The yarn even made it to The Hollywood Reporter here.
The secular humanists ran with it at patheos, here.
It even made the Washington Post here.
Naturally the Daily Rail was on board here.
Heck, even TVNZ paid attention here.
News.com.au ran the story, and even ran the illustration, here, though they'd cropped the image so they could really get that burning witch in the foreground.
Well what's the point of sickening violence against women if you can't get it right up close?
And there were many, many, many more notices as the meme spread around the world.
So what caused all the fuss and the attention?
It's a book that encourages readers to murder women for entertainment. The incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get 'god' points – and now Target are stocking it and promoting it for your Xmas stocking.
This is The Holy Bible. This book means that after various sex acts, readers are given options to kill women by stoning her unconscious, Setting them on fire, cutting off their hands, and killing their children!
One of many fan passages on In The Holy Bible depicts woman being set alight for having sex "And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." (Leviticus 21:9).
This misogynistic book literally makes a game of bashing, killing and horrific violence against women. It also links sexual arousal and violence.
Just knowing that women are being portrayed as deserving to be sexually used by men and potentially murdered for sport and pleasure – to see this violence turned into a form of entertainments is sickening and causes us great pain and harm.
This book spreads the idea that certain women exist as scapegoats for male violence. It shows hatred and contempt for women in the sex industry and puts them at greater risk. Women in the industry are 40 times more likely to be murdered by a man than any other group of women.
Books like this are grooming yet another generation of boys to tolerate violence against women. It is fuelling the epidemic of violence experienced by so many girls and women in Australia - and globally.
Target, you pride yourself on being a family company, caring for local communities, and have a strong ethical sourcing policy. How can you do this while contributing to hostile and callous attitudes toward victims of violence and, more broadly, to all women?
Please put ethics before profits and make a strong statement that you do not condone sexual violence, sexual exploitation or the abuse of women as ‘entertainment’. (here it is)
Now if the pond has a complaint, it's simply that the petition misses out on all the juicy bits, and suggests gamers really haven't done enough bible study, so intent are they on indiscriminately killing men, women, vampires and zombies ...
Really what's wrong with Deuteronomy that it only gets a passing mention?
If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate.... But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you. (22:13)
Why not mention Genesis's idea of a good life for women?
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. (3:16)
How about the favourite passage of angry Sydney Anglicans?
Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing. (Timothy 2:11-15
Heck, they didn't even have to read the bible, they just had to browse the Skeptic's Bible's handy "what the bible says about" here ... including the handy advice in Exodus, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live ... (22:18).
Speaking of Exodus, of course the joke could then take on a second life, because right at the moment Hollywood is about to launch more hokum on the world - with the wretched Ridley Scott imagining he's Cecil - and no doubt in due course Target will carry the defamatory DVD ...
How do we know that the film stands for everything wrong in the world? Why you only have to read the angry Sydney Anglican review here, which is remarkably based only on fragments of the holy visual text:
So get your non-Christian friends and family in there and watch it alongside them. A quick conversation can direct the focus away from Christian Bale the charismatic hero and back where it belongs.
Yes, direct your focus back to where it belongs, to complimentary women - get two for the price of one - subjection, stoning, burning witches, and a fine dose of complementarianism ...
How does that go again?
The most direct teaching of Scripture on the relation of men and women as it bears on Christian ministry is found, unsurprisingly, in the pastoral epistles of the apostle Paul. Writing to Timothy, Paul speaks of the responsibility of men to pray ‘without anger or quarrelling’ and of women to adorn themselves ‘with modesty and self-control’ and ‘with good works’ (1 Tim. 2:8–10). He then goes on Let a women learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbirth—if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. (1 Tim. 2:11–15)
Far from being a hard and restrictive word, this word is the life-giving word of our Saviour through his apostle. It speaks of what is appropriate in the re-ordered relationships of God’s people. It does not mean women have no opportunity to exercise the teaching gifts they may be given. Far from it. However, these gifts should be exercised in contexts which are appropriate, contexts which do not inappropriately constitute teaching or exercising authority over a man.
It is no surprise that this part of God’s word is highly controversial in the eyes of many. It runs counter to the determined commitments of our age. Many have tried to dismiss them as simply a reflection of an ancient worldview, patriarchal and oppressive when it comes to women. Others have sought to reconstruct a specific situation in which these words of Paul would be necessary and which is so significantly different to our own as to justify the conclusion that they no longer apply. However, the context, the words of one who was ‘an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Saviour and Christ Jesus our hope’, cannot be set aside so easily. These words come to us as Scripture, the inspired text from the pen of Christ’s apostle, and so are the good words of a good God who seeks the welfare of those he has redeemed for himself.
It is in the light of this biblical teaching that a complementarian approach to Christian ministry commends itself. A woman does not have to duplicate a man in order to be valuable in the cause of Christ. Instead, by being the person God created her to be, and seeking to exercise the ministry given to her in appropriate settings, she can be an indispensable partner in that cause.
In the diocese of Sydney women are ordained to the diaconate and their teaching gifts are recognised. Yet the distinctiveness of men and women in ministry is understood as a good gift of God which should not be erased or minimised in the service of an erroneous view of equality. So instead we continue imperfectly to seek ways of maximising the application of the Bible’s teaching on this subject. Sadly, our selfishness — the selfishness of men and the selfishness of women — too often still gets in the way. There is a continuing need for humility, a willingness to learn, and a willingness to repent. Yet we are convinced that God made us to delight in each other and the different but equally valuable contribution we can make to life together as the people he has redeemed.
Ah, that old line, equal but different, and some are more equal than others ...
Angry male Sydney Anglicans, kissing cousins of Orwell speak ...
Meanwhile, the angry Anglicans have begun yet another war on poor old Santa Claus, and never mind that the Christians fudged the date of Christ's birth just so they could do over the Romans.
Let's not argue whether it was to do over Saturnalia, or Sol Invicta, as one asserts at History Today here, the reality is these shifty con artists have always practised a dodgy rip off game ...
And now they're at it again:
You see gamers? Why settle for just the bible? Why not the bible's spawn? Why not the Santa-bashing, Santa-hating angry Sydney Anglicans? Can't Target institute an identity check at the door, and ban angry Sydney Anglican men from their stores?
Or perhaps Target should require patrons, before being allowed to enter, to sign a creed including the lines "I support and endorse the Roman Saturnalia and the role of Santa Claus in supporting materialism and capitalism ..."
By golly this petitioning game could be useful ... how about "End the Jensenist heresy now!"?
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