{"id":5548,"date":"2005-07-12T11:14:38","date_gmt":"2005-07-12T11:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html"},"modified":"2005-07-12T11:14:38","modified_gmt":"2005-07-12T11:14:38","slug":"in-honor-of-harry-potter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html","title":{"rendered":"In honor of Harry Potter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can we talk about <em>The Wizard of Oz?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always (well, not always&#8230;for the past couple of decades, anyway) wondered about this, and Michael brought it up the other night when we were in Knoxville, and we all sat around watching <em>The Wizard of Oz<\/em> on TCM. <\/p>\n<p>Is <em>The Wizard of Oz <\/em>responsible for the massive loss of faith and the embrace of subjectivism in the West?<\/p>\n<p>Could it be?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve thought about this too &#8211; no all-powerful Wizard, just a little man behind the curtain, tricking everyone. No need to <em>really<\/em> have anything real within &#8211; just <em>believe<\/em> that you have a brain, a heart and courage, and take on the external signs, and you&#8217;re there, baby.<\/p>\n<p>Has the Wizard, along with parents lying to their kids about Santa Claus,&nbsp; introduced a cynical wobble into the possibility faith in God for generations of kids?<\/p>\n<p>Are we entering into territory where we should remake the website with big banner headlines and hysterical prophecies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can we talk about The Wizard of Oz? I&#8217;ve always (well, not always&#8230;for the past couple of decades, anyway) wondered about this, and Michael brought it up the other night when we were in Knoxville, and we all sat around watching The Wizard of Oz on TCM. Is The Wizard of Oz responsible for the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>In honor of Harry Potter - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In honor of Harry Potter - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Can we talk about The Wizard of Oz? I&#8217;ve always (well, not always&#8230;for the past couple of decades, anyway) wondered about this, and Michael brought it up the other night when we were in Knoxville, and we all sat around watching The Wizard of Oz on TCM. Is The Wizard of Oz responsible for the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-07-12T11:14:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"In honor of Harry Potter - Via Media","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\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"In honor of Harry Potter - Via Media","og_description":"Can we talk about The Wizard of Oz? I&#8217;ve always (well, not always&#8230;for the past couple of decades, anyway) wondered about this, and Michael brought it up the other night when we were in Knoxville, and we all sat around watching The Wizard of Oz on TCM. Is The Wizard of Oz responsible for the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-07-12T11:14:38+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html","name":"In honor of Harry Potter - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-07-12T11:14:38+00:00","dateModified":"2005-07-12T11:14:38+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/in-honor-of-harry-potter.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"In honor of Harry Potter"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?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\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}