What Would Dumbledore Do? ......Harry Potter, Charles Sheldon, and the Social Gospel

 "Where your treasure is, your heart will be also",  Matthew 6:21, 

 The quote engraved on Dumbledore's family tomb

What do J K Rowling and Charles Sheldon have in common?

In  1896, Sheldon published the highly acclaimed  In His Steps which ranks high on the list of the best selling books of all time.   In His Steps was a fictional story with a Christian message which inspired generations of readers to think about their faith.
Almost 100 years later, in 1997, J K Rowling published another work of fiction, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone.......  and we all know the story of it's overwhelming success (although it's underlying message has been a topic of much debate)

I recently stumbled across the website for The Harry Potter Alliance.  The website describes the purpose of the alliance as follows:

• The Harry Potter Alliance fights the Dark Arts in the real world by using parallels from Harry Potter. We work for human rights, equality, and a better world just as Harry and his friends did throughout the books.
  
  The Harry Potter Alliance harnesses the power of new media to communicate with more than 100,000 people, including 60 HPA chapters across the world. The average HPA member is young, passionate, enthusiastic, and idealistic, but often has few activist outlets that speak to them.The HPA makes activism accessible for young people by using the Harry Potter books- something they already love- as an access point to discuss pressing issues of social justice.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the Harry Potter Alliance is just a fun social-networking diversion for young people.   The HPA is a serious organization making a real impact on the world.  A recent campaign garnered 250,000.00 dollars from a Chase Community Giving contest.  Another campaign raised over 123,000.00 dollars to be sent to the work in Haiti.   This is an effective tool to inspire young people to take action to bring about the change they want to see.

Reading this got me to wondering if that same enthusiasm for social justice could be generated from a Christian perspective.   I immediately thought of Charles Sheldon and the book, In His Steps, which popularized the phrase "What Would Jesus Do?" in the late 1800's and helped bring the Social Gospel movement to the general populace.   In it's day, Sheldon's book, In His Steps, was every bit as popular as the Harry Potter series is today.    The protagonist of the story is Henry Maxwell, a minister who challenges his congregation to follow closely the words and examples of Christ and to honestly ask "What Would Jesus Do?" in each and every situation and decision they encountered.

Read More about Charles Sheldon and In His Steps 

The Harry Potter Alliance has built a effective structure using the internet and social networking to encourage young men and women to take positive actions to change the world and address social justice and other issues confronting society.
Could that same model be used to create a Henry Maxwell Alliance or a Charles Sheldon Alliance spurring young people to create and share faith-based social change initiatives today?

Probably Not.  In His Steps remains a compelling story but in today's world of Harry Potters and X-Men, it would be immensely challenging to generate mass enthusiasm for In His Steps and Henry Maxwell Alliances and clubs.  A Narnia Alliance might be possible though.

What other creative ideas could be explored to generate interest and action in social activism for the coming generation?


What creative programs are already out there which could be discussed here?

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FOOTNOTE:
Here's the mission statement from the HPA website:

MISSION STATEMENT

The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) is a 501c3 nonprofit that takes an outside-of-the-box approach to civic engagement by using parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of literacy, equality, and human rights. Our mission is to empower our members to act like the heroes that they love by acting for a better world. By bringing together fans of blockbuster books, TV shows, movies, and YouTube celebrities we are harnessing the power of popular culture toward making our world a better place. Our goal is to make civic engagement exciting by channeling the entertainment-saturated facets of our culture toward mobilization for deep and lasting social change.

The commitment of our members combined with our innovative strategy for social change has enabled us to accomplish astounding successes during our past campaigns. Just as Dumbledore’s Army wakes the world up to Voldemort’s return, works for equal rights of house elves and werewolves, and empowers its members, we:

• Work with partner NGOs in alerting the world to the dangers of global warming, poverty, and genocide.
• Raise funds for partner NGOs to support equality, literacy, and human rights
• Encourage our members to hone the magic of their creativity in endeavoring to make the world a better place.

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FOOTNOTE:

The Faith of J K Rowling:

[source:  Wikipedia ]

Over the years, many religious people have decried Rowling's books for supposedly promoting witchcraft. However, Rowling identifies herself as a Christian. She attended a Church of Scotland congregation while writing Harry Potter and her eldest daughter, Jessica, was baptised into that faith. "I go to church myself", she says, "I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion" Early on she felt that if readers knew of her Christian beliefs, they would be able to "guess what is coming in the books."

In 2007, Rowling described her religious background in an interview with the Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant:

I was officially raised in the Church of England, but I was actually more of a freak in my family. We didn't talk about religion in our home. My father didn't believe in anything, neither did my sister. My mother would incidentally visit the church, but mostly during Christmas. And I was immensely curious. From when I was 13, 14 I went to church alone. I found it very interesting what was being said there, and I believed in it. When I went to university, I became more critical. I got more annoyed with the smugness of religious people and I went to church less and less. Now I'm at the point where I started: yes, I believe. And yes, I go to the church. A protestant church here in Edinburgh.

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FOOTNOTE:
Was Harry Potter a  Good Christian?
[source:  ]

That's the question posed by Eric Marrapodi, co-editor of CNNs Belief Blog as he speaks with author Danielle Tumminio in a Dec 28 2010 blog post.

Tumminio said she wrote God and Harry Potter at Yale: Teaching Faith and Fantasy Fiction in an Ivy League Classroom, to explore the contention by conservative Christians that Harry Potter is akin to heresy. “I felt like the conversation about the Harry Potter series among Christians was really narrow,” Tumminio said.

Tumminio self-identifies as a Christian in the Episcopal tradition and has a two Masters degrees in religion from Yale University’s divinity school. The book grew out of an undergraduate course on the Potter series she taught at Yale.

“I see him best as a seeker in a world where Christianity is not the vocabulary. I see him best as a seeker trying to live a life of faith in the same way a Christian seeker tries to live a life grace,” Tumminio told CNN.

Read the full article at http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/28/harry-potter-was-a-good-christian/