The Penguin Book of Hell by Scott G. Bruce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Control Without Fingerprints

In my youth, and that of many another Catholic school boy of the time, religious ‘retreats’ were an essential component of the curriculum. Three or four days each year were set aside for doing nothing but considering one’s spiritual state - a sort of Catholic tent revival without the singing (silence was strictly enforced). This group activity was usually supervised by a Jesuit priest who, I presume, specialised in such work.

The agenda for retreats never varied. In addition to a fixed daily routine of liturgical observances - Mass, the Divine Office, Benediction - everyone was required to attend lectures on the so-called Four Last Things, namely Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. In these, the assembled adolescent boys would be berated, intimidated, and ultimately convinced of their inadequacy as human beings. Think of Marine boot camp as the physical equivalent of the psychological readjustment which the process was meant to achieve.

The sequence of the lectures was critical. Hell was the emotional culmination of the entire experience. I’ll wager that no one who has heard the kinds of gruesome descriptions awaiting those who did not act as required, particularly regarding obedience and sex, can ever forget them. And this was precisely the intention of the entire programme - to frighten everyone present into permanent, unquestioning submission to ecclesiastical authority. It worked. The fact that the whole process effectively constituted child abuse wasn’t considered relevant at the time.

Even for those who ceased their formal affiliation with the Church in latter years, the emotional residue of these lectures remains buried in the unconscious, shaping much of our lives. Young masculine minds have a penchant for absorbing ghoul into their personalities:

“Hell became a vast prison of red-hot iron and choking smoke with great gates built to withstand the seething tide of furious, tormented souls who crashed inexorably against them in their futile attempt to escape their suffering. The literature of Hell boasts famous villains, but most of the damned are ordinary people like you and me, each judged to be deserving of eternal punishment for their own private sins.”

As Scott Bruce points out, hell was not invented by Christians. But the concept was certainly developed and refined into a uniquely practical doctrine for social control by an institution which had, for a time at least, abjured physical violence. It left no visible marks. There were no limits to the horrors that could be invented and applied. And, most important, it was a mechanism by which each individual became his own policeman. The watcher was also the watched; failing to watch zealously was sufficient cause for damnation. At least Protestantism was more humane in its views - predestination mitigates responsibility and salvation by faith alone narrows one’s worries substantially.

Bruce’s thesis is that although the concept of hell has lost its grip on the modern imagination as a place of punishment (even in church circles), it still exerts a metaphorical hold on Western society. This is no doubt true. Socialism is the inferno of Capitalism; and vice versa. Africa is (according to Trump) a hell-hole; as is most of Latin America. The United States trades hell-based insults with the Axis of Evil which then responds to the Great Satan. The doctrine has been secularised. But it’s intention remains the same as it was in religion: to generate self-enforced conformity and willing obedience within a population.

Christianity transformed the Ancient Greek Tartarus, the Jewish Sheol, and the Roman Underworld from mythical places of indeterminate existence into purportedly real prisons of retributive punishment. Given Jesus’s constant emphasis on the universal availability of heavenly delights according to the gospels, this is a remarkable volte face. Clearly the transformation is politically motivated, not to attract followers but to keep those who were already part of the tribe in line. Hell has never been a very effective marketing strategy but it its hard to beat as an organizing principle. And so it remains: yet another legacy of European culture benefitting the world at large.

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