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Is It a Sin for Christians to Play Dungeons & Dragons?
“I don’t want you to play that game. It’s of the Devil!”
The year was 1979 and I was a fourth grader at Bethlehem Baptist Christian Academy (BBCA) and one of my class buddies introduced us to the game Dungeons & Dragons. I knew nothing about Dungeons & Dragons (hereinafter referred to simply as D&D) but it sounded cool.
So a group of us started playing D&D at lunch.
It didn’t last.
Before long, one of our friend’s dads came to him at lunch and said to him, “I don’t want you playing that game. It’s of the devil.”
Before long, the word went out: There would be no D&D at BBCA.
You see, this was the era of the “Satanic Panic” and (at least in Christian circles) D&D was quickly associated with witchcraft and Satanism.
“The Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s was a period of widespread fear and paranoia about Satanic ritual abuse and the supposed involvement of occult practices in everyday life. Dungeons & Dragons was just one of the many targets of this panic, as religious groups and concerned parents sought to root out supposed Satanic influences in everything from music to movies to games.” — The Guardian, “Why Dungeons & Dragons was accused of Satanism” (July 2019)
