hell

It's hard to avoid the theology in 'A Christmas Carol,' but some movies do just that

It's hard to avoid the theology in 'A Christmas Carol,' but some movies do just that

On his way to becoming a Hollywood superstar, Bill Murray demonstrated great skill at delivering rants that blurred the line between lunacy and pathos.

In the 1988 flick "Scrooged," he belted out lessons learned from visits with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, as well as occupying his own coffin in a crematorium.

"I'm not crazy. It's Christmas Eve. It's the one night when we … share a little more. For a couple of hours, we are the people we always hoped we would be. It's really a miracle because it happens every Christmas Eve," proclaimed Murray's character, a greedy, arrogant TV executive.

"If you waste that miracle, you're gonna burn for it. I know. … There are people that don't have enough to eat and who are cold. You can go and greet these people. Take an old blanket out to them or make a sandwich and say, 'Here!' l get it now. … I believe in it now."

"Scrooged" is a fascinating Tinseltown take on the Charles Dickens novella "A Christmas Carol" because of what the film contains and what it leaves out, said English literature professor Dwight Lindley of Hillsdale College in Michigan.

This dark comedy contains miracles, ghosts, angels, sin, judgment, penance, purgatory, damnation, the Grim Reaper and eternal life. What it lacks is any meaningful role for God or a Holy Babe in a manger.

"Scrooged" is as "far as some people in Hollywood can go with Dickens," by "domesticating his message and making it more comfortable," said Lindley, who is teaching a six-lecture online course about this 1843 text.

The class, he added, was created for "anyone who loves the story, but doesn't know how to dig deeper into it than what they have seen in the somehow superficial versions that are around. … Some people have a sense that there is something deeper, something moving underneath the surface."

For many, watching "A Christmas Carol" on video is a holiday ritual. These movies usually include the basic story, while ignoring the narration in which Dickens frames his parable.


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Why do ancient churches pray for the dead, while many modern churches do not?

Why do ancient churches pray for the dead, while many modern churches do not?

THE QUESTION:

“Why Do Catholics Pray for the Dead?”

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

A Catholic News Agency feature for All Saints’ Day with the above headline was written by senior Rome Correspondent Hannah Brockhaus. One of The Guy’s colleagues immediately critiqued that wording because Eastern Orthodox Christians likewise pray for the dead — although in a different mode from Catholics, as we’ll see.

Perhaps the appropriate question should instead be: Why don’t Protestants pray for the dead when these other Christians have done so for many centuries?

There’s long-established history behind the practice of Christians during their earthly life praying to benefit fellow believers who are dead. This was commended by revered theologians of the early church.

By the early 5th Century, St. Augustine said “the whole Church observes this practice which was handed down by the Fathers.” He stated that through parishioners’ prayers, Masses, and donations, “there is no doubt that the dead are aided, that the Lord might deal more mercifully with them than their sins would deserve.”

The modern Orthodox catechism “The Living God” (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press) teaches that just as Jesus and St. Stephen prayed for forgiveness even for the people who were executing them, so “the prayer of the righteous can also help to obtain forgiveness for a sinner even if he is already dead.”

At this point, Protestants will object that the Bible does not teach such a concept. Their founding principle of sola scriptura means Christian beliefs are defined solely by explicit teachings in Scripture and not by church traditions, even ones that are longstanding and deep-seated.


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Irish priest dares to preach on sex and sin -- creating a hellish media firestorm

Irish priest dares to preach on sex and sin -- creating a hellish media firestorm

For centuries, Irish Catholics heard priests deliver sermons about sin, hell, repentance, grace and heaven.

Times have changed and an 80-year-old priest in County Kerry didn't get the memo.

"How will people know that God wants to forgive them if we don't tell them?", said Father Sean Sheehy, preaching as a substitute priest at St. Mary's Church, Listowel. "How will people who are lost, be found, if we -- as God's people -- don't call them and say, 'Look, God loves you. He has come to call sinners. But he wants you to have life, and to have it to the full'? …That's what he wants. He wants you to live life to the fullest."

The problem was that Sheehy's October 30 sermon stressed ancient Catholic doctrines on behaviors many modern Catholics refuse to call "sins."

