“Scary Religion”
A Sermon by Reverend Chris Buice
M
y friend Barry Whittemore, who grew up in the Baptist church, once explained to me the difference between Northern Baptists and Southern Baptists. He said, “Northern Baptists say there ain’t no hell. Southern Baptists say the hell there ain’t.”
I don’t know if this is a fair characterization of the differences between Northern and Southern Baptists...but if it is then Unitarian Universalists place their sympathies with the Northern Baptists.
The concept of hell is an old one. It has developed in many different cultures. In a pre-scientific world, people believed in a three-layer universe. The earth was flat and hell was literally below the ground. Volcano eruptions led people to the conclusion that it was a place of fire and brimstone. Heaven was literally up in the sky somewhere in the clouds. This was the way people saw things. Eventually, scientific exploration did away with this literal understanding of heaven and hell but the old imagery remains when people speak of heaven as being “up there” and hell being “down there”. Different religions have different criteria for who ends up going “up there” or “down there” and not every religion has a concept of heaven and hell but the idea is quite common.
Historically, both Unitarians and Universalists were quick to move beyond the pre-scientific world view and those conceptions of heaven and hell. In the 19th century William Ellery Channing told his congregation that he did not believe Hell was as a physical place so much as a spiritual state. The word hell was a metaphor used for describing an inward spiritual condition. Hell was the alienation that human beings can have with each other and with God. Channing said, people “are fleeing from an outward hell when in truth they carry within themselves the Hell which they should chiefly dread.”
Of course, not everyone in our day and age would agree with Channing’s spiritual interpretation of the word hell. I once took a U.U. Sunday school class to visit a Catholic Church. We had called ahead to let the church know we were coming. And so I think the priest might have had us in mind when he said in his sermon. “There is a real heaven. There is a real hell. Its not just a state of mind.” Not everyone has rejected a belief in a literal hell. I become aware of this fact whenever I see a car with the bumper sticker that says, “Now boarding for Eternal Life, Smoking or Non-Smoking.”
A few years ago I had the opportunity to get a very close-up view of a literal view of hell. I read in the newspaper about a church sponsoring what they called “Judgment House.” This Judgment House was billed as a Christian alternative to Halloween. People were invited to visit the Judgment House so they could see a dramatic portrayal of the judgment of souls and the fires of hell where the “unsaved” languish for all eternity. You might say that the purpose of Judgment House was to scare the hell out of people.
I get angry when I see things like Judgment house. I get angry at churches that use scare tactics to win converts. Judgment House is just a dramatic example of this kind of fear-mongering. I believe that when you use terror for religious purposes it is a kind of spiritual terrorism and it is wrong.
And yet I am also critical of preachers who condemn books they haven’t read or boycott movies they haven’t seen. As a minister of a liberal church I felt that if I was going criticize practices like Judgment House I should be willing to go and see one for myself. And so one October a few years ago when I was living in South Carolina I did just that. The day before Halloween, my friend Doug Jensen and I went to hell in a Honda...or more precisely we drove to Greenville, South Carolina, in my Honda in order to go to Judgment House.
The first thing I noticed about Judgment House was the size of the parking lot of the church that was hosting this event. It was like a mall parking lot. There were tons of people going to Judgment House. There were vans, buses, and cars. I turned to Doug and said, “How come we can’t get this many folks to come to a U.U. church? What are we doing wrong?” Doug kept a diplomatic silence. We walked into the building where we had to wait in line before we could go to hell. We actually had to fill out a card, take a ticket and wait for our turn.
The crowd was so big...and once again I had to compare it to the number that the average UU church gets on the average Sunday morning. And I had to wonder, “Why would more people rather go to hell than go to a Unitarian Universalist church.” Doug suggested that maybe it is because at the U.U. Church we don’t give easy answers to life’s tough questions. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it is easier to dwell on the worst metaphysical speculations about life after death than it is to live and face the more concrete uncertainties and ambiguities of this life on earth.
Eventually Doug and I were able to begin our tour. Our tour guide introduced himself and then led us on our way. As I tell the story of my trip through Judgment House I want you to bear in mind that this is a jaded person’s version of the tour. I think the concept of “Judgment House” is harmful and I don’t want to minimize the damage it does, especially because it hurts all the wrong people. It scares the young, the vulnerable and the innocent. If you are jaded, like I am, you can walk through Judgment House unscathed and even have a sense of humor about it. But I hope my humor does not hide the real harm I believe happens when religion becomes more about fear than faith.
