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The Road to Hell
Emilia Ramos Samper
Two men walk the road to hell.
The pope, golden cross heavy across his chest
Who prayed, confessed, repented
Who stole, and lied, and meant it
The ploughman, bones dyed red from the soil
Who loved, thieved, broke his back in toil
Who never saw the stained glass of the morning church
And yet
They both walk this road.
When many of us think of Hell, the same image appears: a barren landscape full of fire, pain, torture, and anguish. While this may be influenced by our religion or background, where do these ideas really come from? How have they impacted our culture, and how has the culture around hell impacted us? This presentation will focus on influential depictions of Hell in areas of our culture both past and present to examine how exactly humans perceive Hell and where this perception came from.
HELL in its ACTUAL use.
HELL in its ACTUAL use.
Gods & Kings
The Briefest History of Religion and Control
Emilia Ramos Samper
“Religion is the opiate of the masses.” - Karl Marx
The History of Believing
A prosperous settlement, nestled within a mountain valley, is blessed with rain. Until it’s not. Until a drought.
Whispers of outrage spread across the town, whispers that the chief hears. Quickly, he calls the meeting, the priest, and the sacrifice. With a swoosh of sharp obsidian and a gush of blood, the gods are satisfied. The drought is no longer the chief’s problem. Or his fault.
Welcome to 1300s Tenochtitlan. Where the people follow the priest, because without his truths and rituals, the sun—and the world—would cease. With their labor, they pay the chief, who pays the priest; it’s why the chief and the priest agree to coexist… but that’s a story for another day (see Henry VII and Pope Clementine VII).
Along with the Aztecs, many other cultures followed these sacrificial practices, including the Druids, Celts, Vikings, and Hellenic Greeks, as depicted in the second picture below.
Imagination - Humanity’s Greatest Survival Tool
In Chapter 12 of Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens, he describes religious imagination as both a form of control and a great tool of survival. The “imagined order”, he calls it. A way to keep society in line through a power greater than any human leader. Think Buddhism’s Eightfold Path or Christianity’s Ten Commandments.
These imagined orders surpass the words of any human in their efficacy. Chiefs may kill and fight and overthrow one another, but the people of Tenochtitlan will still follow the religious rules, or else the world could end. As Spanish kings overthrew one another, their people still followed the commandments of the Catholic Church. As Ute chiefs fought and died, their people still honored the land and the Great Spirit, Sinawav. The moral principles of each religion serve as laws of society, safeguards of stability.
Class, Power, and God(s)
Let’s begin with Calvinism, the theology made popular by John Calvin, a 16th century Protestant reformer. Calvinism is found across America and engrained within its oldest educational institutions, including Harvard and King’s College. Calvinists believe that at the beginning of time, God selected an elite few, the predestined elect, to receive eternal salvation.
Nearly every world religion features some form of the “chosen” ideology. According to a creation epic, Babylon was chosen by the god Marduk to be the home of the gods. Athens was fought over by Athena and Poseidon. The Massai of Eastern Africa were entrusted by the god Ngai with the care of all the world’s cattle. In both Judaism and Christianity, the believers are God’s chosen ones.
That is how religion forges a cultural identity, how it keeps nations together. But what happens when it creates divisions between the fabric of a country?
In his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, German sociologist Max Weber explores the relationship between Protestant ethics and the rise of modern American capitalism. Since no Calvinist could guarantee their place among the elect, Calvinists often looked for assurance through displays of hard work and piety. Weber argued that these values contributed to the rise of capitalism in the West and created a moral justification for economic inequality in the States.
On the other side of the world, we have Hinduism. Ancient India’s caste system, formed on the basis of religious texts, is an early demonstration of the classism woven into many of our modern-day religions.
“Purity” is a term often utilized to claim certain people's inferiority under the judgment of the god(s), like with Miss Feemy Evans in Blanco. The model above shows the five main castes, formed from the god Brahma. To provide a heavily simplified version of a complex religion, Ancient Hindu logic went something like this: the caste you are born into is the one you’ll belong to in this lifetime. If you work hard and fulfill your dharma (duty), in your reincarnation you’ll be born into a higher caste. Work your way up to the top, and from there you have an eternity of peace waiting for you in the afterlife.
Another example, the English “royal we”, or pluralis majestatis, roughly dating back to the late twelfth century. It came about during the time of Henry II and his successor, Richard I. When giving their important remarks, kings used “we” (God and I), as a reminder of who endowed them with their kingship. Not that the West was innovative in this regard; the Ancient Chinese were using this logic with their Mandate of Heaven for centuries prior.
Seneca the Younger, one of Ancient Rome's Stoic philosophers, once said that “religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
The Point
I grew up in a Christian elementary school with the sweetest Religion teacher anyone could ever imagine. Every day after lunch, we’d slip off our shoes and curl up on her map-of-the-world carpet as she told us Bible stories with wooden figurines. As I got older, I began asking questions, prodding her with my own ideas about God and women and science. To my surprise, she’d always listen with kindness as this little fifth grader flooded her classroom with questions about the universe. And then she’d tell me this: that the Bible was written a long time ago, that no modern Christian agrees with everything in it, and that I certainly didn’t have to. All I had to believe in was love and honesty and the goodness within our humanity.
As someone who has been incredibly fortunate enough to step into Mayan temples woven into the rainforest, Ancient Egyptian pyramids wrapped in golden sand, intricate mosques, monasteries carved into cliffs, breathtaking cathedrals, and little chapels filled with love and songs, I will be the first to appreciate the many beautiful things that religion has created. I will also be the first to research its wars and monarchies and injustices.
So, I leave you with some history and some ideas, so you can ask all the questions many spend their lives too afraid to utter.
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy the show!
- Emilia Ramos Samper
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