Pokemon and Fundamentalist Christianity

What Pokémon Go Can Teach about Fundamentalism

With the smash hit release of Pokémon Go, a small number of fundamentalist Christian critics have complained about its demonic nature. These reactions against Pokémon can tell us about the nature of fundamentalism.

The most prominent of these current critics is Rick Wiles from Trunews, a fundamentalist Christian radio program and blog. On this program he complains that virtual demons are being placed in churches. He believes the game is a magnet for demonic powers and that Pokémon masters may tell the demons to kill Christians. 

As far-fetched as this may seem, he is not the only current critic that believes in the potential demonic power of Pokemon.

Another current critic, Erika Dawson, wrote a blog post titled “Is Pokémon Safe for Christian Kids.” In this post she quotes Rebecca Woodson’s Let Our Children Go: Steps to Free Your Child from Evil Influences published by the fundamentalist publisher Charisma House:

We must not assume that our children are not a threat to darkness. The enemy’s purpose is to grip and blind every generation, establishing strongholds in the lives of our children from a very young age. – Rebecca Greenwood

Continuing she offers the following introductory questions to determine whether should let your child play Pokémon and other games:·

· What does this game teach you?
· Are supernatural powers involved?
· Does the show, character, story, etc. go against or line up with God’s Word?
· Does the game or toy have symbols, characters, or other characteristics that link it to New Age or occult powers?
· What influence does the game exert?

Both of these commentaries appeared after Pokémon Go was released, but fundamentalists have been critiquing Pokémon since its initial popularity. In 2001, Phil Arms published a book called Pokémon and Harry Potter a Fatal Attraction, where he also complains about the demonic nature of Pokémon. The above referenced book complains about the magical power of Pokémon and lists it alongside World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons as games to be avoided. 

Jigglypuff, an example used by Phil Arms in a sermon about the demonic nature of Pokemon

Berit Kjos in his article “Pokemon: A Christian Commentary,” argues that Pokemon is a gateway into other spiritually dangerous games such as Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. And these games are ways to teach children formulas for summoning spirits and gives children a sense of personal power:

Children everywhere are learning the pagan formulas for invoking “angelic” or demonic spirits through multicultural education, popular books, movies, and television. It’s not surprising that deadly explosions of untamed violence suddenly erupt from “normal” teens across our land. Occult role-playing games teach the same dangerous lessons. They also add a sense of personal power and authority through personal identification with godlike superheroes. Though the demonic realm hasn’t changed, today’s technology, media, and multicultural climate makes it easier to access, and harder than ever to resist its appeal. 

In this conception of reality, true power can only come from God and any other apparent power is from the enemy. These examples all emphasize that the spiritual world, populated with literal angels and demons, is an essential part of reality. So much so that even the more mainstream fundamentalist Christian organization Focus on the Family references potential demonic influences: “some of the claims of demonic influences in Pokémon seem overblown.”

This emphasis of the physical world being intertwined with and affected by the spiritual world can give us insight into fundamentalism. George Marsden is one of the most respected historians of evangelicalism and fundamentalism and he defines fundamentalism as:

…an evangelical who is militant in opposition to liberal theology in the churches or to changes in cultural values or mores, such as those associated with ‘secular humanism.’ --George M. Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,1991), vii.

In my proposed conception of fundamentalism the opposition to changes and liberal theology/culture will center on instances where their conception of reality is opposed or denied. Their conception of reality is one that combines the moral, metaphysical spirituality, and physical reality in a whole that cannot be separated. 

Pokémon arguably have supernatural powers and representations of supernatural powers allow real spiritual beings to interact with the physical world, but any fictionalization of spiritual reality will be opposed. From their perspective, Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and others are mistakenly treated as fictional by most of contemporary society; whereas, for the fundamentalist these books, movies, and games both call into being real unwanted spiritual realities and are an actual representation of an unwanted spiritual reality. And thus a beacon for demonic activity. 

According to fundamentalism, this tendency of contemporary society to fictionalize the spiritual is based on a profound misunderstanding of the metaphysical nature of reality. It is as good as saying the spiritual world does not exist; in other words, there is a large component of reality that most of us are simply unware of. Thus, from the fundamentalist’s perspective, we are unaware of the spiritual warfare happening all around us.

This tripartite conception of reality predates modernity. Natural historians and natural philosophers of the 1800s, such as Newton, saw the empirical ‘scientific’ world and the spiritual as deeply connected, much like contemporary fundamentalists. Morality was not viewed as quite as essential to reality, but it was still common to suggest that people under demonic influence committed immoral acts.

Contemporary conceptions of reality separate or deny these aspects of reality. Morality is separated from spirituality when atheists say you can be good without God. Morality is separated from reality when people deny objective moral truths by espousing various form of moral relativism. Spiritual reality is outright denied by scientists who espouse metaphysical naturalism, that everything is potentially explainable through natural explanations. And since fundamentalists are at war, the rest of us are, at best, innocent bystanders in the most epic war in all of history.