Witness Times

“We will have have a priest taking the first hour today. So you can join the fifth graders and see that the children are keeping quiet.” She said, as she zipped the Peugeot past little snow-covered hillocks. The sun was battling with its own rise as much as I do every day with my alarm clock. “They get Bibles, you see. Its a part of the kommune. And the priest will tell them how to read the Bible.” <kommune = local community governance, like a city corporation> Interesting, I thought, how the Norwegian state desperately tries to cling on to the last bits of its state-religion. Seeding ideologies to the young is indeed a good way of making sure that the community survives.

I have to say that I was a little disappointed. It was my last week of internship at the children’s school as a teaching assistant, and after five weeks of pestering, I had finally given in to the music teacher to handle a class with some ‘Indian’ content. I was prepared with a nursery rhyme in my native language, which I had painstakingly translated to Norwegian the previous night. Though my connection to music, outside listening, go as far as George Bush(Junior)’s love for Osama Bin Laden, I was looking forward to the class I had prepared for. This unexpected ‘heavenly’ intervention would be robbing me of that class. But I consoled myself, because it would indeed be an interesting experience of an outside observance of an intra-communal religious brainwash attempt.

Priest… Human belonging to the male sex. Very ‘manly’. Tall. White or brown robes. Old, little hair. Wise. Peaceful. Thin, but active and energetic. Smiling. These were the expectations unconsciously and automatically produced. So, half an hour later, when a plump, frowning, rushed, tired-looking woman wearing a black t-shirt and a black casual pajama pants walked hurriedly into the staff room, I had reason to suspect her as yet another mother who was carrying her ward’s lunch-box, which she/he had forgotten to carry. The early intervention of another teacher saved me from a possibly embarrassing scene, which would have involved the ever-helpful me volunteering to track down her kid and pass on the lunch-box. The priest was here.

The class began, and there was first the initiation ritual: distributing of Bibles to the children. The kids happily cast their newly gotten gifts on to their tables, and started restlessly flipping through the pages or using it as a fan. Some emerging musicians were trying to experiment with sounds made when the more-than-thousand-page book hit the wooden table. Coming from a different culture where we believe in the presence of the Divine in every one and every thing, especially books, and very much in holy books like the Bible, it was quite an unsettling experience for me to see how the children were treating the Bibles they had just received. It has always been uncomfortable to be in the presence of people handling books in Norway…  So I decided to take it easy on myself, and settle to the back of the class. I took for support an English-Norwegian School Dictionary which lay on the bookshelf.

That dictionary, incidentally, was one of my survival secrets during boring classes. I would immerse myself into a concentrated reading of the book when the goings got tough. Teachers admired my perseverance at learning Norwegian, and craving to understand what was happening in class. The children loathed a person who was a perfect example of perseverance. But what made me chuckle at these interpretational behaviour was something which I knew, and they did not know. That little dictionary had, in random pages, strips of Calvin and Hobbes.

The class was beginning, and I was soon lost in an episode of transmorgification. But suddenly, something shook me out of the smiles and giggles which I was mentally experiencing after perusing through a strip where Calvin resembled a pygmy Hobbes. That something was something along the lines of ‘Harry Potter’.

Naaa. Can’t be. But wait. Yes! It is! It was! And there it is again! The priest was using Harry Potter to describe the Bible!

“Do you know how many books are there in the Harry Potter series? Now, the Bible has more than ten times all of them put together. Do you know how many chapters are there in the Bible? Its more than all the chapters in all the seven Harry Potter books put together.”

Um… What happened to Witch Hunts of the sixteen hundreds…

“If someone says a particular page where something happens, we can turn to the page in Harry Potter, right? But we cannot do that in the Bible, because there are two sections which are numbered from the beginning – the Old Testament, and the New Testament…”

If theorists opine that Christianity has liberalised itself, and turn to popular culture to reach out effectively, they definitely wouldn’t have thought of extents of liberalisation and turns to popular culture as I was witnessing right now. A priest evangelising ten-year olds, using Harry Potter as medium and example to explain how to read the Bible… Harry Potter – a rendition of most things detested by the Church, and a product of pure consumerist utilisation and branding exercises. Wow. What a combination! Next thing I know, Osama could be brought down all the way from the mountain caves in Paksitan for guest-lectures on Islam in schools!

The priest ploughed on relentlessly, unwavering even when facing the boredom, restlessness, and disinterest  so obviously apparent on her audience’s faces and behaviour. Harry Potter this, Bible that, Moses, Jesus Christ, magic wand, the seventh book… I am not too partial to Christianity. Nor am I, I believe and I hope, to any religion, save perhaps Buddhism. But this, I thought, was quite an insult. Comparing Harry Potter and the Bible is like… Ouch. I don’t think any religion would ever be bad enough to rate a comparison of its holy scripture to Harry Potter… (save perhaps Scientology, but then that’s a different debate…)

What were these children being unconsciously exposed to? That Harry Potter is more important than the Bible? That your every day whims and fantasies are to be placed above everything else? That to fit in to today’s society, you need to know a little bit about the Bible, but more importantly, must read Harry Potter, and be proficient enough with it to use it as an example? Calvin and Hobbes was long lost. This was way too disturbingly intriguing.

It was also intriguing to note stereotypical notions of what appeals to Norwegian children. It is interesting how Harry Potter, a work from Britain, in English, plays such an important role in that stereotype in a country with a different language, which is Western more in an American than British way.

I asked her later if she was ever uncomfortable with the way the children treated the Bibles. “As long as they know how to read it, that is what’s important…” She replied. But despite her drawing from Harry Potter, I don’t think those kids saved any of what was discussed in that class. It was just another one of those formalities for them… Another one of those exasperating, boring classes, which are not really required, but are part of school any way. Most classes in the children’s school start an active discussion, debate, or activity among the kids during break times. I never heard either the Bible, or Harry Potter, being mentioned.

Harry Potter Church anyone?