The Moral Substitute: Difference between revisions

== Toys ==

* After the [[American Girls Collection|American Girl]] doll brand was involved in controversies over claims that the company's charitable contributions supported pro-abortion and pro-gay rights groups, several alternate doll brands popped up intending to be more moral alternatives. In some cases, they all but called out American Girl by name when criticizing "other" companies in their publicity. American Girl remained the leader in brand recognition, marketing and quality, and for the most part the imitators have since fallen by the wayside and folded with little fanfare.

 

 

** He also reviewed ''Bible Adventures'' and ''Sunday Funday''. After comparing ''Sunday Funday's'' gimmick of quoting scripture versus ''Menace Beach's'' gimmick of having your girlfriend's clothes disappear between levels, he concluded that "If you suck at making things but want people to buy them anyway, crap with [[Jesus]] sells better than crap with tits."

* A Christian ''[[Guitar Hero]]'' clone, entitled ''Guitar Praise'', which includes a lot of groups listed on [[Christian Rock]] (and one song from a [[Not Christian Rock]] group, [[Flyleaf]]).

* There was a PC game spawned by the ''[[Bibleman]]'' video series by a company called Covenant Studios. It played sort of like ''[[Diablo]]'' with jerky controls, sprites that moved at a snail's pace and weapons of a purely defensive nature—even the character who had a laser gun at the time. Instead, there's a clunky system to destroy enemies with random Bible passages. To top it all off, Bibleman, the character the series is named after, has to be unlocked before players can take control of him. Oddly, despite this winning combination, the purported [[PlayStation 2]] and [[Game Boy Advance]] versions never materialized. At last check, the developers' site had disappeared off the face of the internet.

* Parodied mercilessly in a viral campaign for ''[[Dante's Inferno (video game)|Dante's Inferno]]'', which offered a game at the complete opposite end called ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRMiRFJzIKA Mass: We Pray]''. And naturally, [[Take That|it was presented as]] a game using [[Wii]]-like technology. The punchline was that, whenever you clicked any link on the fake website for the game (which is now dead), you got a message more in the style of the ''real'' game informing you that performing mass without a real Catholic priest [[You Bastard|falls under the sin of Heresy]].

* Several churches, appalled at the pagan influences of [[All Hallow's Eve|Halloween]] and the monsters seen in traditional haunted houses, have taken to doing "Halloween alternative" parties, in which children disguise themselves as Biblical characters. Some take this to extremes by setting up "hell houses," in which the attendees are shown scenes meant to portray the decadence of secular culture, finally ending in a room occupied by [[Satan]], claiming that all of the characters they had seen are now firmly in his grasp. In the worst of these, the Hell House is marketed as a normal haunted house, and is thus a [[Bait and Switch]], and in some the attendees must either agree to be saved (ie, become born-again Christians) or must traverse the length of the building in order to get out. The whole concept is savagely mocked in a [[Something*Positive]] sequence starting [http://somethingpositive.net/sp10042006.shtml here]. Perhaps more common are the Harvest Parties, which feature game booths, contests, and the requisite candy, typically hosted in whatever part of the church has an open floor and forgoing the ghouls-and-ghosts theme.

* Some parents who [[Homeschooled Kids|school their children at home]] do so because they perceive public school as un-Christian or un-whatever their religion/worldview is. Depending on the parents, homeschooling can actually be a better choice for the child, since the child can learn at a more personalized pace, but with the parents also pushing the child more often to do better than teachers might.

* [[wikipedia:Heritage USA|Heritage USA]], part of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's [[Fun with Acronyms|PTL]] media empire, was planned as the Christian version of [[Disney Theme Parks|Disney World]], and wound up becoming fairly popular after its opening in 1978. Today, however, the park is best known for playing a role in the scandal that led to [[Corrupt Church|Jim Bakker]]'s downfall and subsequent imprisonment. The park was closed in 1989, and parts of it have since been redeveloped (mostly by various ministries), while the rest lingers in various states of decay.

* The American Center for Law and Justice is a Christian conservative counterpart to the ACLU founded by Pat Robertson that litigates for pro-Christian, pro-life issues.