Daily Revolt

October 06, 2007

Churches Using Violent Video Games to Recruit the Young

I thought I had heard everything. This has to take the cake. There is something terribly wrong with America, and the world. It is the total victory of the material over the spiritual. Everything is for sale. You don't have to be a christian, or even a member of an established church, to see something wrong with this matter:
Across the country, hundreds of ministers and pastors desperate to reach young congregants have drawn concern and criticism through their use of an unusual recruiting tool: the immersive and violent video game Halo.

[...]Those buying it must be 17 years old, given it is rated M for mature audiences. But that has not prevented leaders at churches and youth centers across Protestant denominations, including evangelical churches that have cautioned against violent entertainment, from holding heavily attended Halo nights and stocking their centers with multiple game consoles so dozens of teenagers can flock around big-screen televisions and shoot it out.

[...]Daniel R. Heimbach, a professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, believes that churches should reject Halo, in part because it associates thrill and arousal with killing.

“To justify whatever killing is involved by saying that it’s just pixels involved is an illusion,” he said.

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