The X-Box game Halo 3 was released recently and it is huge, with more than $300 million in sales in the first two weeks; it is expected to generate more than $1 billion in revenue.
Within the Christian world, however, Halo 3 is hugely controversial.
It turns out to be so pervasive among young men that, despite the game's violence, some church youth groups have literally decided to not fight Halo 3, but to join it.
The New York Times reports that “across the country, hundreds of ministers and pastors, desperate to reach young congregants, have drawn concern and criticism” for using Halo as an evangelism tool.
The reporter sees something ironic in the use of the game: “First the percussive sounds of sniper fire and the thrill of the kill. Then the gospel of peace.”
Gregg Barbour, a youth pastor at Denver's Colorado Community Church, defended the “evangelistic” use of Halo. He reasoned that kids who come for the game will stay for the gospel. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Barbour wrote in a letter to parents, according to The Times.
Here's my central concern: community and identity have always been mediated, but historically, in personal and local ways — families, religious affiliations, neighbors. What is the significance of handing this role off to the virtual, electronic world?
My friend and culture-watcher John Seel is very concerned.
“The fear of irrelevance is palpable in the evangelical church. In many North American churches the consumer logic reigns — any means is justifiable to reach a target audience as long as it is followed by a simple gospel presentation. To reach an edgy audience, so the argument goes, one must employ edgy means.”
He goes on to say, “Many readers of The New York Times will read this article and shake their heads and mutter, ‘Unbelievable.' I was one. Culture renewal begins in our churches. The problem is not the proverbial ‘them.' It's us.”
Marty O'Donnell, one of the creators of Halo and himself a Christian, agrees.
“I too read the article in The New York Times today and was disappointed and shook my head,” he said. “Once again [I believe] the modern evangelical church has misinterpreted Christ's injunction to be ‘fishers of men.' Having Halo night at the local church building is about the same as having ultimate Frisbee night.”
O'Donnell says Jesus went out into the world rather than using lures to get people to come to him.
“When Jesus spoke to the woman at the well it wasn't some sort of ‘bait and switch,' ” O'Donnell says. “The church is the body of Christ, not a building.”
Though O'Donnell agrees with Seel about the inappropriateness of churches harnessing their evangelistic aims to Halo 3, he parts ways with Seel and others who dismiss Halo 3 as just another violent video game.
In O'Donnell's view, Halo's real appeal is a mythologically rich storyline conveyed through cutting-edge imagery and sound. He also believes a young generation wants to connect in community, and that games like Halo offer this more engagingly than other media.
I've long argued that popular culture has become the carrier of religious beliefs and ideas, and that the younger generation forms identity and community within that popular culture.
Sociologist Todd Gitlin agrees.
“Popular culture summons improvisational communities — show audiences, fan clubs, chat groups,” Gitlin says. “It saturates everyday conversation. It overlaps with politics. It circulates the materials with which people splice together identities. It forms the imagescape and soundtrack through which we think and feel about who we are or — as film critic Robert Warshow once put it — who we wish to be and fear we might become.”
But have we reliquished too much to it?
Dick Staub is the author of The Culturally Savvy Christian and the host of The Kindlings Muse (www. thekindlings.com).