What is a secular sacred text?
A secular sacred text is any text you love that is generative — that gets you thinking, feeling, inspired, wanting to research and talk with others.
By treating Harry Potter as sacred, we mean three things:
Trusting the text
We practice the belief that the text is not “just entertainment,” but if taken seriously, can give us generous rewards. Trusting the text doesn’t mean we understand the text to be perfect — either in construction or moral teaching — but that it is worthy of our attention and contemplation. A guiding principle is that the more time we give to the text the more blessings it has to give us.
Rigor and ritual
By reading the text slowly, repeatedly and with concentrated attention, our effort becomes a key part of what makes the book sacred. The text in and of itself is not sacred, but is made so through our rigorous engagement. Particularly by rigorously engaging in ritual reading, we believe we can glean wisdom from its pages.
Reading it in community
Scholars of religion explain that what makes a text sacred is not the text itself, but the community of readers that proclaim it as such. The same applies for us. We started reading Harry Potter in community in Cambridge, Massachusetts in September 2015 and are excited to be expanding that community through this podcast!