The tour guide led us through some rooms where we got to meet two characters, a brother and sister. The sister had accepted Jesus as her personal savior. The brother had not. Under a set of unusual circumstances they both died in a house fire (the special effects were pretty good in this part of the tour). The girl died because she went into the burning house to save her brother. After their tragic deaths they went to the gates of heaven to be judged and sorted out for the afterlife.
The Judge was, of course, a man and he stood on an elevated platform. He was surrounded by angels (who were female.) He was not identified. I could not tell whether he was meant to be Saint Peter or God. Either way he had a very judgmental look on his face, which seemed appropriate for Judgment House.
The Judge called out the brother’s name and told him to step forward and we learned that the brother’s name was not in the Lamb’s book of life. And so he was dragged off screaming to the fires of Hell. The sister was then called forward. Her name was in the book and she was welcomed into heaven.
Then something surprising happened. The Judge called out our names...the names of the people who were on the tour. We had filled out cards ahead of time so they had our names. The judge called out each person by name and asked each one of us to step forward...It was one of those awkward social situations...and it was hard to know how to respond. For the most part people were obedient and stepped forward when called. When they called my name I stepped forward too mainly because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. But when the judge called out the name of my friend Doug Jensen ...no one stepped forward. Doug held his ground clearly not intimidated by this heavenly judge. So the judge moved on to the next name.
After he called everyone’s name the judge reminded us that one day we too would be called to the judgment seat and he asked us. “Will your name be in the Lamb’s book of life?” After the Judge asked the question, our tour guide escorted us from the room so that we could begin our tour through hell and heaven. This was so that we could make a better-informed decision about whether we preferred to spend Eternity in the Smoking or Non-Smoking section.
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“Scary Religion”
A Sermon by Reverend Chris Buice
After we saw the Judge, the tour went straight to hell. In order to go to hell we had to go down a couple of flights of stairs, which seemed appropriate. The concept of hell is found in many different cultures and so I should say from the start that this was fundamentalist Christian version of hell. If you do not accept Jesus as your lord and savior this is the place you are going. If you are ethical, kind, and considerate it does not matter. If you were born and raised in foreign culture and never heard of Jesus it does not matter. If you’re a good person who happens to be Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish it is to not avail. It is a simple concept. If you don’t accept Jesus then you are toast.
So we entered the fundamentalist Christian version of hell. It was dark with red tinted lights and special effect lighting that created the impression of flames crackling and twisting on the wall. And there were teenagers chained to walls screaming in agony. No doubt some of these teenagers will need therapy later in life. Some of the chained people were screaming, “Jesus save me! Please save me Jesus!” Apparently, at this point, Jesus no longer cared... because Jesus made no effort to save these people. Instead they were trapped in hell for all eternity.
This may be the most disturbing aspect of this kind of theology. It presents the picture of a merciless God: a God who turns a deaf ear to cries for help. In fact some of the other characters in the Judgment House play come out looking more admirable than God. Earlier, I mentioned that the sister in this play died because she went into a burning house to try and rescue her brother. She risked her life in an effort to save her sibling from a house fire, whereas the God of Judgment house does not lift a finger to help anyone out of the fires of hell even though they call out for his help. The people cry out for Jesus to save them but Jesus does nothing. In this way I think the sister in the play appeared kinder than her God or Jesus. She was more loving than the God portrayed in Judgment House. The sister was more compassionate and unselfish than the God she worshipped.
