OS GAMES NO DISCURSO ADVENTISTA: BREVE ANÁLISE DE PUBLICAÇÕES E DOCUMENTOS ECLESIÁSTICOS

Abstract

With the emergence of academic studies on the interface between religion and digital games, the present work seeks to explore the relationship between Seventh-day Adventism and analog and digital games, to understand Adventist thinking and vision about games. To this end, the article presents a brief historical-bibliographic description of the relationship between games and Christian tradition, followed by a presentation on the historical context and the philosophical-theological assumptions that underlie the Adventist view on games, with emphasis on Ellen White thinking, co-founder and prophetess of the IASD. Based on this contextualization, the present study, with elements of content analysis, investigates the mentions of games in the Seventh-day Adventist Church Manual, a document that gathers norms and rules to be followed by its churches and affiliates, in the official minutes of commissions of the denomination's world headquarters, in order to identify the evolution of the official Adventist deliberations and norms on games. Finally, this study examines mentions of digital games and video games in Adventist Review, the official English-language IASD journal, in order to link Adventist discourse on games in Ellen White's writings and ecclesiastical documents with recent discourse on the universe of video games and digital games. Among the results obtained, it is worth highlighting the maintenance of Ellen White's assumptions and vision about games in contemporary Adventist discourse, which focuses on a moral-utilitarian view of the use of leisure and free time and in the exposure of mostly restrictive and prohibitive guidelines , generally under the bias of associating games with worldly practices that pose a danger to physical, mental and, especially, spiritual health.