Christian guilds

I was curious about religion within this little game of ours and while doing some research I came across some interesting stuff that will probably be a future post in and of itself. But I got a little sidetracked by coming across what has to be a the Onion type satire site. First was this site from a while back about using WoW for evangelism. A second related site outlines the rules of certain Christian guild called Convert or Die.

When I first looked at Convert of Die's guild rules, I alternatively laughed and choked on my coffee a little. I am copying it fully here, so you can get the complete flavor.

1. We do not accept Warlocks as members. The Warlock class delights in dark magic and utilizes demons, and satanic runes for assistance. In addition, if you zoom in really close, you can see fireballs coming from between their legs. Playing a Warlock is a bad testimony and could open your heart to Satanic influences.

2. We are currently not accepting Gnomes as members. Gnomes are a very small "human-like" race. Although some find them to be cute, there is a perversion that lurks beneath their seemingly innocent eyes. We found after hours of playing them, there is a glitch where if you stand next to a female, and accidentally hit your mouse wheel, you can see right up her skirt. Until the smarty-pants game coders at Blizzard fix this glitch, we will not be allowing Gnomes in our guild.

3. We do not participate in any raid that takes over 30 minutes. Long raids are a waste of precious time that is better spent PM'ing and broadcasting the message of Jesus Christ - crucified, buried and resurrected to unsaved Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and other players who are going to hell. Jesus says He will come like a thief in the night, at an hour we least expect - the current situation in the Middle East leads us to believe that His return is VERY close at hand, so sharing the Gospel message is our primary and immediate goal in playing World of Warcraft.

4. We do not play Horde characters. Horde are usually older people and/or Blizzard developers and are not as open to hearing the Gospel of Christ. Horde are also unclean, animal-like characters. Just ask yourself, What Race Would Jesus Play? Human! of course! We understand it can be argued that Jesus would also play "undead," but we're not allowing that, until they clean up their appearance.

5. Men play male characters and women play female characters. If we find you are playing a female character and you are a male in real life - you will be booted from the guild immediately. If you wonder why, then we suggest you crack open your Bible and stop acting so gay!

6. All bind-on-equip items are to be sent to guild leader, Billy Houston. He will place them in the auction house to earn more gold or sell them to IGE so we can buy more gold for higher level equipment. Wearing high level equipment is sometimes necessary to earn the respect of other non-Christian players and usually makes them take you more seriously when you present them with the message of Christ. Whenever you have more than 100 Gold on you, send 90 of it to Billy for the Guild Bank.

7. We meet in Booty Bay under the docks for Bible Study and Prayer services every Sunday afternoon at 2PM CST and Wednesday evenings at 8PM CST. These meetings are mandatory. Get on VENT! We will have a keynote speaker from our church on Vent preaching during each meeting. The meetings last from 1-2 hours depending on how many prayer requests we have at the end of the service.

8. We are an English speaking guild. If you also speak Mexican, or foreign you are welcome to join - but you need to sound your words out in English when you are on Vent so that they are clear and understandable.

Then I read it a little more closely, and saw that this supposed guild was on the "Gaping Orifice" server and the fact that they say the guild was formed on 6/6/06. I then realized that this has to be some satire/joke.

Though I wonder how many folks saw this and thought that it was real? I wondered how real Christian guilds feel about it... whether they feel it put their guilds in a bad light. Anyways, this got me curious about real Christian guilds, which I think I had previously heard from somewhere that they existed.

Myself, I was born and raised Catholic, though as I've gotten older I've become less of a structured Catholic and incorporated aspects of Taoism and Buddhism into my beliefs. My reaction to Christian guilds is probably a bit similar to my reaction to religion and evangelism in real life. You do your thing, I'll do my thing, and as long as you don't step into my personal space by trying to convert me, I'm good.

From my searches, I found a number of Christian guilds. It seems that the majority of these guilds just want to play the game while fostering a Christian community, but are open to non-Christians as well. I found that a number of these guilds, like The Fish and Bread Trick specifically mention respecting the beliefs and opinions of others.

I found it interesting that the Christian Expeditionary Force specifically answers whether they allow warlock and death knight toons in their Christian guild (answer is yes). It reminded me of the satire rule above about not allowing warlocks.

Carriers of the Cross outlines an interesting way to think about resolving conflicts within the guild and refuting an officer's decision:

1. The guild officer has final authority.
2. Pray that God will humble your heart and the heart of the guild officer for quick resolution to the situation without causing a rift among the guild.
3. If you can be polite about it, whisper your complaint to the officer that you have a disagreement with, and try to resolve it there WITHOUT arguing. If you cannot do this without arguing, contact the officer later, after you have cooled down. Continual arguing with a guild officer will result in probationary measures being taken.
4. If the officer is not listening to you or the problem is not being resolved, you may go above that person to the next person in the Chain of Command.
5. Repeat the same process until either your issue is resolved or you work your way up to the guild leader who will resolve the issue, either for or against you. The guild leader's word is the final word.
6. The guild leader will consult with the other leaders that can be reached within a decent amount of time before making the final decision.
7. Spreading your complaint in the open chat or in private with other members who do not need to know (gossip) will not be tolerated and can lead to an immediate kick from the guild.

What gets me about this is less the praying bit, and more around the extreme authoritarian feeling. Their leaders are not messing around! I found that in addressing guild conflict a number of Christian guilds quoted scripture, which was an interesting way to think about things.

By His Stripes outlines some specific rules for their Christian guild around PvP:

The guidelines we set on members for PvP come as a matter of respect to the other players in the game. Remember that your actions not only reflect upon you, but upon the guild as a whole.
1. No corpse camping: If you kill someone, move on and don't sit and camp their corpse waiting for them to come back. This is disrespectful to the person to whom you are doing it and reflects poorly upon the guild. This includes both world PVP and Battlegrounds.
2. No killing the flight master: If you are participating in world PvP, do not kill flight masters in a town. This does not just affect high level players, but affects all players of the opposing faction in the area. While it can be argued that this is a part of the game, we do not approve of this type of behavior in the game due to the impact it has upon so many.
3. No killing lowbies: If you are level 80 and see a level 30 run by that happens to be flagged for PvP, do not kill them. There is no honor to be gained in killing someone who can not even be considered a challenge to you and thus it can only be perceived as being mean and disrespectful.

Geez, if only more guilds and players followed these rules!

The Narrow Path elaborates on to be expected rules around language and profanity by specifying that our favorite terms like WTF, OMG, and OMFG are not allowed. They also specify not calling other players noobs and they will not allow immoral behavior like dancing naked on mailboxes.

All in all, I found it pretty interesting. Most of these Christian guilds are pretty open to accepting members of other faiths, and are not looking to evangelize within the game. They generally seem to all have rules of respecting other people's faiths and beliefs and are just looking to play this game within a more wholesome or Christian community, which I completely respect.

I think though that I would fail the language/profanity rule pretty hard...