We recently received a "legal notice" from Troy Lyndon, the president of Left Behind Games. This is the company that is releasing the video game Left Behind:  Eternal Forces this week.  He threatened legal action unless  Talk to Action remove the screenshots that writers here have used to illustrate their posts about the game, and apologize for violating their copyright  We agreed to do so, even though we feel that the uses of the screenshots are well within the legal doctrine of "fair use," and note that they are also being used to illustrate many other stories and reviews of the game.  

Lyndon was also upset that red coloring was added to some of the shots to indicate blood in the battle scenes depicted in the game. Lyndon correctly points out that the game itself studiously avoids blood and guts.  

I am a believer in copyright, even in an age of far greater flexibility with regard to copyright, especially since the advent of the blogosphere.  My own belief is that bloggers are sometimes  insufficiently respectful of the copyrights of others. But they are not the only ones.

I believe that even when the law is generous, that the principle of copyright is important, and that if an author, a copyright holder objects to a use, that holds great weight with me, and it is in that spirit that I am honored to apologize on behalf of Talk to Action, and to welcome Left Behind Games, a relatively new company, to the ranks of those with a keen sense of intellectual property in an age when corporations and others are quick to appropriate the work of others for uses of their own.

The countdown to the launch of Left Behind:  Eternal Forces into minds of evangelical youth to prepare them for the coming religious war, is now underway.

While many will no doubt play the new video game, like any other game, others in the game's target market will unwittingly  experience an indoctrination in the idea that the failure to convert the targets of religious prostylitization justifies killing them.

Nevertheless, the game's release is tied to the Christmas shopping season, suggesting that the evangelical Christian commercial marketplace is being harnessed to drive a dangerous form of Christian supremacism: Dangerous to religious minorities, as well as members of incorrect sects. Arguably, it  undermines and prepares for aggression against constitutional democracy itself, and foundational ideas of religious equality under the law.

A few months ago, Jonathan Hutson broke a series of stories at Talk to Action about a ruthless indoctrination video game masquerading as entertainment for children. Left Behind:  Eternal Forces, based on Tim LaHaye's best selling series of novels, is set in contemporary New York City where the citizens, "left behind" after all of the good Christians have been pulled up into heaven in an event called the rapture, are to be converted or killed by a roving Christian militia battling the United Nation peace keeping force, headed by the Anti-Christ.

The game, which is scheduled to come out next month - just in time for the Christmas shopping season, is the subject of an article by Michelle Goldberg, in the current issue of New York magazine. Goldberg advances the story with new information about the developers of the game: the key people are Jewish converts to conservative Christianity. (One clarified that he is not converted, but "completed." This is a notion of Messianic Jews, who consider themsevles "completed" because they have accepted Jesus the Messiah.)

The release, of what some now consider to be orientation software for the Christian militias of a coming religious war in America, coincidentally comes just as a film is coming out that documents the indoctrination of young evangelical children in a fierce ideology of religious warfare and what they call God's Army. Their pastor compares her efforts to Islamic Madrassa schools in Pakistan. The film is called Jesus Camp.

Talk To Action author Jonathan Hutson's The Purpose Driven Life Takers series has become part of the required reading in a course taught at The College Of New Jersey called "Video Games: Issues and Influences"

Excerpt from part one of Hutson's multi-part series:

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

The game, slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush, has been previewed at video game exhibitions, and reviewed by major newspapers and magazines. But until now, no fan or critic has pointed out the controversial game's connection to Mr. Warren or his dominionist agenda.

Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates (author info)
The Rev. Tim LaHaye knows that the country is being subverted by the forces of Satan, and he knows who is behind the conspiracy. In his 1998 book, Rapture (Under Attack), LaHaye writes, "For twenty years my wife and I have worked tirelessly to halt the effects of this conspiracy on the church, our government, media, and the public schools; so obviously I am not hostile to the conspiracy theory" (p. 138).

It is unprecedented for conservative and progressive Christians alike to close ranks in condemning a Bible publisher. It is unheard of for Christians to call for a boycott of a Bible publisher for licensing a real-time strategy videogame that caricaturizes Christianity as a crusade, puts modern military weapons in the hands of children, sends them on a mission to convert or kill infidels, and even lets children role play commanding the armies of the AntiChrist, unleashing demons that feast on Christians.

