Evangelical "Hell Houses"?

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“there aren’t hell-house scenes that deal with gossip or overeating at church potlucks or vicious power struggles and backstabbing among the rival candidates for Sunday-school superintendent because the scary God depicted in the hell house is supposed to be scary only to other people. God’s not somebody you’re supposed to fear if you’ve said a convincing-enough sinner’s prayer to feel confident that you’re in the “saved” category.”

That’s from How Jesus Saves the World from Us: 12 Antidotes to Toxic Christianity.

Not that I think Evangelical Protestantism is “toxic” mind you. :cool:

And then there’s this: 6 Warning Signs of Spiritual Abuse, which I suppose is slightly off-topic, but I think it may be helpful to anyone who’s been involved with churches that do Hell Houses or other such stuff.
 
ltwin said:
Hell Houses are designed to accomplish several things. First, its an evangelistic outreach–people do need to know that hell is a real concept and this just dramatizes that. Second, its a “Christian” alternative to haunted houses. It’s not really for small children. When I was growing up (I’m only 27), churches would take their youth groups (so these would be teenagers in middle and high schools). And yes, there usually is a scene representing heaven and what awaits those who are saved and there are church volunteers who will give counsel and pray with anyone who is led to want to become a Christian or turn away from sin.

It’s pretty much a fire and brimstone sermon but taking advantage of the Halloween season to put a different twist on the message.
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That is not as bad as it sounds. If it has heaven scene, then why is it called Hell House? Is hell also represented in it?
 
Reuben_J said:
That is not as bad as it sounds. If it has heaven scene, then why is it called Hell House? Is hell also represented in it?
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It concludes with a heaven scene because just focusing on hell would be depressing and not very redemptive messaging.
 
Peter_J said:
I want to admit up front that I’ve never participated in a Hell House – never even been to one. But I have been around conservative Christians quite a lot, and I think I’m fairly good at recognizing displays of arrogant self-righteousness. From what I’ve seen of Hell House (2001), I’d say it was an unusually blatant display of self-righteousness.

So no, I don’t buy the explanation that it “just dramatizes that”.
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OK. Everyone’s got an opinion.
 
Peter_J said:
“there aren’t hell-house scenes that deal with gossip or overeating at church potlucks or vicious power struggles and backstabbing among the rival candidates for Sunday-school superintendent because the scary God depicted in the hell house is supposed to be scary only to other people. God’s not somebody you’re supposed to fear if you’ve said a convincing-enough sinner’s prayer to feel confident that you’re in the “saved” category.”

That’s from How Jesus Saves the World from Us: 12 Antidotes to Toxic Christianity.
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Hmm. Or maybe its because a scene of two people gossiping or a fat man eating a cheeseburger or Sunday school teachers competing over a promotion are not really the kinds of dramatic material that makes someone say wow maybe I should pay attention.

And the sinner’s prayer is not a license to self-righteousness, nor is having an assurance of salvation based on faith in the saving work of Christ. People who think that really don’t understand the theology behind it in the first place.

In addition, since most people who attend these things undoubtedly are connected to a church in someway (most likely a youth group), church’s who put these types of things on are talking to themselves and their own people–undoubtedly those who have prayed a sinner’s prayer and confess to being saved.

The notion that church’s who organize these are engaging in self-righteousness is really unfair.
 
ltwin said:
In addition, since most people who attend these things undoubtedly are connected to a church in someway (most likely a youth group), church’s who put these types of things on are talking to themselves and their own people–undoubtedly those who have prayed a sinner’s prayer and confess to being saved.
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Well said.
 
ltwin said:
It concludes with a heaven scene because just focusing on hell would be depressing and not very redemptive messaging.
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OK. I take it as a tool for teaching/outreaching and evangelism. No biggie for me.

Growing up as a Catholic kid in a Catholic school, I was terribly afraid of hell, because of how explicitly our catechism teacher depicted it to be. On top of that, we would be going to hell if we committed mortal sin.

Those were strong deterrent for not committing sins and motivation for going for Confession.
 
Gertabelle said:
We used to have a fairly (in)famous one at a church near our home in years past. It was intended not for children (there was actually an age limit) but for teens and young adults.

The hell house was a series of rooms showing people engaged in various types of sins (what we Catholics would call mortal sins). One room looked like a medical office with a young woman on an exam table with a sheet over her torso and legs. She was having an abortion and screaming while the medical folks laughed evilly and the lights flickered on and off.

Other rooms included drugs and other such things – always with demons and such encouraging the sin and looking like they were about to consume the folks in their sin.

One of the last rooms had a “glass” floor. Below it were souls being tortured by demons in hell.

There may have been one room that showed the resurrection, or heaven, or some such thing – can’t remember

In the last room there were “counselors” to talk with people and encourage them to repentance and praying to accept Jesus in their lives.

It was all very high end – can’t imagine how much money and time it would take to set up this sort of thing!

Scare tactics from beginning to end. :nope:

I absolutely did NOT attend. This hell house and the controversy around it were covered on the local news more than once.
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I went to one that was similar to what you describe above, about 13-14 years ago, at a friend’s urging. I was evangelical and not Catholic at the time, but I was thoroughly disgusted and disturbed by it. It was basically a bizarre hybrid of a haunted house and an evangelization attempt (but a terrible one).

I am hoping that these “Christian haunted houses” were a passing fad. I can’t imagine that they engender true conversion, and they just serve to make the Christian community a laughing stock for all the wrong reasons.
 
ltwin said:
Hell Houses are designed to accomplish several things. First, its an evangelistic outreach–people do need to know that hell is a real concept and this just dramatizes that. Second, its a “Christian” alternative to haunted houses. It’s not really for small children. When I was growing up (I’m only 27), churches would take their youth groups (so these would be teenagers in middle and high schools). And yes, there usually is a scene representing heaven and what awaits those who are saved and there are church volunteers who will give counsel and pray with anyone who is led to want to become a Christian or turn away from sin.

It’s pretty much a fire and brimstone sermon but taking advantage of the Halloween season to put a different twist on the message.
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Not a good or effective way to attempt evangelization. It makes me cringe just remembering it (and not because it was scary; rather because it is embarrassing and a shame that some Christians think this is a good way to bring people to Christ). I say this not to put down the people who organize these Hell Houses, but because I believe this is an awful way to “evangelize” and think that those good intentions of sharing the gospel should be directed toward better means.
 
Ok, let me play the devil’s advocate here, no pun intended.
I have never been to a “Hell house”. But I have read Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, a third of which is essentially a “Hell house”.

I am concerned about scaring children under a certain age. But I am also concerned about the opposite extreme, where older children, and adults, ******never ******hear ****any ****thing about the reality we call Hell…or devils either.

In half of Catholic education and perhaps all of mainline Protestant religious education, we have created a sugary world, I’m ok, you’re ok, everything should be tolerated, there is no right or wrong, let no disturbing thought enter your mind, there is no “Sin” except intolerance. The assumption is that if we don’t talk about Satan, that means he no longer exists. Most priests and ministers are afraid to mention Hell or the Devil because it might make someone uncomfortable.

Are you surprised some colleges cancelled classes because some students were traumatized by seeing the slogan “Trump 2016”?

Not endorsing Hell houses, just trying to shine light in the opposite direction, on the far more common problem for teens and adults.
 
commenter said:
Are you surprised some colleges cancelled classes because some students were traumatized by seeing the slogan “Trump 2016”?
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No, I’m not really surprised by that. People like doing sensational things … if the college had instead printed a “10 Reasons For Not Supporting Trump in 2016” article, would we be talking about them? Most likely we wouldn’t even know about it.
 
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