Current Key Perspectives in Video Gaming and Religion

This special issue, edited by Gregory Grieve, Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, and Xenia Zeiler and published in 2015, brings together a series of theses from scholars across religious studies, media studies, and game studies to map current thinking about the relationship between video games and religion. The contribution featured here, by Rachel Wagner, argues that religious studies should take video games seriously because games, like religions, construct ordered worlds that shape how people understand reality, identity, and community. Using the game Minecraft as a central case, Wagner contends that its emphasis on construction, rule-based coherence, and open-ended creativity offers players a form of respite from a chaotic world, and that fan practices, online communities, and religiously inflected creative works extend the game's influence into offline life.

The essay develops its argument through close attention to Minecraft's design and reception. It draws on developer accounts, scholarship on play and ritual, and examples of faith-oriented media, such as a Christian Let's Play series and a Catholic blogger's use of in-game metaphors, to illustrate how the game becomes a site of religious meaning-making. Wagner also reflects on the broader cultural shift toward malleable, software-shaped conceptions of reality, which she links to the game's significance as a metaphor for contemporary life.

Methodologically, the piece advocates a "comparatist" approach, adapted from Wendy Doniger, that weaves together insights from many fields rather than prescribing a single method. Wagner distinguishes this telescopic, big-picture mode from microscopic case studies that require sustained play, and argues that the two complement one another. The overall conclusion is that scholars need not play every game they analyze in order to study its cultural impact, but that interdisciplinary breadth must be paired with rigor to avoid vague generalization.