thoughts on the documentary "Hell House" (and a little bit of "Jesus Camp")

(MAJOR CW AND TW FOR MENTIONS OF RELIGIOUS TRAUMA, SA/CSA, GUN VIOLENCE, SUICIDE, ABORTION/MISCARRIAGE, AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE)

recently, i was looking for various documentaries of different cults, and one that caught my attention was one called Hell House. essentially, this documentary is about an Evangelical church putting their own version of a haunted house called a "hell house". what a hell house does is "warn" visitors of falling into sin and rejecting God and the eternal punishment that follows. of course, being an attraction run by an Evangelical church, the imagery in this attraction was not only disturbing but downright disgusting and offensive. to put it as lightly as i could, there were scenes of a drunk driving accident, a school shooting/suicide, gang violence, a hospital scene in which a gay man dies of AIDS and a girl has a miscarriage due to a botched abortion pill, a rave then suicide, domestic/family violence, and then a scene of Heaven vs Hell. the attraction then ends with a preacher urging the visitors to repent.

the one scene of the attraction that was the most repulsive in my opinion was the rave/suicide scene. in the scene, a girl gets drugged and then is implied to have been SA'd. as she comes home, a demon tempts her into suicide by invoking her childhood abuse from her father and encouraging her to reject God. of course, the girl rejects God, kills herself, and thus is condemned to Hell. and it turns out i am not the only one who found the hell house attraction disgusting, for in the documentary, a group of teenagers/college students confront one of the people in charge of the hell house attraction. that part of the movie was my favorite imo because those kids had a point. one of them said something along the lines of "the Catholic Bible is 2000 years old and then the Protestant church broke off. if that never happened, you [Evangelical Protestants] wouldn't even have a Bible", obviously saying that Evangelicals do not have the truth. then a security officer had to be brought out to calm down the situation. frankly, nothing needed to be calmed down because the group of college kids wasn't threatening any violence or escalating the situation. regardless, another one of the college kids then remarks that the girl in the aforementioned rave/suicide scene shouldn't be damned to Hell because she was in a very poor state of mental health. all the while, the security guard dances around the issue going "oH wELL, shE wAS cONdEmNeD bEcAUSe shE rEjeCTeD GoD", which just goes to show how intellectually honest Evangelicals really are (spoiler alert: they're not).

another thing i thought while watching this film pretty much sums up on what i think the Evangelical Christian worldview is. the hell house attraction alone in the documentary shows it all with the scenes of violence and abuse. Evangelicals see the world as inherently evil. to Evangelicals, the world doesn't just have aspects that may lead people into sin, no, but as a horrible place with horrible people. to them, the only good that exists is God and Jesus Christ. funnily enough, while rewatching Jesus Camp after a few years, the same thought occurred to me. the children in that summer camp in the documentary were being indoctrinated into this worldview of inherent evil. and that in of itself, is such a horrible theology. yes, a lot of evil exists in the world, but a lot of good exists too. for every greedy billionaire, there are ten times as many people providing resources for the poor and marginalized. as someone who is deeply spiritual and looking to study Christianity further, it infuriates me that this belief exists. this kind of theology, ironically, contributes to even more evil in the world as racism, queerphobia, and misogyny gets spread around (often no thanks to Evangelicals). if you want to have people become believers in Jesus Christ, you show the good of the world and show the goodness in yourself, because Jesus Christ is good. and if one decides to follow a different path, they did not sign themself away to eternal punishment and torture, they just only decided to follow a different path.

if you read this far, please be sure to take care of yourself. i just brought up some really heavy and disturbing topics, so drink some coffee or tea, have a snack, and/or watch/read something light and fun. and since it's getting close to Christmas, do something good for yourself and your friends <3