Playtime

Anyone who has watched children play knows the spectacularly creative and subversive ways in which they can use playthings, even "safe" religious ones. The Mennonite kid uses the sweet, puffy figures of the crèche set to stage a bone-crushing, manger-side brawl. The Muslim girl undresses her modestly clothed Fulla doll—marketed as an anti-Barbie and the "moral Muslim choice" for young girls—and lays her on top of a naked boyfriend doll. Many parents have intervened in the make-believe rumble or lovemaking, or wondered whether they should, or at least found it imperative to call the child for dinner.

That's the problem with religious toys, say the authors of Toying with God, a study of religious toys, games and dolls and their connections to commerce, culture, gender, play and ritual. Adults create them to instill values or to pass on traditions—or just to make some money—but once the toys are in the hands of children, there's no telling what will happen. Children are not simply "passive consumers," the authors write. "They are capable of producing meanings of their own—meanings that may surprise, challenge and even undermine the goals of both marketing and parents."

And that's a good thing, Nikki Bado-Fralick and Rebecca Sachs Norris would say. Professors of religious studies at Iowa State University and Merrimack College, respectively, Bado-Fralick and Norris roundly criticize idealized religious play such as that portrayed on the website of one Christian toy manufacturer: Dad is reading the David and Goliath story from the Bible, and Mom is holding a talking David doll. Mom then asks, "How do you think that David answered Goliath? Let's push the button and find out what happens next." "There is still some question of whether play is still play when it is imposed by adults with didactic, edifying, or moralizing aims," the authors write. "Religion can embrace fun, but can fun withstand control?"