This is very strange theology. The Protestant preacher Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, rejected this kind of theology and so do I. He once said that it is, “Better to believe in no God than to believe in a cruel God, a tribal God, a sectarian God. Belief in God is one of the most dangerous beliefs a human being can cherish. If the God we believe in is small and mean, the more intensely we hold this belief and cultivate it the smaller and meaner we will be. People have believed in a cruel God who will send a large part of the human race to an endless hell, and by this belief all their own cruelty was confirmed. They got the idea that the torture chambers of earth were but replicas of the great torture chamber of God. It behooves us to take care what kind of God we believe in. Some of the people who do not believe in God at all are more merciful, truth-loving, and just than are some who do.” (adapted for gender inclusive language)
My own understanding of God is more in line with that of the Universalists who professed faith in “God as Eternal and all-conquering love.” The idea that God is love is ultimately irreconcilable with the idea of eternal damnation in hell. For love seeks reconciliation not estrangement. Love seeks unity and not division. Misguided Christians can try to scare the hell out of people but the scriptures remind us, “there is no fear in love for perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18)
Of course, the focus in Judgment House is not on God or love. The focus is on the devil. I think it is fair to say that in Judgment House makes the devil look Big and God look small. So let’s talk about the devil. The devil of Judgment house was pretty impressive from the point of view of make up and special effects. On a scale of 1 to 10 I’d definitely give him a 9. Good make up. Pointed ears. Horns. Sinister features. Pretty good acting. He had a neat little book with the names of people condemned to hell written in it. And when he opened his book flames shot out of it. Needless to say the brother’s name was in the book. And the devil quickly made the decision to throw him into the lake of fire where the teenage boy screamed in agony and pain. As the boy continued to scream, our tour guide led us out of the room, into the hall so that we could do something that the rock group Led Zeppelin would have approved. We began climbing a stairway to heaven. Note that hell being down stairs and heaven being upstairs is a holdover to the literal pre-scientific view of a three-layer universe.
Heaven conformed to most conventional stereotypes. There were pearly gates and clouds and angels in robes with harps and there was Jesus. Now on a scale of 1 to 10 I’d have to give Jesus a 9 ½. And he might have been a 10 if he hadn’t been covered with a light sprinkling of some kind of glitter. Of course, this was the white European image of Jesus. He was what my Western Civilization professor once called, “The California hippy Jesus.” No doubt the historic Jesus, who was a Middle eastern Jew, looked quite different...but this Jesus was a very good re-creation of the Jesus I learned about it Sunday School. And I had to ask myself the question, “Where does a conservative church find someone with long hair and a beard like that.”
Once we entered heaven Jesus embraced each one of us and whispered into our ears, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” This Jesus may have been a closet Universalist because I noticed he even hugged Doug...even though Doug had refused to step forward to the judgment seat earlier in the tour. And he hugged me even though I am a Unitarian Universalist minister. After being embraced by Jesus our tour guide led us away from heaven and escorted us to special area where we could receive post Judgment House counseling.
At the group counseling session we were each given a card that invited us to check the appropriate box to complete a sentence. The sentence was something like...”After touring Judgment House I …
a)made a decision to accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior
b)reconfirmed my commitment to Christ
c)would like to talk to a personal counselor to discuss my experience.
You will note that this is a set of limited options. There was no option that said, “After touring Judgment house I’m thinking about becoming a Buddhist.” Or “After this tour I decided to quit going to church.” None of these were options. Doug and I both declined to fill out the card and we left the church without the benefit of personal counseling. We went back out into the parking lot and we got into our car and drove home.
I’ve thought about my visit to Judgment House over the years. The experience gave me plenty of food for thought. On one hand it was kind of interesting to take a tour through the religious imagination of some literal-minded Christians. To walk through the sort of images that fill the fundamentalists mind. And yet, when I take this detached point of view I think I am minimizing the harm that can be done by this kind of religion.
My sister told me about how her children were once invited to go to a place like Judgment House without knowing exactly what they were getting into. The experience was traumatizing and gave them nightmares. My sister was mad and I am angry too. Religion should not be used to give children nightmares or to instill in them fears that make them toss and turn at night.
And so in conclusion I say that the religious educator Sophia Fah’s was right,
Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children’s days with fears of unknown calamities. Other beliefs are like sunshine, blessing children with the warmth of happiness. Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved, friends from enemies. Other beliefs are bonds in a world community, where sincere differences beautify the pattern.
I know what kind of beliefs I want to live and teach. For the three layer understanding of the universe is no longer adequate scientifically or spiritually. And so I encourage us to say with Theodore Parker, “Be ours a religion which like sunshine goes everywhere; it’s temple all space, It’s shrine the good heart, It’s creed all truth; It’s ritual works of love. It profession of faith divine living.”
It has been said that some religions try to get people into heaven whereas Unitarian Universalists try to get heaven into people. And there is more than a little truth to this statement. No doubt there are some in our community who might say to us, “There ain’t no way you Unitarian Universalists are going to get in to heaven” To which we can say, “The hell there ain’t.”
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