This caused a media storm, including this Irish Times headline: "Fr Sheen Sheehy's Listowel sermon was an uncomfortable reminder of who we really were." Also, Kerry Bishop Ray Browne apologized, after 20-plus parishioners walked out of the rite, and barred Sheehy from saying Mass until the parish priest returns to the altar.

During his sermon, Sheehy fiercely condemned core doctrines of the Sexual Revolution, while defending Catholic teachings on marriage and sex.

"What is so sad today is you rarely hear about sin but it's rampant. It's rampant," he said. "We see it, for example, in the legislation of our governments. We see it in the promotion of abortion. We see it in the example of this lunatic approach of transgenderism. We see it, for example, in the promotion of sex between two men and two women.

"That is sinful, that is mortal sin and people don't seem to realize it. … And we need to listen to God about it -- because if we don't, then there is no hope for those people."

In his public statement about the furor, Bishop Browne said it's crucial for Catholics to have "total respect for one another" and it was wrong for Sheehy to address these issues during a weekend Mass.

"I apologize to all who were offended," he said. "The views expressed do not represent the Christian position."


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Can someone write a decent article about Rob Bell? That LA Magazine piece wasn't it

Can someone write a decent article about Rob Bell? That LA Magazine piece wasn't it

It’s been awhile since we heard from Rob Bell, the Grand Rapids, Mich., superstar pastor whose 2011 book asking if hell is truly real got him booted out of evangelical Christian circles. He was quite the phenomenon a decade ago and then he disappeared for a time.

Turns out that, like many folks who live in the northern half of the country, Bell wanted to escape to a better climate — so it was off to California he went.

Los Angeles Magazine just ran a long piece on what Bell is up to now as he lives near the tony Venice Beach section of Los Angeles. The soulful photos look like, as one Twitter poster remarked, “like he delivers sandwiches for a hipster restaurant in Portland.”

Bingo.

The story begins with a casual mention about Bell having surfed that morning in Malibu. But (cue the flashback) 10 years ago:

… Bell was among the most prominent Evangelical pastors in America. His Michigan megachurch, Mars Hill, attracted over 10,000 worshippers a weekend. His debut book, 2005’s Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, sold half a million copies. And he performed annual speaking tours to packed theaters around the world. One newspaper called him “The next Billy Graham.” But that was before Bell went to hell.

In his fourth book, 2011’s Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Bell wondered aloud whether a loving God would really condemn billions of nonbelievers to eternal torment. The book sold half a million copies and landed him on the cover of Time. It led to friendships with the likes of Oprah Winfrey. But it also led conservative pastors to label him a heretic and a false teacher; it led to him leaving not just his church, but the church; it led to him questioning the faith that had made him famous. And it led him to Los Angeles.

Then he began a podcast in 2015.

More than 300 episodes and tens of millions of downloads later, the Robcast has helped to resurrect Bell’s career.


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Skeptical thinking (from left) about role of religion in President Joe Biden's big day

Skeptical thinking (from left) about role of religion in President Joe Biden's big day

Back in the early days of GetReligion (we launched on Feb. 2, 2004) I urged reporters not to forget the old Religious Left and, when covering believers in those flocks, not to forget that there is more to their stories than politics. The left is the left because of doctrinal and worship traditions, as well as convictions that align with the New York Times editorial page.

Then something happened that modified my thinking on this subject. Hang in there with me, because I am working my way to an interesting think piece, care of Religion Dispatches. The headline: “The Inauguration’s Beautiful Call for Unity Was Undermined by the Invocation of Religion.”

Faithful readers of GetReligion will remember that, in the summer of 2007, political scientist and polling maven John C. Green spoke at a Washington Journalism Center seminar to a international circle of journalists who came to Capitol Hill to discuss press freedoms in their homelands. But the hot topic of the day was the rise of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and whether he could reach the White House. As I wrote in a previous post about that:

The bottom line: Obama was speaking directly to Democrats in the black church, but he was also reaching out to an emerging power bloc in his party — a group Green called the “religiously unaffiliated.” These so-called “nones” were poised to form a powerful coalition with atheists, agnostics and liberal believers.

Green made a prediction that was years ahead of schedule, in terms of the conventional thinking of Beltway politicos. At some point in the future, that growing coalition of secularists and religious liberals was going to cause tensions inside the Democratic Party.

