With this ISP, I was hoping to gather a general historical knowledge of the role and development of the Hell myth in American evangelicalism. I am most interested in Hell’s relationship to justice and punishment, but also wanted to explore symbols and physical representations and how they might relate to our understanding of Hell as a place. Unfortunately, since the physical nature of Hell wasn’t of particular interest to evangelicals, I wasn’t able to explore that element as much as I would have liked to.
Some specific questions I wanted to address were the following: What is Hell like? Is it a physical place? Why does Hell exist? Who goes there? It turns out the answers to these questions are pretty complex. Evangelicals haven’t spent a great amount of time telling us what Hell is like, but the Bible does give us fire and brimstone, so we know that’s there. The physical existence of Hell I think is still a debatable issue, along with its existence all together, really. Hell seems to serve a different purpose for different people, but I think it generally justifies evil and unfairness on God’s good Earth by punishing those who deserve it. And who goes there ranges from everyone who’s not a good Bible reading Christian to no one at all, but I think most contemporary evangelicals are in the Billy Graham category: good people can know the grace of God even if they never had the opportunity to consciously accept Jesus Christ.
Our ideas of Hell, like other theological trends, move and change with the culture – as I’ve discussed in previous posts, in trying times, we tend to be more interested in death and Hell, and vice versa. I discovered an interesting arc over the course of early Christianity and into the evangelical movements – a heavy interest in the topology and nature of Hell taken over by a theological debate about its function and importance. Prior to this project, I associated evangelicals heavily with the language of “hellfire and brimstone”, but found that it’s a much more complex issue than that. I think the recent trend towards the rejection of the Hell myth is really interesting (and unexpected). Though, we have seen a rise in fundamentalism in the past decade, which I think may put an at least temporary damper on this trend.
In future research, I’d be interested in reading more about older afterlife myths, in other parts of the world, and comparing their similarities and differences. Most American students are relatively well versed in Greek mythology, but reading about the Egyptians and Sheol was pretty eye opening. I’d also like to explore how our understanding of justice is influenced by the Hell myth, and how it has perhaps shaped our image of punishment and even the formal justice system itself.
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