Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Spirit Warriors

Having just seen the harrowing documentary Jesus Camp, I am still struck by the ease with which Pentecostals (and other so-called evangelicals) metaphorize their religious actions with images of warfare. In the documentary, we see how kids are trained to be Christian soldiers in God's army. Of course, some of this rhetoric comes from the Bible, though not so much the New Testament. Now it's possible to reinforce these lessons with action figures made by One2believe, a toy company contracted by Wal-Mart to sell its biblical-themed toys all over the country. Here's an example:
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That's Samson Spirit Warrior. Many of the action figures come with supplementary biblical passages. I wonder if they'll include the part when Samson got really mad:
So Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took some torches; and he turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails. When he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves. (Judges 15:4-5)
Or maybe there will just be a button to push so that we can hear him sing in victory:
With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps,
With the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men. (Judges 15: 16)
That's some good biblical ass-kicking, I mean, spirit-triumphing.

Oh, and by the way to the good Christian soldiers at One2believe, regarding Goliath Spirit Warrior, Goliath was, like, a bad guy, not really a "spirit warrior" even by your own definition.

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