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Please play this syllabus
By Tori Lee | May 26, 2026
In the University of Chicago Divinity School course Gaming the Gods, College student Tiffany Seo plays the final act of the video game Journey to kick off class discussion.Photo by Jason Smith
In ‘Gaming the Gods,’ UChicago undergrads use video games as primary texts to understand religious symbolism and ritual practice
Class begins with a final cutscene.
Projected on a large screen, a student guides a cloaked figure toward a beam of light atop a distant mountain. Trudging through blinding snow, the figure falls to its knees, unable to continue.
Then, a dizzying ascent into the sky. A freewheeling flight through red, torii-like gates. And finally, a blinding white light.
“How did this ‘payoff’ make you feel?” prompted instructor Marshall Cunningham.
Relief. Disappointment. Joy. Sorrow. The class is divided.
In the video game Journey (2012), players walk, slide, and fly through dunes on a sandy pilgrimage. Without any dialogue other than a musical chirp, the character visits shrines and communes with other players to uncover the history of a fallen civilization.
The game is one of many on the syllabus of “Gaming the Gods: Video Games and Religion,” a new undergraduate course offered by the University of Chicago Divinity School—part of the campus-wide Year of Games. Using video games as primary texts, students analyze the religious themes and imagery used by developers and designers.
“The way this generation of students consumes media is primarily through video games,” said Cunningham, assistant instructional professor of the Bible and the ancient Near East in the Divinity School. “Let's take the medium seriously as a medium of storytelling—of meaning-making—and apply a critical apparatus to it so these students can be better readers.”
Throughout the course, students played Halo, Cult of the Lamb, Indika, I Am Jesus Christ, and more, while discussing ritual, belief systems and depictions of religion.
“I feel like I'm really learning how to closely read different works of media. I've never been able to look at video games with such a critical eye before,” said Rafaela Grieco-Freeman, a third-year student in the College. “If you want to expand a different skill, I think this is a really fascinating class to do it.”