A Sense of Doubt blog post #2654 - Is it Hateful to Believe in Hell?
I already had this scheduled when news broke of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. More on that tomorrow or Friday.
For today, maybe appropriate looks at belief in Hell and religious bigotry.
Maybe we are living in a Hell of our own making?
Politics are the religion of Hell.
TWO SHARES TODAY:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/09/532116365/is-it-hateful-to-believe-in-hell-bernie-sanders-questions-prompt-backlash
also
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/09/532116365/is-it-hateful-to-believe-in-hell-bernie-sanders-questions-prompt-backlash
CAMILA DOMONOSKE
A low-profile confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill this week raised eyebrows when the questioning turned to theology — specifically, damnation.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont pressed Russell Vought, nominated by President Trump to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, about his beliefs.
"Do you think that people who are not Christians are condemned?" Sanders repeatedly asked, challenging that belief as Islamophobic.
Christian organizations have denounced Sanders' questioning as amounting to a religious test for public office — one that would disqualify millions of people.
Polls show about half of all Christians in the U.S. believe that some non-Christians can go to heaven. But particularly among evangelicals, the traditional view of damnation remains widespread.
A confirmation showdown rooted in college dispute
How did hellfire come up in a confirmation hearing in the first place?
In 2015, an evangelical Christian college suspended a tenured professor who said that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. That's a belief shared by many Christians, but not all; Wheaton College said it contradicted the school's statement of faith.
Vought, an alumnus of Wheaton, wrote a blog post last year expressing support for his alma mater. He quoted a theologian who said non-Christians have a "deficient" theology but could have a meaningful relationship with God. Vought disagreed.
"Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology," Vought wrote. "They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned. "
Ahead of Vought's confirmation hearing, that quote was picked up by advocacy groups concerned about whether Vought could serve all Americans fairly.
Sanders brought up the passage, again and again, in the hearing. He asked Vought if he thought his statement was Islamophobic.
"Absolutely not, senator," Vought said
"Do you believe people in the Muslim religion stand condemned?" Sanders asked. "What about Jews? Do they stand condemned, too?"
"I'm a Christian," Vought repeatedly responded.
"I understand you are a Christian," Sanders said, raising his voice. The senator is Jewish and has said he's not particularly religious. "But there are other people who have different religions in this country and around the world. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?"
"I believe that all individuals are made in the image of God and are worthy of dignity and respect regardless of their religious beliefs," Vought said, while also emphasizing "the centrality of Jesus Christ in salvation."
"This nominee is really not someone who this country is supposed to be about," Sanders said, announcing that he'd vote against him.
Did focus on a nominee's faith cross a line?
Sanders was criticized almost immediately for focusing on a nominee's religious principles instead of qualifications or behavior. His office has defended the senator's questions.
"The question at hand is not about Mr. Vought's freedom to hold certain religious beliefs," a spokesman for Sanders said. The spokesman said Vought's post expressed his views in an "inflammatory way" and said Sanders is concerned if Vought can "carry out the duties of his office in a way that treats all Americans equally."
Many news outlets — religious, conservative and mainstream — highlighted the exchange as a possible application of a religious test, which is prohibited under the Constitution. U.S. News & World Report spoke to legal experts who say Sanders is on solid legal ground. "Senators can vote against nominees for any reason or no reason at all," one law professor told the magazine. "It may be atrocious, but it's not unconstitutional," another said
Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, called Sanders' comments "breathtakingly audacious and shockingly ignorant," and deeply troubling even if they are legal.
"This is not some arcane or obscure private opinion being held by this one individual," Moore told NPR. "The language that Sen. Sanders, finds so disturbing — 'stands condemned' — is language right out of the New Testament."
Moore says there's nothing hostile about Vought's comments. "In Christian theology, no one is righteous before God," he said. "[Evangelical] Christians don't believe that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. Christians believe that all of humanity is fallen."
And Moore argues there's a fundamental misunderstanding at play: Secular people often assume that beliefs are "just ideas and opinions" that can shift. But for religious people, he says, "we don't believe that we are constructing our faith. We believe that it's been handed to us by God."
A question of belief, or a question of behavior?
Scott Simpson, public advocacy director for Muslim Advocates, defended Sanders' questions and said it's important to keep Vought's comments in context — both his original post and the broader political climate. "This isn't some personal expression of how he feels in his heart about theology," Simpson said. "This is the type of speech that was being used against somebody" to argue a professor should lose her job.
He also says the Trump administration has a "pattern of appointments" of people with anti-Muslim views and rhetoric. "We're very sensitive to the concept of religious liberty, because Muslims' religious liberty is under attack every day," Simpson said. "But we're talking about something very specific. ... When a nominee calls the faith of millions of Americans deficient, that is something that should be questioned. That is what hearings are for."
