The Steven Spielberg Model of Evangelism and What Hollywood Has to Do with
Conversion: More on Manipulation at the Altar
By
David L Rattigan
So I'm sat there in the
darkened movie theatre watching Love Actually, looking like a bit of lemon
there with my two deeply-in-love friends, whom I didn't even realize were
yet an item until they shared a tender moment together at the end of the
film.
I've just watched Prime
Minister Hugh Grant fall in love with tea-lady Martine McCutcheon, and now
I'm seeing this cute little wide-eyed kid running through an airport in
slow motion to stop the girl of his dreams getting on a plane and walking
out of his life forever. The combination of swelling orchestral music and
the sweeping camera movements are doing their best to wrench every last
bit of emotion from my already-weakened frame. As if I weren't choked-up
enough from watching Grant and McCutcheon finally declare their undying
love for each other, now I'm trying to hold back the tears as the
exhilarating ride that is Love Actually threatens to reduce me to a
snivelling emotional wreck. So damn cheesy, so obviously crass, and yet
like a sucker I've fallen for it.
But that's all right. No
one's going to appear from behind the curtain as the credits roll and ask
me to dedicate my life to Hugh Grant. I'm not about to be presented with a
demand to let Martine McCutcheon into my heart. I'm not being invited to
raise my hand to signal that I want Liam Neeson or Keira Knightley to
become my personal Saviour, or to sign a decision card to make Alan
Rickman Lord of my life. I'm free to leave my seat, dump the remainder of
my popcorn in the trash, and then go talk with my friends over coffee
about how manipulative and trite the whole movie was.
To an extent, manipulation is
forgivable at the movies. When the Hollywood philosophy is transferred to
the pulpit and the altar, however, be afraid. Be very afraid.
I am almost loathe to admit
that in my fundamentalist days I was once part of an evangelistic
outreach-cum-stage-spectacular called
Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames.
At the time it was one more thing in a succession of innovations that were
going to bring revival to our community, but in retrospect, it was the one
of the most shamelessly manipulative religious projects with which I've
ever been involved. I am deeply disheartened to discover that a
Google search reveals the production is still going strong at churches
worldwide. It wasn't long before I even came across a
website
for children promoting this frankly horrific presentation.
Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames
is a poorly written drama that tours internationally, drawing its cast
from local Christians at each venue, but with a permanent crew, usually a
family, to manage the equipment and direct the show. It takes the form of
a series of skits in which characters in a variety of situations are
killed: A depressed young drug-addict commits suicide; a boy and his
father on their way to a soccer match get hit by a car; a husband and wife
on vacation are in a plane-crash; two friends on a construction site get
buried underneath a collapsing wall. At the end of each scene, there is
total black, and then the lights come up to reveal the dead characters as
they appear before a throng of angels to find out whether their names are
written in the "Lamb's Book of Life". If in life they had committed their
lives to Jesus as Lord and Saviour, becoming born again, their names are
found in the book, bright lights flood the stage, literally dazzling the
audience (the huge reflective backdrop boasts NASA technology,
apparently), and Beethoven's Hallelujah Chorus accompanies their entrance
into heaven with Jesus; if not, infra-red light consumes the stage, the
supremely terrifying Satan appears with booming, echoing voice, surrounded
by cackling demon-henchmen, and they literally drag their victims kicking
and screaming into the bowels of hell.
Distraught kids are torn from
the sides of their sobbing parents (and this is the same
family-friendly Christianity subscribed to by James Dobson and his
followers?), wailing wives are separated from their heartbroken husbands,
and distressed friends are forced to part as one is dragged off to hell,
the other welcomed into the arms of Jesus, all because one said yes to
being born again, and the other, sometimes despite being begged to repent
just moments before their untimely death, forewent the opportunity to
become a born-again Christian.
If sitting through an
hour-and-a-half of what I described above doesn't provoke some sort of
emotional reaction in you, there is a deficiency somewhere. If the
constant sea of dazzling lights, infra-red flashes, reverberating cackles,
screaming, yelling, weeping, whooping, cheering and sudden, high-volume
bursts of symphonic drama leaves you totally unaffected, you were
probably in a deep sleep. These kinds of methods -- and I accept the bizarre
sincerity of the participants -- are the perfect recipe for creating an
atmosphere conducive to emotional, psychological and spiritual
manipulation. They belong in Hollywood blockbusters, where at the end of
the night you can leave the theatre and get over the experience because,
after all, it's just a movie.
Heaven's Gates, Hell's
Flames, on the other hand, is not "just a movie". This is gospel truth.
You are not being allowed to walk away having been entertained and then
put it to the back of your mind. You are being asked to stake your life on
the validity of what you've just witnessed. You can probably guess what
happens when it's all over, but I'll tell you anyway. The stunned audience
is subjected to a ten-minute plea by the show's director to take immediate
action to ensure that if they were to die that night -- the alltime
classic illustration is "You could walk out that door and be knocked over
by a bus" -- they wouldn't be among those dragged by Satan into the fires
of hell, but among those who spend eternity with Jesus in heaven,
because they made a decision to ask Jesus to be their personal Lord and
Saviour. At the end of the plea, members of the audience will be asked to
leave their seat and walk publicly down to the altar where they can
respond to Jesus, becoming born again, and guaranteeing freedom from
everlasting punishment and the eternal salvation of their souls. This
challenge isn't being put to them after they've had some time to
investigate what it is they're committing themselves to, after they've
gone away and weighed up rationally and sensibly the message they've heard
and what they're being required to sign up for. They aren't being asked to
think over the decision: The demand to respond is placed squarely on their
shoulders there and then, barely a few minutes after enduring an
emotionally exhilarating 90-minute evangelistic flashing-light show of a rollercoaster-ride
with all the subtlety of a Mafia interrogation. Is
it really all that surprising to see the lost souls flock to the front to
give their lives to the Lord?
I defy anyone to watch this
presentation and tell me it is not at root a kind of mind-control, whether
intentional or unwitting. And I fear the same ethos, albeit not always so
blatant a manner, is present in a lot of
what passes as evangelism in fundamentalist churches: Teenagers are
challenged to sign up to fundamentalist Christianity amid the intense
excitement of a full-fledged rock concert in a darkened and noisy arena;
an audience are asked to make a life-or-death decision whether to follow
Jesus in the heady and charged atmosphere of a charismatic worship
meeting; and people are confronted with the demand to commit the rest of
their lives to a particular brand of Christian faith after a passionate
speech from a revivalist whose power over his listeners really depends
more on stirring rhetoric and appeals to base emotions than on the actual
content of the message itself.
I'll be honest, the adrenalin
is pumping fast through my veins, and my hands are
literally shaking as I near the finish of this entry. I just spilled coffee as I put my cup
down because this is a subject that overwhelms me and angers me. I know
fundamentalists are often sincere people who are not intentionally out to
control and manipulate. That's something I know because at one time I
participated in all these things I've described, thinking I was doing the
right thing, fully convinced that God was moving and doing something
wonderful in people's hearts. I never set out to deceive or abuse.
Nevertheless, I was a willing
participant in what I can now only describe as manipulation of a very high
order. It's not the manipulation of a Steven Spielberg or a James Cameron.
That we can brush off, because it's Hollywood. This manipulation is
religious, spiritual, psychological and emotional, toying with the most
private and personal recesses of a person's psyche, and it has
consequences that stretch beyond the walls of the theatre. And it must be
opposed.
©
David L Rattigan 2005
