Recently my thoughts have turned to the place of hell in Christian thought.
Back in 2021 the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of American belief in heaven and hell. It found across denominations from Catholic to Pentecostal to Fundamentalist in the aggregate, ninety-two percent of those who identify as Christian believe in heaven. I’m intrigued by the eight percent, but for here I’m setting that aside.
A somewhat smaller number believe in hell, again across denomination seventy-nine percent of self-identified Christians believe in a hell. The breakouts are interesting, as well. Sixty-nine percent of identified “mainline” Protestants believe in hell, and so thirty-one percent do not. I believe Anglicans are bunched up with mainline Protestants here. Seventy-four percent of Catholics believe in hell, therefore twenty six percent do not. Averaging it all out, as I said seventy-nine percent of American Christians believe in a hell. Twenty-one percent do not.
Hell…
Hell has distant roots in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the New Testament. The Book of Revelations, probably the most controversial of the Christian scriptures, and last to be generally accepted into the canon is the only one that attends to hell in any serious way. And really the full blown idea of the fall of humanity in Adam and Eve’s disobedience inherited by all humans leading to a rupture for which the punishment is, well, hell; that’s largely post scriptural.
All religions deal with the problem of some ancient wound in the human heart. Once one parses out, as best can be done, the very large part that religions play in establishing and reinforcing the contours of a culture, that question of human dis-ease, the worm in human lives is the central offering of religions. For me it is the only part of religion worth sustained attention. Religions are the repository of our human struggle with the hurts of our lives right up to our deaths.
And the religions name it differently. Religious scholar Stephen Prothero suggests how in Judaism the problem is exile. In Islam the problem is framed as pride. And for Christianity the problem is sin. Prothero also notes how the problem is framed in Confucianism as chaos. And he says the problem in Buddhism is suffering. Which for me shows that that the good professor might not be right on the mark. The problem in Buddhism as I understand it is ignorance. The result of that ignorance is suffering. But then I might be complicating something that doesn’t need all that much complication. Whatrever, the good professor’s list is helpful as a thumbnail for how many religions address that problem.
And the point is that each religion addresses some common human hurt, that ancient wound, offering interpretations of what that hurt actually is, and with that, offers it’s solutions. I suggest that the original teachings of Jesus were in fact a variation on the Jewish narrative of exile. And his way, as best we can discern it among the preserved sayings is about reclamation of our true inheritance, a heaven that is both somehow in the future and right here and now.
But starting with Paul, whose disciples and their disciples ended up owning Jesus Inc, and fleshed out in all its painful consequence by Athanasius of Alexandria, we get the religion with hell at its center. It’s based in Adam & Eve’s terrible fall into sin in mythic time, from which we each and every one of us carry from the moment of our conception. Which, without the cosmic sacrifice, condemns people to hell. Each and everyone. Generation after generation born to hell.
Hell as some kind of individual conscious immortality of endless and horrific suffering, possibly featuring an actual physical and I guess very large lake of fire. It is interesting hell does not appear to be much discussed in what we see of earliest writers. Tatian the Assyrian in the second century being the most notable exception.
But the idea of inherited sin deserving eternal pain with the only fix being God’s endless sacrifice in the person of Jesus, and some kind of conscious acceptance of the sacrifice takes a while. That comes to us full blown in the fourth century with Athanasius. We can pretty much lay the foundations of this view of that idea of the normative Christian project at the saint’s feet. And really not much before that near five centuries after Jesus’ death.
Of course this is simply the logical conclusion to the groundwork established by Paul’s obsession with turning Jesus into the center of a Greek Mystery cult. But that and the alternatives not taken, starting with the religion the Jesus and his family appeared to hold, for us basically contained somewhere in the received collections of his sayings, are the subject for other meditations.
For me today is noticing how there is a counter narrative within the larger, shall we say Pauline/Athanasian version on offer today. And has been on and off for a long time.
And that’s Universalism.
Certainly at least from Origen, and his Apocatastasis, a Greek word meaning something along the lines of reconciliation or restoration, Universalism, the belief that in the last instance all things will reconcile to God, has been at the very least a minor current within the Christian tradition.