Meanwhile, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said the belief that vast swaths of people are damned might, in fact, be inherently problematic for certain government positions. "If [someone] believe these people are to be condemned ... is that the person who ought to be making budgetary decisions for the country as a whole?" asked Zogby, who is a Maronite Catholic. "Can you be a fair adjudicator of decisions?" he asked.
Hussein Rashid, founder of the religious literacy consultancy Islamicate L3C, doesn't agree that the belief itself is a problem.
"I think we have to accept that there are theologies that are what I would call exclusionary, that only certain people will go to heaven and certain people will go to hell. They are not inherently Islamophobic or anti-Semitic," Rashid said. "It's when it turns into action that we start getting worried. "
He, like Moore, emphasized that these beliefs are not particularly unusual.
"Exclusionary theologies are far more prevalent than I think we realize," Rashid said, noting many Americans' reticence to talk about religion in public. A substantial number of Christians believe Catholics are going to hell, he noted.
Belief in hell is widespread, but views differ on who is damned
Different Christian sects, and individuals, have varying interpretations of damnation. The traditionalist view is that eternal suffering awaits all who do not accept Christ; on the other end of the spectrum is the universalist belief that everyone will be saved. And then there are disagreements about what hell actually is.
In short, it's hard to pin down exactly how many Americans believe non-Christians are going to hell — but polling data suggests a strong minority.
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Pew Research Center/NPR |
The Pew Research Center recently found that nearly 60 percent of Americans surveyed believe in hell. And among Christians, 48 percent of Protestants and 56 percent of evangelicals believe Christianity is the only path to eternal life. (Catholics and mainline Protestants were far more likely to believe that other faiths can get into heaven.)
A LifeWay Research survey, conducted online with a much smaller sample, found that 40 percent of Americans believe those who do not accept Jesus are bound for hell. But it's complicated: Some of those people appear to also believe other faiths can attain salvation.
At any rate, Vought's belief is not a fringe view. "Most conservative evangelical churches believe that faith in Christ is necessarily for salvation," Moore says.
And it's not unique to evangelicalism or Christianity. The Quran is quite clear that there is a hell, says Mohammad Hassan Khalil, a professor of religious studies at Michigan State University and author of Islam and the Fate of Others. The general view is that those who reject the message of Muhammad are damned, he says, but just like in Christianity, there's a vast spectrum of beliefs.
You'll see "a popular preacher who has many YouTube hits saying that all non-Muslims go to hell," he says, and at the same time, "you'll get other people who say there are multiple paths to heaven."
Khalil says belief in hell does not have a clear-cut implication for behavior on Earth. "If I believe all non-Muslims go to hell ... it can lead me to look down upon them, see them as just fuel for hell, and not really take them too seriously. Or I could be motivated to want to save them," he says, "and be unusually kind and nice to them in the hopes that they will convert."
NPR asked Sanders' office if the senator would have challenged a devout Muslim who believed non-Muslims are condemned to hell, in the same way he challenged Vought. Sanders' spokesman said yes.
Moore of the Southern Baptist Conference says Sanders confronting a Muslim would be equally problematic.
"We've been working for religious freedom for everyone," said Moore, who has spoken up in defense of mosques. Rejecting a nominee for their religious doctrine is "a troubling trend, and if this were the direction that American public officials were to go this would be very dangerous for American democracy," he said.
"We've seen what happens when the state sets itself up as a theological referee."
Why Do People Believe in Hell?
The idea of eternal damnation is neither biblically, philosophically nor morally justified. But for many it retains a psychological allure.
Dr. Hart is a philosopher, scholar of religion and cultural critic.
Once the faith of his youth had faded into the serene agnosticism of his mature years, Charles Darwin found himself amazed that anyone could even wish Christianity to be true. Not, that is, the kindlier bits — “Love thy neighbor” and whatnot — but rather the notion that unbelievers (including relatives and friends) might be tormented in hell forever.
It’s a reasonable perplexity, really. And it raises a troubling question of social psychology. It’s comforting to imagine that Christians generally accept the notion of a hell of eternal misery not because they’re emotionally attached to it, but because they see it as a small, inevitable zone of darkness peripheral to a larger spiritual landscape that — viewed in its totality — they find ravishingly lovely. And this is true of many.
But not of all. For a good number of Christians, hell isn’t just a tragic shadow cast across one of an otherwise ravishing vista’s remoter corners; rather, it’s one of the landscape’s most conspicuous and delectable details.
I know whereof I speak. I’ve published many books, often willfully provocative, and have vexed my share of critics. But only recently, in releasing a book challenging the historical validity, biblical origins, philosophical cogency and moral sanity of the standard Christian teaching on the matter of eternal damnation, have I ever inspired reactions so truculent, uninhibited and (frankly) demented.
