Hell House
Hell houses ( English light houses or judgment houses ) are haunted houses , which since the 1980s by fundamentalist - evangelical churches in the United States are operated. They are aimed primarily at children and young people, who should be brought closer to the value system of the organizing evangelical groups through the topics presented.
history
In the 1970s, the Youth for Christ movement opened a haunted attraction in Bakersfield called Scream in the Dark, which was later taken over by other local chapters. Although hosted by an evangelical organization, the attraction did not yet have a Christian message. It was the inspiration for the Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell for Scaremare: The House of Death, the first hellhouse with a religious purpose.
George Ratliff's documentary Hell House (2001) reports that in ten years the Trinity Assembly of God Church's hellhouse received 75,000 visitors, of whom 15,000 became Church members.
Topics and content
Hellhouses are constructed in a similar way to haunted house attractions, but essentially serve to spread a message based on the value system of the evangelical groups.
Typically a guide disguised as Satan and equipped with appropriate attributes ( trident and the like) leads the visitors through the rooms, each of which addresses a moral threat to young people. Not only the immoral act and its worldly consequences are presented, but attention is also drawn to the consequences for the salvation of the soul in the hereafter . One of the kits available for hellhouses has seven to ten standard topics, including abortion, homosexuality, extramarital sex, drunk driving, drugs, suicide, and school slaughter . Misconduct such as pornography consumption or lying are mentioned casually as paving the way for more serious sins.
Each sin is performed with a drama, with a focus on the sufferings caused by the plot. For example, on the subject of abortion, a crying young girl is shown on an operating table, where amateur actors simulate an abortion and the mutilated fetus is reproduced by bleeding animal meat. The narrator reports that the girl was raped after her moral powers weakened due to the use of ecstasy . The room devoted to homosexuality shows a dying gay teenager with skin lesions as a result of AIDS contracted during his sexual digressions.
Hellhouses can be seen as a countermovement to the popular Halloween festivities, which in church circles are said to have played down the occult .
controversy
Hellhouses are controversial both inside and outside evangelicalism for their drastic display. Proponents believe that in times of extreme moral neglect, extreme means are required. Hellhouses are contemporary facilities that are necessary to compete with Halloween parties. Others consider hellhouses to be an exaggeratedly manipulative form of influence that anticipates personal freedom to decide for or against Jesus Christ . Some secular educators are hostile to the Hellhouses because they fear traumatic effects on young visitors.
Movies
- Hell House , (2001) by George Ratliff
- The Root of All Evil? (2006) by Richard Dawkins
literature
- Douglas Davies: The theology of death, p. 82 f. T&T Clark, London 2008, ISBN 0-567-03048-2
- Gregory S. Jackson: The Word and its witness: the spiritualization of American realism, pp. 37 ff. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2009, ISBN 0-226-39003-9
- Elisabeth Ann Nixon: Playing devil's advocate on the path to heaven: evangelical hell houses and the play of politics, fear and faith. Dissertation, Ohio State University 2006 ( PDF, 3.4 MB )
- Quentin J. Schultze, Robert Woods: Understanding evangelical media: the changing face of Christian communication, p. 163. IVP Academic, Downers Grove 2008, ISBN 978-0-8308-2882-1
- W. Scott Poole: Satan in America: the Devil we know, p. 193 f. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 2009, ISBN 978-0-7425-6171-7
- Nicholas Rogers: Halloween: from pagan ritual to party night, p. 161 f. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, ISBN 0-19-514691-3