Hellmouth

Published on December 4, 2003

Just after the war in Bosnia, a priest showed Rose Marie Berger a cross erected on a hillside. One side depicted a resurrection Jesus, offering the promise of life and joy; the other revealed an angry Christ of eternal judgment. Berger preferred the good-times Jesus, but the locals, who had seen 1,500 of their own massacred, opted for […]

Just after the war in Bosnia, a priest showed Rose Marie Berger a cross erected on a hillside. One side depicted a resurrection Jesus, offering the promise of life and joy; the other revealed an angry Christ of eternal judgment. Berger preferred the good-times Jesus, but the locals, who had seen 1,500 of their own massacred, opted for judgment and the wrath of a god who, Berger writes in Sojourner to remind us, had Hell on His mind as much as He did eternal salvation. Berger wonders why contemporary theology and evangelism pays so little attention to the flip side of Heaven — Billy Graham told Time a while back that he had sworn off preaching hellfire — when it is so evident in the world around us. Berger’s suggested source for better information? The media, of course. “Almost everything I know about Hell’s eschatological aspects,” she writes, “I learned from watching… Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — The Door magazine’s 2002 Theologian of the Year. But that’s nothing new, she argues; before Buffy came along to educate us, we made do with Italian pop cult hero Dante. Religion writers, Berger suggests, would do well to pay closer attention to such teachers should they wish to report knowledgably on the geography of Hell — i.e., Bosnia, Iraq, Congo, etc.

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