One of the off-shoots of the haunted attraction industry and Christianity's love/hate relationship with Halloween is the 'Hell House.' This kind of Christian-themed haunted event presents a series of moralistic tableaux under the guise of a traditional Halloween walk-through attraction; however, guests don't truly interact with the scenes, as they do in a typical haunted house, but are rather passive audience members for a series of short plays that each present the commission of a sin (in a gruesome fashion). The last room in a Hell House usually involves a prayer meeting with the pastor or minister in which he attempts to convert the paying guests to his church. Hell houses may have first appeared in the 1970s, but they didn't attract major attention until a Colorado pastor named Keenan Roberts began selling a 'Hell House Outreach' kit. Priced at $299, the kit includes instructions on how to run a Hell House; for additional fees, Hell House presenters can also purchase optional extra scenes that include 'Gay Wedding', 'Post-birth Abortion' and 'Cyber-chick Multimedia' (the last offers 'contemporary TNT to caution of the dangerous cesspool the Internet can become'). There are now hundreds of Hell Houses offered in the United States every year, and they claim a 35 per cent conversion rate.
Lisa Morton, Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween, Reaktion Books, 2019, p. 108.
First, the copy I have is a 2019 reprint of the 2012 original. Nine years is an eon in popular culture, so "Hell Houses" may have fallen in popularity. But I would point out that since they were never part of a Presidential political campaign or even noticed by a major political party, they were never (or not for long) a part of the "national discussion" (because if it isn't connected to the major political parties, a "national" political candidate, or maybe a popular-at-the-moment celebrity, it isn't part of the "national discussion").* So I don't know that her information here is all that current; but this raises several interesting issues we are still grappling with, and which especially media pooh-bahs on the East Coast seem thoroughly ignorant of; and shocked when they hear about it.
But let's start with the intersection of religion, or more specifically soteriology, with capitalism. The underlying justification for a "Hell House" is literally to scare hell (the place, not the metaphor) out of people. And if you can combine that with good old American enterpreneurship, it's a win-win! The people selling these "kits" make money, the people running the "Hell House" make money, and the churches get members they can milk for money (yes, I'm a pastor; yes, I know I'm saying it's a racket. Yes, I climb down from my judgement seat in a moment and do my mea culpas.)
So there's that unholy alliance; there's also the irony of this, an historical one. Hallowe'en started out as "All Hallow's Even," meaning the evening before All Saint's Day (always November 1 on the liturgical calendar. Easter is a moveable feast; All Saint's, like Christmas, is a fixed date.). All Saint's Day originated, obviously, with the Roman Catholic church. The Reformed wing of the Reformation (the other was Lutheranism) decided the best way to reform the church of Christ was to renounce all "Papist" trappings, including saints and feast days. Days like Halloween, which became in the popular imagination a day when demons freely walked the earth (deriving, most likely, from the Irish sentiment that it was the day when the veil between worlds was thin, and ancestors could return to vist families. Not ghosts and terrors; family members gone on.), was, to the Reformed movement, superstition and "Romish" foolishness, if not outright heresy. It's largely the Reformed side of Protestantism that pushes these ideas of hell and damnation so strongly, especially the emphasis on salvation as a means of escaping the demons who plague this world (their idea, not mine). Halloween, then, is a natural holiday to "hate," but what better response than to use the "devices of the Devil" against him?
I can think of a few; starting, again, with Matthew's parable of the sheep and the goats. I know, I know, but look carefully at that parable and tell me where the sheep get treated well because they professed "faith" in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord? Or did they just behave kindly towards others?
Anyway, to circle back around to current events: much wailing and gnashing of teeth about people with fixed and apparently crazy beliefs, be they political or religious or medical or related to public health. I don't remember much hand-wringing about "Hell Houses", which are nothing more than Chick Tracts come to life, where you pay for the conversion pitch at the end. Speaking of which: find me one example in the gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, or any of the letters of Paul or the others, where there is a story of someone being converted to Christianity by being scared silly by lurid descriptions of the torments of hell. Just one.
That's what I thought.
The crazy has always been with us. I find this kind much more disturbing because it afflicts the vulnerable with nonsense and a philosophy (!) that this life is a demon-haunted one where all the wonders of human endeavor are just traps for the unwary, luring them to damnation. I reject it. I resent it. I find it as bad, if not worse, than people ranting at school board meetings or gathering outside some poor school board member's house. It's as bad as current efforts to ban books from school libraries (when I was in high school the librarians were more circumspect. The story went around that a librarian at my high school finally cracked a copy of Cat's Cradle and got to the passage where the narrator recounts interviewing a prostitute in a bar, a story that ends with him saying, IIRC, "in the end we both underestimated our indifference," or something equally anodyne. Shocked to read such a intimation in intimate relations, she pulled it from the library shelves. Most of us reading Vonnegut had it at home on our bookshelves, though.). I despise banning books. Children can find more on the internet than they will ever read in a graphic novel (those seem to be the target of choice lately).
But to the soteriological claims. I know the entire concept of salvation, going back to Anselm's atonement theory and Augustine's insistence on original sin being our birthright, is based on original sin, the story of Genesis 2. However, before Genesis 2 comes Genesis 1, and a creation that at every point is pronounced "good." Reformed theology of the "scare hell outta people" variety posits that not only are we all sinners at birth, but that we are damned and probably love damnation (those of us who give in to our lusts, anyway; and yes, most of this fear of lusts stuff is from the old Catholic seven deadlies business. Funny how much of Catholic teachings the Reformed movement kept, while despising Catholicism with the other hand.) if left to our own devices. There is a Psalm (I should remember which one, but I don't just now) that speaks of "being a sinner from my birth," which I used in worship one Sunday. It prompted one of the kinder members of that church (I lasted there less than a year, if that tells you anything about the other members) asked me about, because it disturbed her to think of babies as "sinners" when they hadn't done anything. If asked that today, in a situation where I could give a theology lesson and a lesson in biblical exegesis (interpretation), I'd say the Psalmist is making a plea of humility before the Almighty, rather than a statement of Calvinistic/Augustinian doctrine on the subject of soteriology. "Sinner" in that psalm recognizes not a state of deserved damnation for all eternity, but of humility before God, whom the psalm asks for guidance and consideration. Indeed, as another psalm asks, what is humanity that God is mindful of it? Not mud and pond scum (the usual Reformed teaching), but again, a statement of humility. Which is the right attitude to have toward all people, too. "Lord, when did we see you?" The humble and the arrogant ask the same question; but only the former get invited in to the glories of eternity with God.
Oh, and per Matthew 25 (to keep this short), the world is good and we make it better with our acts of kindness toward others. What does the Lord require of you? Nothing all that esoteric, after all.
The last ironic bit to notice here is the connection to the morality plays of medieval times, when audiences were illiterate and needed Biblical stories and teachings acted out the better to learn them. The remnants of this persist in the "Christmas pageants" and plays that the most Reformed tradition churches (the larger Baptist churches here in town make much of their productions which include live animals, spotlights, probably microphones, too) continue to this day, oblivious of their "papist" origins; or morality plays like "Everyman," which is a far subtler and more interesting tableu than anything a "Hell House kit" might tell you how to put on. Everything fades with time.
I'm trying to prepare this blog for Advent, moving slowly away from reposting political tweets at least for a month, and toward some sense of Advent as a time of preparation. Preparation for what is an issue that will continue to make me go in circles. We'll see if I ever reach the center of that maze.
*Which raises all kinds of issues about what is and isn't part of the "national discussion," and how one gets and keeps a place in that conversation, doesn't it?
