However, he said he gets to know his students in another way. “You, [students] give me three months and you’re gone,” he laughed.
He said he loves to see the change in students from the time they are freshmen throughout the rest of their time at Union.
“Harry Potter and the Gospel is a senior level course, and I say that because by the time the seniors have registered there are no spots left, so some of the students I have in that class are the same students I had in my New Testament class their freshman years, so I’ve really seen them come full circle and it’s very interesting to watch.”
Poe said he does not have any sort of expectations of students. “Everybody is intelligent in one way or another…some are great at memorizing information, and then there are the dreamers, like myself, which wasn’t always appreciated when I was going through school.”
He said that in the best way possible, “Union is like [his] elementary school.” Poe went to Stone Elementary in Greenville, South Carolina, and said his teachers really knew how to find students’ intelligence.
“They knew how to get out of you what was inside,” he said. Poe said something he tries to remember as a professor is that each student is intelligent in a different way because “God does some really amazing things with people.”
He said it was while studying at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, that intellectually, he was “at the same time both terrified and exhilarated.” He said loved his time there and being in England gave him the feeling that he was “in the midst of history.”
While writing “The Inklings of Oxford: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Their Friends,” published in 2009, Poe got the chance to return to England along with his friend and colleague Jim Veneman, former assistant professor of communication arts and director of visual communication, who took the photographs for the book.
“There were a lot of pictures, and [Veneman] took all that we would need for the book in ten days…he never would have told me then, but he told me later that he thought it would be impossible. But we had nine days of beautiful sunshine in England. It was a miracle. Then, after all that sunshine, we got to thinking, ‘we don’t have any pictures of the rainy England.’ The next day it just poured buckets and buckets and we got all the pictures we needed.”
Another author who Poe said writes about and explains the gospel is J.K. Rowling, upon whose work one of his courses is taught.
The first time Poe read Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Phliosopher’s Stone,” he said “well this is the gospel.”
He said Rowling’s work makes connections to Romans six in that “you must die to kill sin,” and that she shows her readers evangelism instead of telling them.
“She was inspired by C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien,” he said. But, he added, she developed her characters in a way that is very different and shows a progression of growth.
“She illustrates change in her characters over the course of seven years, the most important years in a person’s development…She addresses issues in each stage and illustrates growth in each of the characters.”
Of all the things Poe has a passion for, Potter, the works of Lewis and Tolkien, being a professor, advising, and the people in his life, he is most passionate about one thing. It is the commonality between all of the books he has written and what he most tries to show through his work.
“I write about one thing,” he said. “and, I write about it over and over again, and that thing is the gospel.”
