1 23 PERSONAL INTEREST


First, I was pretty sure these guys worked as pastoral interns in a local church.


Second, as I was in the middle of my doctorate at Talbot Theological Seminary, I happened to be reading primary sources as to the early church’s response to the gladiatorial contests in Rome. The church protested the brutality of these “blood sports” arguing, from the Imago Dei, and the value of human life, that the games were immoral and that Christians should not participate. Eventually, the early church became the moral force that turned the tide against the games, so that they eventually were declared illegal by the Roman government.


Third, I was aware that evangelical churches were using Pay-per-view MMA matches to do outreach to their community in order to attract men to their men’s ministry. Some churches had even started MMA training clubs to attract youth into their ministry


IT OCCURRED TO ME THAT THERE MIGHT BE SOME INCONSISTENCY HERE... AN EVANGELICAL BLIND SPOT.


Where we as Christians might be embarrassed to admit that we had seen a movie with gratuitous sex in it, we know a movie with gratuitous violence wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. How had we come to see violence as an acceptable form of entertainment? I could not recall one example in my Christian formation where I was asked by a Christian leader to consider the impact of consuming violent TV, movies, video games, or sports on human persons and culture at large. From then on, I began to ask Christians if they saw any problem with the amount of violence


they consumed in popular media. I found that most had never thought about it. I also found myself dismissed by some men as either pacifistic, weak, or effeminate for even asking if there was a moral problem with these forms. So for the last year, I have been researching the social science that shows the impact


that violence (as a form of entertainment) has on us; from the increase of aggression, to desensitization to real life violence, to the loss of empathy, to the objectification of human persons. As a pastor, professor, and a father of three boys, I have come to the conclusion that this


is an issue for our times. Are we as Christians missing an opportunity to thoughtfully engage the issue of the morality of these cultural forms? I, for one, have begun to ask those under my influence to see these forms through the filter of faith and then, in full view of our call to be students of the one who taught us to address our anger, to not retaliate and to “turn the other cheek,” thoughtfully engage this subject.


Brad Swope is the founding Pastor of Horizon Community Church in Roseville, California, a church that was planted in 1999. He is also an adjunct professor at William Jessup


University, teaching courses in Philosophy and Ethics. He is the former president of The Common Good, a non-profit that served emancipating foster youth. Brad received his BA from Wheaton College, his MA from Talbot Theological Seminary and currently, he is a Doctor of Ministry Candidate at Talbot Theological Seminary under Dr. J.P. Moreland. Brad is married to Catherine and they have four children.


26 JESSUP MAGAZINE


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