Propaganda from the Pulpit

I was recently perusing a message board on Amazon.com when a title caught my eye asking if anyone's denomination of Christianity proposed the anti-semitic idea that Jews were bloodthirsty, murderous, sneaky and evil people. Well of course, I had to read it. I skimmed over much of what people read as much of it had to do with previous conversations amongst members, but it reminded me of something that I had seen only a few months ago - a rather disturbing little production called "Hell's Fire and Heaven's Gates."

Some months ago I was invited by a friend to attend what she called a "play" that her church was putting on. Silly me, I thought I was going to see a nice lovely play preaching Christ's love and the positive and uplifting aspects of Christianity but instead was shown something wholly different.

Since I've begun my present relationship with my boyfriend, I have learned to become much more tolerant and open-minded when it comes to the Christian faith, so I approached the scenario with an open mind and decided to give the group the benefit of the doubt. However, from the moment the service began I knew I was in for some good 'ol Southern Baptist fundamentalist propaganda.

The beginning of this morality play displays the crucifixion of Jesus whilst a group of bloodthirsty and murderous Jews run down the church aisles screaming, then gathering down at the base of the stage pounding their fists in the air demanding for Christ's execution. This action alone was startling enough, even more so because my friend was amongst the bloodthirsty mob. Then after that lovely depiction we were shown Jesus tackling Satan and beating him down in an all too football touch-down sort of way. After Jesus' triumphant win against the Devil several overly exaggerated and dramatized depictions of how you can die quite suddenly a sinner without having been saved were portrayed. The levels of ridiculousness were like none I had seen before. Picture if you will act after tiring act of 1-8 people doing or saying things of a various "sinful" nature, always with at least one "voice of reason" talking about the perks of being saved, continuously ending the same way with one or more persons going to hell and one or more persons going to heaven - children were frequently carried off by a maniacally laughing Satan figure.

One such idiotic skit involved a group of teenagers at a party, with the painfully predictable depictions of drinking, dancing, and talking about sex and boyfriends. One girl was describing to another how she had sex with her boyfriend, ended up getting pregnant, and then wound up having an abortion. The boyfriend shows up and starts talking to the girl about how angry he was at her about "killing his baby", then declares that he had AIDS and gave it to her when they had sex, and then the next minute hands her some pills convincing her she'll get high off them, but in some ludicrous turn of events, they actually turn out to be poison as he had plotted to kill himself and her. But woe to the friend, for she sees this too and decides to engage in taking pills too, so they all die and all wind up going to hell. Moral? Don't have sex, don't drink, don't go to parties, don't do drugs and don't have abortions or you'll get AIDS and go to hell with Satan as your personal escort. Nevermind the fact that a decent sexual health education could have prevented the unwanted pregnancy or the transmission of AIDs and nevermind the absolute ludicrous compounding of just about every teenager's and parent's worst fear into one silly skit. This sort of redundancy lasted for well over an hour, and at the end I was asked if I wanted to be "saved." I had to politely decline...

The whole point of this painful to watch melodrama seemed nothing more than an elaborate ruse to scare people half to death into following their cult-like Christian denomination. I was absolutely horrified and stunned - not only at what I saw but that people could witness such a spectacle and could somehow feel closer to their God and feel uplifted. I don't think they felt uplifted so much as smug and justified in their chosen belief system. It was an absolutely disgusting spectacle and one that not only reeked of anti-Semitism but also of Christian elitism.

I went home that night feeling disgusted and angry, but my thoughts turned to other subjects as well. How would Jesus feel about this portrayal? Would he feel heartwarmed at such a depiction? Would he feel repulsed? Somehow, I don't think that a man who preached a message of such love, forgiveness, light, and hope would find anything positive and uplifting about that debauched spectacle. I'm afraid that when a religion feels the need to resort to fear in order to try and gain followers that it has completely lost sight of what it's original message was and instead has refocused its attention on numbers and feelings of self-righteousness, reducing itself to little more than a hungry machine needing more souls to fuel it. Has the current culture of Christianity lost all of its shame? I can't help but feel as though much of modern Christianity has completely lost touch with the true sacredness of their religion and have devolved to petty consumers interested more in the packaging than the product. How unfortunate.

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