MINISTERS AND PREACHERS have been experiencing unusual visions of late: Young people flocking to their churches at all hours of the day, rooting around the pews and peering behind statuary.
No, we are not witnessing a resurgence of evangelical fervor among the young. The spirit moving upon the figurative waters is the smartphone game Pokemon Go. Its Creator is a San Francisco-based company named Niantic. The fast-growing sect has attracted 10 million adherents around the world, clutching their smartphones like a church missal, hoping to “capture” Pokemon, cute little video avatars, with their phone cameras. (Like the Christian Trinity, Pokemon – both a singular and plural noun – is many in one.)
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If Pokemon Go had a Feast of the Annunciation, it would have been July 6, when gamers first learned to seek out Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms in the world around them. Pokestops are virtual supply depots, and players enter the “gyms” to wage Poke-battles, to capture rivals’ avatars and increase their own flock. The software designates public places for the stops and gyms, and many of them happen to be houses of worship.
How are churches reacting? For the most part, with Christian aplomb. An Episcopal flyer urges Poke-churches “to have fun offering Christ’s welcome to all who come.” Several denominations proffer bottled water or electronic manna, in the form of a recharging station, to the Poke-pilgrims.
In a chapel built by John Wesley in Bristol, England, a sign informs Poke-passers-by: “John Wesley was a social activist who worked for the rights of the poor, encouraged education and human rights and spoke out against the slave trade. Happy Pokemon Hunting!”
“That sounds about right,” says Annie Baker-Streevy, head of the Calvary United Methodist Church in Lewiston, Maine. “John Wesley was someone who believed in taking the message of God outside the church walls.”
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Baker-Streevy plays Pokemon Go with young people in her congregation, and with the many college students who wander over to Calvary’s Poke-gym from nearby Bates College. A sign outside her church proclaims: “Our Minister Speaks Pokemon.”
You think this is just kids’ stuff? Tell that to the notorious Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, which espouses a toxic doctrine of homophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism. A cuddly pink Pokemon named “Love is Love” briefly “occupied” the WBC’s Pokemon gym. The WBC fought back, sending a small army of scripture-toting Poke-warriors do battle with the “sodomites,” urging them to “repent and sin no more.”
The epic struggle between Light and Darkness continues.
Inevitably, the Harry-Potter-and-Halloween-haters have decoded the Pokemon’s latent Satanic message. “The enemy, Satan, is targeting churches with virtual, digital, cyber demons,” Christian radio talk show host Rick Wiles recently opined. “This technology will be used by the enemies of the cross to target, locate, and execute Christians.”
In the real world, Christians aren’t all that hard to find. They tend to congregate in these boxy structures every Sunday. You know, the pointy buildings with the cross on top.
Quite properly, the public looks to newspaper columnists to sort out such thorny theological questions as: Are Pokemon in churches a sign of the End Times? I think not. If my iPhone had any memory left, I would probably be hunting my old friend Snorlax at this very moment. Ecclesiastes urges me “not to withhold my heart from any pleasure,” and Pokemon hunting sounds like pure fun.
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Alex Beam’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @imalexbeamyrnot.