Horror, Christian-style

[Lainey]

From here:

Halloween Evoking New Kind Of Spirit
`Hell House' Mixes Fright, Jesus Christ
October 30, 2006
By WILLIAM WEIR, COURANT STAFF WRITER WATERBURY -- Hell House's organizers promise visitors a trip "to hell and back," and you might first mistake it for plenty of other frightful Halloween attractions.

Once inside, though, visitors are greeted by an actor playing Jesus Christ. He explains that hell awaits those who fail to accept his word.

Here's a preview: This netherworld has a lot of the usual haunted-house-type stuff - shrieking ghouls, flying skeletons - but visitors also happen upon wayward pastors, young folks who have turned away from God and others who fall out of a very strict view of a heaven-bound life.

Dan Rubelmann, of Watertown, has been working on Hell House since early September and recruited the help of friends, family and members of his church, the First Assembly of God in Waterbury.

Kids from eighth grade to a couple of years out of high school are his target audience - that's the demographic least likely to be born again, he said. He wants to give them an old-fashioned Halloween fright for their $2 admission. But he also wants to make them think about choosing heaven over hell.

"My idea is to challenge kids," Rubelmann says. That way, he says, they can "make their decision whether to know Christ or not."

Holding a rubber monster mask, Rubelmann points down the winding corridor made from sheets and explains that visitors will be separated from their friends as they enter Hell House. Hell is something you face alone, he said.

The idea for Hell House started with Jerry Falwell in the 1970s as an alternative Halloween attraction. It was popularized in the 1990s by a Colorado minister and has since become common in other parts of the country. Around here, though, it's been scarce. Rubelmann says he can't recall seeing any others in Connecticut.

Other versions of Hell House are overtly political and feature skits that take on such issues as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research. One in Colorado reserved a spot in hell for Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

Not surprisingly, the Hell House approach has sparked protests, even from other Christian groups, which say fear isn't the way to spread God's word.

Though visitors at the Waterbury version might see images of abortion clinics flash on projection screens as they did during Hell House's introductory "media blitz" last week, Rubelmann said this Hell House focuses less on social issues and more on their interpretation of hell as it appears in the Bible. For example, the tour includes a scenario in which Iran was sending a nuclear warhead to Connecticut.

Besides the Bible, Rubelmann said, source material comes from two books by authors who say they know hell through out-of-body experiences.

Visitors will see various skits written by Rubelmann's son, Jeffrey Cheney. These include one about a group of teenagers who were raised as Christians but then left the church and have been sent to hell. A preacher who gave his parishioners only part of the Gospel also ends up in hell.

Another skit features a twentysomething who spent a lot of time doing charity work but who never fully accepted Jesus Christ.

"Good deeds are not enough," Cheney said.

Rubelmann and his group of about 30 helpers spent much of last week at the Family Life Center, constructing their vision of hell. Stretching their $2,600 budget (mostly from Rubelmann's pocket), they're making use of the empty warehouses that surround the center.

Workers shrink-wrapped Christ's "throne room" with a blowtorch, while others hung large paintings of ghostly bodies floating above flames. A skeleton with angel wings is rigged to fly out at visitors. Hell's sulfuric aroma is courtesy of stink bombs.

The mood was upbeat, and the volunteers could just as easily have been preparing a bake sale. It's exhausting but fun, said Rubelmann's wife, Carol, as she carried a papier-mâché stalactite across the complex. Father Richard Dionne, one of the church's pastors, arrived with Dunkin' Donuts coffee and hot chocolate for everyone. He's playing Jesus Christ, though he admitted he still had some lines to memorize.

At the end of their journey through hell (about a 12-minute trip), visitors are greeted by a group of ministers there to talk about what they've just seen and how they feel about it. If it's successful, Rubelmann said he would like to expand it for future Halloweens.

Hell House is open from 6 to 10 p.m. today and Tuesday. Admission is $2.

What do you think of this? Terrorizing kids and making them pay for it. Yep, sounds about right. Is this moral?

[Madeline]

2 Corinthians 5:11 - Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.

I believe that little children need to be shown the Love of God instead of trying to scare them into repentance. Perhaps when they get older and begin rebelling against their parents, they can be shown the fear of the Lord. I turned to God because of fear of my father who was a stern Christian. If I would be naughty, he would spank me!

Love,
Madeline

[The Persnickety Platypus]

Sure, people usually make the best decisions when scared irrational.

Heck, just look at the 50's nuclear arms race and the war in Iraq.

[otseng]

What do you think of this? Terrorizing kids and making them pay for it.

I don't think it's quite "terrorizing kids and making them pay for it." But more like "kids pay money, then they get to be terrorized".

I don't understand why in general though people would pay money to be scared. Like watching horror films. And in a sense, this would not be too much different.

But one thing that I would have a disagreement with in "hell house" is the implication that those who have certain political stances, or get an abortion, or are gay, would go to hell.

[Northwoods]

[quote]Halloween Evoking New Kind Of Spirit
`Hell House' Mixes Fright, Jesus Christ
October 30, 2006
By WILLIAM WEIR, COURANT STAFF WRITER WATERBURY -- Hell House's organizers promise visitors a trip "to hell and back," and you might first mistake it for plenty of other frightful Halloween attractions.[quote]

This Halloween approach is much like the traveling play Christians take around the country (maybe the world) each year called, I believe, "Hell's Flames, Heaven's Gates." Have you seen it? I took my pad and pen a few years ago and stood in the back. Here were all these families with their young kids whom most of the parents would never allow to go see a horror film with blood and guts. But, somehow, it was okay to let their young ones watch families being torn apart as Satan's helpers literally dragged their mommies or brothers or sisters or daddies or husbands or wives away from them down into a firey pit. And why? Not always because of sinful behavior; some of them were wonderful people but were taken simply because they didn't believe the Gospel and accept Jesus.

So, in answer to your question of whether it is okay to frighten people into Christianity, my first thought is that it seems to me that fear is what drives most people into it anyway. They accept the story that says we are all fallen (which I don't think is in Genesis 1-3) and are scarred to eternity that they'll go to Hell unless they rectify the situation. Or, they have an existential fear of "living" in a vacuum, all alone in the universe, unable to figure out purpose and meaning, responsible for figuring it all out and the pressure and pain and loneliness of it all frightens them enough to embrace Christianity because it seems to provide a solution to it all.

My second thought is: No, it is not okay because it perpetuates a negative perspective on humankind and on ourselves, on the children going through the Halloween maze, that I don't think can be substantiated. If the point is to get converts and help convince the prosyletizers that they are right because they get people to agree with them and become more and more of a majority in the United States and make themselves feel like kings of the mountain, then stooping to scare tactics becomes understandable. Of course, Jesus did (according to the New Testament) say he'd come to tear families apart and he shooed his family away at least once and he told his mother "O woman, What have you to do with me?" And I suppose one could focus, as fundamentalists do, on the 20+ verses of the New Testament that proclaim that, unless you believe in Christ, you will be condemned. But, if you believe that Christianity is mostly about nurturing our ability to have compassion, to love, and to forgive and have other Jewish and widespread values like helping the poor, taking care of the orphan and widow, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and treating the stranger as one's own, then fear hardly seems to be the way to teach such values.

[Scrotum]

Sure, people usually make the best decisions when scared irrational.

Heck, just look at the 50's nuclear arms race and the war in Iraq.

I think your sarcasm went over the head of most.