UPDATE: There was a typo in the name and email address of the Wal-Mart spokesman below. Please contact them again with the new information below that's now been corrected. Sorry about that.
This is a violent video game being sold by Wal-Mart, and made by the leaders of the religious right (the game producer's wife is the founder of the extremist religious right group Concerned Women for America).
Wal-Mart's rep says she hasn't heard any complaints:
Tara Raddohl
1-479-277-7589
Tara.Raddohl@wal-mart.com
More from the SF Chronicle:
Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.Join the anti-Christ? These are people who get upset when rock music lyrics say "Dear God, I don't believe in you," yet they're selling our children games in which they can choose to kill Muslims and Jews, and "join the anti-Christ." Imagine if you or I tried to sell a "join the anti-Christ" game at Wal-Mart?
The Campaign to Defend the Constitution and the Christian Alliance for Progress, two online political groups, plan to demand today that Wal-Mart dump Left Behind: Eternal Forces, a PC game inspired by a series of Christian novels that are hugely popular, especially with teens.
The series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins is based on their interpretation of the Bible's Book of Revelation and takes place after the Rapture, when Jesus has taken his people to heaven and left nonbelievers behind to face the Antichrist....
"It's an incredibly violent video game," said Stevens. "Sure, there is no blood. (The dead just fade off the screen.) But you are mowing down your enemy with a gun. It pushes a message of religious intolerance. You can either play for the 'good side' by trying to convert nonbelievers to your side or join the Antichrist."
The Rev. Tim Simpson, a Jacksonville, Fla., Presbyterian minister and president of the Christian Alliance for Progress, added: "So, under the Christmas tree this year for little Johnny is this allegedly Christian video game teaching Johnny to hate and kill?"
Not to mention, how is mowing down non-believers in the name of Christ very different from what Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma City? Seriously. Would Wal-Mart sell that game too? Murder US government employees for Christ?
Then again, I suspect the Washington Post would say that mowing down Muslims and Jews isn't that malign, so long as we get a bump in the GDP.
