LOS ANGELES, CA — A lot has been said recently in various halls of justice throughout the country about violent video games and their likely ill affect upon young and developing minds. Religiously conservative thinkers have been among some of the loudest voices raised in protest – which makes the October release of Left Behind: Eternal Forces just that much more ironic.The game, which has been previewed at video game exhibitions and reviewed in major newspapers and magazines, has a simple and common plot: shoot to kill.

Usually, the victims of video game violence are bad guys, terrorists, thugs, monsters, or other players. This time they’re Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and secular thinkers. And the shooters? They’re Christians on a mission “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare” against those who refuse to convert. They even shout “Praise the Lord” while dispatching the unsaved.

Adding irony to irony, the game designers not only drew their personal motivation from by self-proclaimed “stealth evangelist” Pastor Rick Warren’s best selling book The Purpose Driven Life, but they have the international director of Warren’s Purpose Driven Church as a board member dedicated to creating and marketing the game. Stealthy evangelizing, indeed.

The marketing and distribution strategy likely to be employed mirrors that used by Warren to get the word out about his book: distribution through pastoral networks, especially what are called “mega-churches.”

Godly youths who come into contact with Left Behind will find themselves in modern New York City, with a range of 500 square blocks that stretch from Wall Street to Chinatown, and include Greenwich Village, the United Nations headquarters, and Harlem. To spice things up, when kids get tired of killing heretics for Christ, they can switch sides and fight for the army of the anti-Christ – an activity that includes setting loose hungry cloven-hoofed demons. Traditional family values, indeed.

The game’s developers hope to see Left Behind break through to the mainstream and receive a T for Teen rating. Jerry B. Jenkins, author of the wildly popular Left Behind series whose first four novels provide scenes for the game hopes that teenagers will like the game. His collaborator, Southern Baptist minister Tim LaHaye jokes that their “real goal is to have no one left behind.”

Christian publisher Tyndale House is responsible for not only Left Behind but also James Dobson’s The Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference Guide, whose author has strongly urged parents to limit time that children spend playing violent games, if they can’t “avoid the violent ones altogether.” No word on where Dobson stands on killing virtual infidels for the messiah.

LeftBehindGames.com quotes the New York Times as describing the game as combining “Tom Clancy-like suspense with touches of romance, high-tech flash and Biblical references.”