universe, what has she made of us?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-end-of-harry-potter"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Civilization Does Harry Potter Create? - Blogalogue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Civilization Does Harry Potter Create? - Blogalogue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Orson Scott Card Spoiler alert: This post reveals the ending of Book Seven. 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Where did she take us, and to the degree that we have been reshaped (or reaffirmed) by that moral universe, what has she made of us?…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Blogalogue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-07-27T11:54:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"prothfuss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What Civilization Does Harry Potter Create? - Blogalogue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What Civilization Does Harry Potter Create? - Blogalogue","og_description":"By Orson Scott Card Spoiler alert: This post reveals the ending of Book Seven. So we\u2019ve lived in J.K. Rowling\u2019s moral universe for a decade now, seven volumes worth. Where did she take us, and to the degree that we have been reshaped (or reaffirmed) by that moral universe, what has she made of us?…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html","og_site_name":"Blogalogue","article_published_time":"2007-07-27T11:54:21+00:00","author":"prothfuss","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html","name":"What Civilization Does Harry Potter Create? - Blogalogue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-07-27T11:54:21+00:00","dateModified":"2007-07-27T11:54:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/#\/schema\/person\/3c8775a31b49ebc7036eaf7f92829115"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/2007\/07\/what-civilization-does-harry-p.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What Civilization Does Harry Potter Create?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/","name":"Blogalogue","description":"Debates About Faith","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/#\/schema\/person\/3c8775a31b49ebc7036eaf7f92829115","name":"prothfuss","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/8b6\/8b67d3e576b12bdb6a322e49ec7bb959x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/8b6\/8b67d3e576b12bdb6a322e49ec7bb959x96.jpg","caption":"prothfuss"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/author\/prothfuss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/blogalogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}