Five years later, when the Pew Forum released its groundbreaking report on religiously unaffiliated Americans, Green raised that issue once again in a public event. Here’s a bite of the “On Religion” column that I wrote at that time.

[The] unaffiliated overwhelmingly reject ancient doctrines on sexuality with 73 percent backing same-sex marriage and 72 percent saying abortion should be legal in all, or most, cases. Thus, the "Nones" skew heavily Democratic as voters — with 75 percent supporting Barack Obama in 2008. The unaffiliated are now a stronger presence in the Democratic Party than African-American Protestants, white mainline Protestants or white Catholics.

"It may very well be that in the future the unaffiliated vote will be as important to the Democrats as the traditionally religious are to the Republican Party,” said Green, addressing the religion reporters. "If these trends continue, we are likely to see even sharper divisions between the political parties."

This brings us to Biden, today’s Democratic Party and some of the challenges he faces, when dealing with moral, cultural and religious issues in American life.


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To hell with hell: Actually, Jeffrey Epstein chatter points to news stories and hot sermons

To hell with hell: Actually, Jeffrey Epstein chatter points to news stories and hot sermons

It was another wild week, to say the least, for people who are following the hellish details of the Jeffrey Epstein case and the fallout from his death.

I am referring, of course, to his reported suicide in his non-suicide-watch cell, which contained no required roommate (check), no working video cameras (check) and no regular safety checks by his sleeping and maybe unqualified guards.

Forget all of that, for a moment. While you are at it, forget the mystery of how he ended up with a broken hyoid bone near the larynx, something that — statistically — tends to happen when a victim is strangled, as opposed to hanging himself with a sheet tied to a bed while he leans over on his knees. And go ahead and forget about that painting (or print) of Bill Clinton photographed in Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, the portrait of the former president wearing a vivid blue dress, red women’s high-heeled shoes and a come-hither look while posed relaxing in an Oval Office chair.

No, this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on some of the hell-based rhetoric unleashed by the disgraced New York City financial wizard’s death. This was hooked to my “On Religion” column for this week, which opened rather bluntly (if I say so myself):

So, what is Jeffrey Epstein up to these days?

When beloved public figures pass away, cartoonists picture them sitting on clouds, playing harps or chatting up St. Peter at heaven's Pearly Gates. The deaths of notorious individuals like Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden and Epstein tend to inspire a different kind of response.

"The world is now a safer place," one victim of the disgraced New York financier and convicted sex offender told The Daily Mirror. "Jeffrey lived his life on his terms and now he's ended it on his terms too. Justice was not served before, and it will not be served now. I hope he rots in hell."

Social media judgments were frequent and fiery. After all, this man's personal contacts file — politicians, entertainers, Ivy League intellectuals and others — was both famous and infamous. Epstein knew people who knew people. … The rush to consign Epstein to hell is interesting, since many Americans no longer believe in a place of eternal damnation — a trend seen in polls in recent decades.

By the way, would this discussion or moral theology and eternity be any different if we were talking about the Rev. Jeffrey Epstein or Rabbi Jeffrey Epstein?


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Will everybody reach heaven? Are fights over hell about to grab some more headlines?

Chances are churches frequented by your readers and listeners rarely if ever offer sermons about hell and damnation these days. And yet this rather unpleasant topic is eternally (so to speak) fascinating, and may be about to grab some headlines. That’s due to Eastern Orthodox lay theologian David Bentley Hart's acerbic Sep. 24 release from Yale University Press “That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, & Universal Salvation.”

Sample sentences: “No one, logically speaking, could merit eternal punishment.”

Also this: “If Christianity is in any way true, Christians dare not doubt the salvation of all,”

Yes, Hart is a Hitler-in-heaven sort of guy (see page 38), and your sources will have interesting responses. Lest Hart seem a rank heretic, the Very Rev. John Behr of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary blurbs that this book presents “the promise that, in the end, all will indeed be saved, and exposing the inadequacy — above all moral — of claims to the contrary.”

Heretofore Hart was better known for ridiculing non-belief, as in “Atheist Delusions.” The prolific author has held a succession of university appointments, most recently as a University of Notre Dame fellow. Catholic theologian Paul Griffiths (in the news when he resigned over Duke University’s “diversity” policy) proclaims Hart “the most eminent” theologian in the English-speaking world.