"Does it sound like fun, or does it sound like the way homicidal Muslims think?" asks Marvin Olasky, editor of the conservative Christian World Magazine in a blog post dated August 21, 2006, and titled Convert Them Or Kill Them? That's Not Christianity. His piece links to a recent Washington Post article, "Fire and Brimstone, Guns and Ammo." But the Post and World Magazine have barely touched the hem of the garment, in terms of understanding and exposing the game for what is truly is. Yet word is getting out, and a boycott is picking up steam.

It is unprecedented, and to date unheralded by the mainstream media. But it is happening. It is sparking, sputtering, glowing and growing like a prairie fire. There is a growing movement among conservative and progressive Christians alike to boycott Tyndale House, the Christian publishing house that publishes the Living Bible and Tim LaHaye's Left Behind novels and also licenses the controversial videogame Left Behind: Eternal Forces, along with any chain stores or megachurches that plan to distribute the game.

Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates (author info)
Tim LaHaye is a Christian family counselor, rooted in apocalyptic evangelicalism. In 1975 LaHaye wrote Revelation: Illustrated and Made Plain, followed in 1978 by, The Unhappy Gays: What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality. These two themes converge into an elaborate conspiracy theory about secular humanism in his series of books on The Battle for the Mind (1980), The Battle for the Family (1982), and The Battle for the Public Shools (1983)

In 1972 Tim and Beverly LaHaye launched a national series of workshops called the Family Life Seminars, which is what first gained the LaHaye’s national attention, at least in evangelical circles.

Senior Analyst,
Political Research Associates (author info)

To understand how "Tim LaHaye helped engineer today's Religious Right," it is important to track his role in speciifc New Right institutions. (IFAS 1999). We have traced how Tim LaHaye helped make televangelist Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority a powerful force for recruiting voters to the Republican Party. But LaHaye's role in creating and leading the Council for National Policy(CNP) is less well known. According to Skipp Porteous, "The CNP is a networking vehicle for right-wing leadership. CNP meetings enable members to become acquainted with one another, speak freely, and to plan short and long-term strategies"

The CNP was founded in 1981 with Tim LaHaye as the first president and his allies in the New Right salon that created the Moral Majority in 1979--Billings, McAteer, Falwell, Weyrich, Phillips, and Viguerie--joined this new group. The Council brings together “a broad array of top right-wing evangelicals, secular activists, government officials, retired military and intelligence officers, journalists, academicians, and business leaders,” writes Matthew N. Lyons (1998). CNP membership is by invitation only, and pricey since “several thousand dollars a year” are expected as dues.

Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates (author info)
The publisher's blurb for Tim LaHaye's 1980 book, The Battle for the Mind: A Subtle Warfare, gushes that it is a “shocking, detailed exposé of the humanist onslaught, as well as a positive, practical handbook for waging war against this subtle infiltration.” So LaHaye has been preparing for this "war" for over 25 years. No surprise to find this frame of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil in the Left Behind book series and video game.

LaHaye believes that "Secular Humanism" is a religion that has subverted America in defiance of God's will.

We can reasonably expect to see a lot of media coverage of the convert-or-kill-New Yorkers themed video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces over the next few months. The latest article to appear is currently running on Alternet.   Alternet's story, by Zack Pelta-Heller is quite comprehensive, and will no doubt inspire further reporting on the game and its forthcoming release. The story features Talk to Action's Jonathan Hutson and his dramatic series of stories that showed, among other things, how the game,  based on Tim LaHaye's controversial series of novels, and intended for children as young as 13, is an indoctrination program that teaches that in the End Times, Christian militias will roam the streets of New York, requiring people to convert or be killed.  (But when the Religion News Service wrote about the game recently, they left some things out.)

The tremendous controversy and conversation that Hutson's series generated all over the blogosphere prefigures what will likely be a national and international controversy in the run-up to the official release of the game in October.  

Senior Analyst,
Political Research Associates (author info)
Tim LaHaye sees the earth as a battleground between the Godly and the Satanic, facing an approaching confrontation prophesied in the Bible's book of Revelation. The master plan of the Satanic conspiracy, according to LaHaye, is Secular Humanism.

LaHaye is not referring to an actual existing group of secular humanists, mind you, but his fantastic idea of a vast socialist utopian conspiracy hatched back in the 1800s.

It was just a matter of time before mainstream media started to pick up on the controversies surrounding the video game, Left Behind:  Eternal Forces. A nationally syndicated story by Religion News Service sumarizes the critcisms of the game raised by conservative Christian attorney Jack Thompson, who is a prominent critic of violence in video games.  While this was certainly newsworthy, there are many more major concerns about the game.