I expect, of course, that people will defend the faith they’ve been taught. What I find odd is that, in my experience, raising questions about this particular detail of their faith evinces a more indignant and hysterical reaction from many believers than would almost any other challenge to their convictions. Something unutterably precious is at stake for them. Why?
After all, the idea comes to us in such a ghastly gallery of images: late Augustinianism’s unbaptized babes descending in their thrashing billions to a perpetual and condign combustion; Dante’s exquisitely psychotic dreamscapes of twisted, mutilated, broiling souls; St. Francis Xavier morosely informing his weeping Japanese converts that their deceased parents must suffer an eternity of agony; your poor old palpitant Aunt Maude on her knees each night in a frenzy of worry over her reprobate boys; and so on.
Surely it would be welcome news if it turned out that, on the matter of hell, something got garbled in transmission. And there really is room for doubt.
No truly accomplished New Testament scholar, for instance, believes that later Christianity’s opulent mythology of God’s eternal torture chamber is clearly present in the scriptural texts. It’s entirely absent from St. Paul’s writings; the only eschatological fire he ever mentions brings salvation to those whom it tries (1 Corinthians 3:15). Neither is it found in the other New Testament epistles, or in any extant documents (like the Didache) from the earliest post-apostolic period. There are a few terrible, surreal, allegorical images of judgment in the Book of Revelation, but nothing that, properly read, yields a clear doctrine of eternal torment. Even the frightening language used by Jesus in the Gospels, when read in the original Greek, fails to deliver the infernal dogmas we casually assume to be there.
On the other hand, many New Testament passages seem — and not metaphorically — to promise the eventual salvation of everyone. For example: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” (Romans 5:18) Or: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:22) Or: “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2) (Or: John 13:32; Romans 11:32; 1 Timothy 2:3-6; 4:10; Titus 2:11; and others.)
Admittedly, much theological ink has been spilled over the years explaining away the plain meaning of those verses. But it’s instructive that during the first half millennium of Christianity — especially in the Greek-speaking Hellenistic and Semitic East — believers in universal salvation apparently enjoyed their largest presence as a relative ratio of the faithful. Late in the fourth century, in fact, the theologian Basil the Great reported that the dominant view of hell among the believers he knew was of a limited, “purgatorial” suffering. Those were also the centuries that gave us many of the greatest Christian “universalists”: Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Didymus the Blind, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Diodore of Tarsus and others.
Of course, once the Christian Church became part of the Roman Empire’s political apparatus, the grimmest view naturally triumphed. As the company of the baptized became more or less the whole imperial population, rather than only those people personally drawn to the faith, spiritual terror became an ever more indispensable instrument of social stability. And, even today, institutional power remains one potent inducement to conformity on this issue.
Still, none of that accounts for the deep emotional need many modern Christians seem to have for an eternal hell. And I don’t mean those who ruefully accept the idea out of religious allegiance, or whose sense of justice demands that Hitler and Pol Pot get their proper comeuppance, or who think they need the prospect of hell to keep themselves on the straight and narrow. Those aren’t the ones who scream and foam in rage at the thought that hell might be only a stage along the way to a final universal reconciliation. In those who do, something else is at work.
Theological history can boast few ideas more chilling than the claim (of, among others, Thomas Aquinas) that the beatitude of the saved in heaven will be increased by their direct vision of the torments of the damned (as this will allow them to savor their own immunity from sin’s consequences). But as awful as that sounds, it may be more honest in its sheer cold impersonality than is the secret pleasure that many of us, at one time or another, hope to derive not from seeing but from being seen by those we leave behind.
How can we be winners, after all, if there are no losers? Where’s the joy in getting into the gated community and the private academy if it turns out that the gates are merely decorative and the academy has an inexhaustible scholarship program for the underprivileged? What success can there be that isn’t validated by another’s failure? What heaven can there be for us without an eternity in which to relish the impotent envy of those outside its walls?
Not to sound too cynical. But it’s hard not to suspect that what many of us find intolerable is a concept of God that gives inadequate license to the cruelty of which our own imaginations are capable.
An old monk on Mount Athos in Greece once told me that people rejoice in the thought of hell to the precise degree that they harbor hell within themselves. By which he meant, I believe, that heaven and hell alike are both within us all, in varying degrees, and that, for some, the idea of hell is the treasury of their most secret, most cherished hopes — the hope of being proved right when so many were wrong, of being admired when so many are despised, of being envied when so many have been scorned.
And as Jesus said (Matthew 6:21), “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
David Bentley Hart is the author, most recently, of “That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation.”
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