Terms Hart applies to centuries of traditional orthodox and Orthodox doctrines on hell and damnation include “absurd,” “ludicrous,” “nonsensical,” “incoherent,” “horrid,” “degrading,” “loathsome,” “diseased,” “perverse,” “cruel,” “wicked” and “morally repugnant.” He is mainly offended by the idea that punishment is everlasting, on grounds that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Hart is open to some sort of cleansing to make sorry souls fit for heaven, but doesn’t spell out any version of Western Catholicism’s Purgatory.


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I know, I know, it was Twitter: Was New York Times pro right that Jews don't believe in heaven?

I did not watch the State of the Union show last night, in keeping with my long-standing policy that I strive to prevent the face of Donald Trump from appearing on my television screen. I took the same approach to Hillary Clinton throughout the 2016 race.

In other words, I wait for the transcript of the speech and I read the key parts. This approach is much easier on my aging stomach lining. In other words, I’m interested in what was said — not the Trump dramatics and the talking-heads circus that followed.

This time around, I was interested in what Trump had to say about the current firestorms in Virginia and New York about what U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse has called “fourth-trimester abortion.”

You’ll be shocked, shocked, to learn that fact-checkers at The New York Times were not impressed with Trump’s comments in this area. Click here to see that, and then click here for a conservative academic’s skeptical fact-check of the Times fact-check.

I also checked Twitter a bit, during the speech, and then read all the way through my feed this morning looking for signs of post-SOTU intelligent life.

Thus, I ran into the amazing tweet by New York Times White House correspondent Annie Karmi stating:

Trump Just Ad-Libbed "They Came Down From Heaven" When Quoting A Holocaust Survivor Watching American Soldiers Liberate Dachau. Jews Don't Believe In Heaven.

Wow. I had no idea that there was a Jewish catechism that definitively stated loud dogma on issues of this kind.

I was under the impression — based on graduate school readings on trends in post-Holocaust Jewish life and culture — that trying to say that “Jews believe” this, that or the other is rather difficult. In this case, are we talking about Orthodox Jews, modern Orthodox Jews, Reform Jews, Buddhist Jews, “cultural” Jews, Jewish agnostics, secular Jews or what?

Saying “Jews don’t believe in heaven” is sort of like saying “Democrats don’t believe in God.” I mean, there are Democrats who believe in God, and there’s evidence of that, and there’s some evidence that lots of Democrats don’t believe in God. How would anyone try to make a definitive statement about something like that?

Ditto for Jews and “heaven.”


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Yes, President George H.W. Bush was an Episcopalian (and that word is still a noun)

Back when I was breaking into journalism, soon after the cooling of the earth’s crust, I quickly learned that religion-beat specialists know lots of inside jokes.

Take this classic one, from the “light bulb” genre: How many Episcopalians does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: One. Along with 10 others to start a newsletter about the utter irreplaceability of the original, historic bulb.

Yes, that’s a really old joke. Today, “newsletter” would be “Facebook page,” or something like that.

In this GetReligion post, the key thing is to note, in this joke, that “Episcopalian” is a noun.

Want to see the adjective form?

While working at the old Charlotte News (RIP), I got some nasty telephone calls after writing a column with this lede: “When covering an Episcopal convention, never stay in the hotel room next to the ice machine.”

As the late Associated Press religion reporter George Cornell — an Episcopalian’s Episcopalian, if there ever was one — once offered, in my presence, a quip that went something like this: You can tell that a journalist is a religion-beat reporter when they know that “Episcopalian” is a noun and “Episcopal” is an adjective.

I bring this up because lots of journalists — few of them religion-beat specialists — will be covering the funeral rites for President George H.W. Bush. Since he was a faithful Episcopalian, of a rather traditional bent, all of these rites will occur in Episcopal settings, with Episcopal clergy involved.

It’s safe to say that mistakes will be made. Consider, for example, the following passage in a lovely Houston Chronicle sidebar about the current emotions in the parish that Barbara and George Bush attended in Houston. The headline: “At Bush’s church, a moment of pause for ‘a remarkable life’.” The story opens with images from the 8 a.m. Mass at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, a service that tends to attract an older, quieter crowd:


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