At the height of COVID, United Methodist pastor Cynthia Kepler-Karrer and her husband were invited to join a Zoom-based Dungeons and Dragons game made up mostly of clergy. “I play a tabaxi (cat person) monk (not so much religious as highly dexterous, like a ninja), and some of what has been so awesome is learning how to live into and embody another perspective,” wrote Kepler-Karrer in an email. She is the pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas.
“She is braver in many ways than I am,” she said, “and I am learning to channel some of that courage when I most need it.”
Kepler-Karrer and her friends aren’t playing alone. Across the country, the role-playing game is bringing ordained Christians and Jews together in a fantasy world in which good and evil sometimes seem clearer and choices more obvious than in murky, real-life, pandemic America.