Here the narrative of ancient love becomes the reconciliation of the lost, another unfolding of that ancient story of exile. It also reconciles the intuitions of pride, and chaos, and most of all ignorance. The sense of separation and the calling home to intimacy seems, best I can tell, the underlying theme of all religions addressing that ancient wound.
The Universalist versions of Christianity embrace the best of the Christian mystical traditions, that calling of intimacy, that calling all family, that calling all home. Not with threats of punishment, but as a response to hungry hearts, home to the feast. It is an invitation to a dance. It is absolutely possible to see within the currents of the Pauline church expressing itself in the mystical currents of the tradition.
So. Not quite a decade ago a prominent Protestant minister caused quite the hubbub in Evangelical circles when he published a book titled Love Wins. He then spent a lot of time explaining precisely how he wasn’t actually a universalist. But, if you google him, Rob Bell is his name, you will see pretty much everyone else seems to think he’s one.
Around the same time a Charismatic minister, Bishop Carlton Pearson, after feeling a movement of the spirit, began to preach what he called the Gospel of Inclusion. Again, his colleagues looked at what he was saying, and as with Reverend Bell, they denounced him as a universalist.
The glee that some Christian writers address the fact of hell as actual physical and endless pain is shocking. And the violence of their opposition to those who challenge this as an actual hallmark of an authentic Christianity is immediate and relentless.
The Reverend Mr Bell was pressured to leave his megachurch and began an independent ministry as a speaker and writer. While the bishop’s megachurch began to dwindle, until the remaining congregation, still a good five hundred people, ended up joining All Souls Unitarian Universalist church, in Tulsa.
Thanks largely to my participation with interfaith organizations I’ve come to know a number of Christian clergy. Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Methodists, principally. Although along with a sprinkling of others. And, of these, once we get past the “what church do you serve” and looking to find anyone we might know in common, a fair number of these ministers in one-on-one conversations, want to let me know, if quietly, that they, too, are universalists.
(There is another variation on the theme, again outside the scope of this meditation, but to note. If one doesn’t postulate a continuation of the person beyond death, then the noticing of unsatisfactoriness, suffering, the hell of this life finds it cure, its healing in a full on embrace of the universal heart illustrated in that lovely saying attributed to Jesus “I am the vine and you are the branches thereof…”) Mystical religion and nonduality does not require more than one life to bring its blessings…)
As I noted at the beginning among the so-called mainline Episcopal and Protestant churches some thirty-one percent reject hell. And twenty-six percent of Catholics! When pushed I suspect a larger number yet of clergy and laity alike in fact believe in some form of ultimate reconciliation for everyone in this hurting world.
It is also a fact on the ground that mainline Christianity in America, Protestant and Episcopal are in pretty steep decline. I just watched a YouTube video where the presenter wanted to make sure we understood these were the liberals, meaning for that presenter advocating LGBTQ rights. And, happily showed demographics demonstrating socially conservative churches, excepting the Southern Baptist Convention were growing.
Of course this is demographic slight of hand. Again, according to Pew, in 1972 about ninety percent of Americans considered themselves Christian. Today that number is sixty-four percent. There is some denominational shifting about, but its happening as Christianity is itself in steep decline. In the United States. The group growing most rapidly are the “nones.” Some people pause for a while in the more liberal churches, before abandoning religion altogether.
The whole subject of trending secularism among the industrialized nations is another fascinating subject. But. Not my interest here.
While these more liberal churches and more importantly their members and often their clergy may not use the word, it definitely is universalism that is the growing theological edge. Their understanding might be more theologically informed as often is the case with clergy. It might be more visceral and specific, “of course Gandhi is in heaven,” as with many of the laity.
The fact is in many forms universalism runs a wondrous current through the churches. Sort of the secret teaching of the Christian heart. And. As Christianity here in North America slips into steep decline, it has lost a third of its membership in the last thirty years here, mostly to the nones, that may not be a bad thing. It is fragmenting. The need for Christianity or for that matter any religion to assume the role of cultural reinforcer is slipping away. And religion is taking many shapes. And. And who knows. Perhaps some new form may reclaim yet human hearts.
Perhaps this most ancient counter narrative will be it. Universalism.
And, I believe, wouldn’t that be a blessing for this poor hurting world?
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