From the NY Times
Many christian churches are using the violent video game Halo 3 to lure teens and young men back to church.
Those buying [Halo 3] 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
----
Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church.
-----
“If you want to connect with young teenage boys and drag them into church, free alcohol and pornographic movies would do it,” said James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a nonprofit group that assesses denominational policies. “My own take is you can do better than that.”
The article goes on to say that James Dobson's Focus on the Family doesn't yet have an opinion on the controversy. What, God's not talking to you today, Jimmy?
2 comments:
OH.
MY.
GOD.
We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell.
I find it difficult to believe these people can say and do this stuff without going into convulsive laughing fits at their own stupidity.
Wow.
Glad to be an atheist, man.
I commented on this over at Boxer Rebellion... In a bout of super lazy blogging (for shits sake, i posted 3 things today!) i am copying...
As the resident liberal and irreverent practicing Catholic of this loose circle of lefty bloggers, once again I am horrified by the behavior of so-called Christians.
This really is beyond awful. I can't pretend to know the mind or heart of Jesus, but I can tell you this, I am not thinking this is even remotely ok. At all.
I actually do a lot of writing for my parish and even have a parish blog. This whole thing kind of touches on something I just wrote earlier this morning...
This notion of spirituality is just so lame. Well I did not use the word lame on my church blog. I must maintain some propriety there. But lame it is.
We Catholics have so many issues so please know I am not ignoring that when I write the following.
One issue we do not have is this "get more Christians get more points" mentality.
In many forms of Christianity it is thought that the more souls you save for Christ, the better poised you are to go to heaven.
God help me. That is so- well, frankly it is completely F*CKED!
It's not a contest... or a game, where "points" matter.
And to use video games that glorify violence and death. That is another layer of sickness.
This is so disturbing. So disturbing.
Ugh. WWJD? I think that he would, like when he overturned the moneychangers tables, do the same with the video games.
This makes me completely ill!
Post a Comment