Happy Helloween!
For Halloween I thought I would offer you a trailer for the surreal, disturbing and mesmerizing documentary Hell House directed by George Ratliff. In it we are introduced to a church in which the parishioners passionately re-create their fantasy of hell so as to scare heaven into peoples hearts (although it appears that this phenomenon is more widespread than one particular church). I gotta find me one of these tonight!
I came across this via Hacking Christianity.
October 31st, 2009 at 6:35 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Peter Rollins, dbgooglereader. dbgooglereader said: Happy Helloween!: For Halloween I thought I would offer you a trailer for the surreal documentary Hell House di.. http://bit.ly/1qQXD2 [...]
October 31st, 2009 at 7:48 am
yeah we have one of these in cleveland, ohio as well. i remember being able to bring friends from school who i normally wasn’t even allowed to hang out with in hopes that fear would drive them to christ? what a weird evangelical phenomenon. happy halloween peter! welcome to the u.s.
October 31st, 2009 at 7:59 am
Folks should check out the article from NYU’s Prof. Ann Pelligrini on this topic. (Performance Studies, once again!!)
October 31st, 2009 at 8:06 am
NPR’s This American Life just did a piece on this, in a show called “Devil on My Shoulder.” It was really good. They contrasted this piece with an Amish young man on his rumspringa. Worth a listen.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=213
October 31st, 2009 at 8:24 am
just looks like a normal sunday service to me. are you saying there’s something strange about this?
October 31st, 2009 at 8:43 am
Scaring the hell out of someone? I supposed, choosing fear is a from of free will?
October 31st, 2009 at 8:57 am
Sadly, we have all kinds of churches in the “Bible Belt” doing these things.
This church is just around the corner from where I live:
http://www.mvconline.org/judgementhouse-clips.html
October 31st, 2009 at 9:23 am
here’s a link to the story on this american life lia mentioned…
hell house starts around minute 11:
http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=213
October 31st, 2009 at 10:12 am
As someone who has been traumatized by witnessing it, I’d advise you to stay away. I sometimes think Satan truly runs all the Hell Houses around the world, because it is by far the most effective to make one hate all things Christian
October 31st, 2009 at 10:49 am
There was one of these in the town where I grew up. It was the big thing for all the youth groups to do as a “safe alternative” to going trick-or-treating.
October 31st, 2009 at 11:55 am
I live in the deep south ‘Bible Belt’; the day I shrugged off all this fundamental baggage was the day I felt I could finally breath. My rescue came in the form of my husband, who was born on the other side of the world and of another religion, seeing my faith (what I thought was faith) and my religion through another’s eye, especially from one I love, was/is quite a wake up call. I still cringe at my (past) fundamental self telling my husband, ‘Yes, I believed he would be going to Hell, because he did not believe like me’. Peter I am so grateful that you have come to the U.S. we, American Evangelical Christians, need to have our blinders taken off and our hearts opened. Sadly, we so need voices, such as you, here in the North West Panhandle of Florida, Alabama, etc. There desperately needs to be a counter or alternative message available.
A Southern Baptist in South Alabama a couple of years ago did a similar scare tactic, they made youth, who came to their ‘Fall Carnival’, sit through the ‘Passion of Christ’. My niece, who was 14 at the time, attended and was traumatized to tears and had nightmares for sometime after. What does teaching ‘fear’ over come? Weren’t we (supposed to be) taught that it is love that conquers all?
October 31st, 2009 at 2:46 pm
There was a Hell House near the city where I live. I engaged the Pastor in a conversation about it and whether or not it was consistent with the way Jesus did ministry. I think the guy cared about people, but he couldn’t see how harmful the story he was telling about Christianity really was. It breaks my heart that kids would experience this in the context of faith in Jesus whose perfect love casts out fear.
October 31st, 2009 at 2:52 pm
That is sick. What a horrible depiction of “Grace.”
November 1st, 2009 at 7:12 pm
‘Skip Says:
That is sick. What a horrible depiction of “Grace.”’
It’s funny, every time the church veers off-track and needs to be reformed, it’s because it’s lost track of grace. What kick-started the Reformation? Luther studying Galatians and seeing a disconnect between that and what the Church was teaching. What kick-started the Great Awakening? The Wesleys reading Luther’s commentary on Galatians and having the whole concept of grace refreshed. And now that the Church is on the brink of another paradigm shift, IMHO, what’s everyone talking about? Grace.
It’s sad when Christians think using guilt and fear rather than love and gratitude to motivate people to Christ is a good idea, cos it seems to me that when we disconnect from grace we inevitably fuck up.
November 3rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm
i dont think theres anything wrong with being motivated by fear or guilt bc there is that which we should in fact fear and those things of which we are certainly guilty.
fear and guilt are just as useful as love and gratitude – the real villain is the notion that legitimate thots and feelings such as these are somehow invalid reasons for action.
theres a massive difference between one who will channel them into appropriate avenues and another who will use them to manipulate a prescribed response. this is where i think the hell houses go astray.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
graceshaker – just to clarify, I do agree that there are things to be afraid of or feel remorse for, that fear of God is a virtue, and that God is ultimately very big and very scary so fear is an appropriate response! My concern is that that’s where it begins and ends for these guys…
November 7th, 2009 at 4:21 am
WTF!!
November 13th, 2009 at 10:18 am
[...] Apparently “hell houses” used to scare teenagers to Jesus are a North American thing, Pete Rollins is fascinated. [...]