RESPONSE to Daniela's post: Moralizing Violence: Hell House

          Daniela, I enjoyed this post because you asked a valid question on the representation of violence in association with Christianity. When is it OK? and why is the violence in Christianity ignored? I think that Hell House is a perfect example of how Christians use popular culture to missionize, but does so in a hostile manner. Not only is the violence in Christianity ignored but scaring people into having faith in Christianity is a violent act in itself.
         You are correct when you also said that this is simplifying violence. This reminded me of the film "Donnie Darko" and the "lifeline" concept that is taught by Kitty Farmer to her class. She claims that:

*"As you can see, the Life Line is divided into two polar extremes. Fear and love. Fear is in the negative energy spectrum. And love is in the positive energy spectrum." 
When Donnie Darko is asked to categorize a given scenario in to one side of the spectrum, he argues: 
"No, I mean I know what to do, I just don’t get this. You can’t just lump things into two categories. Things aren’t that simple[...]There are other things that need to be taken into account. Like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can’t just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else."
After Donnie argues with Kitty farmer, she quickly threatens him and claims that he will get a zero for the day if he does not complete the assignment. Instead of hearing out what he has to say like a fair Christian, she immediately points out the trouble that he is causing.
I think that Donnie is right. Like categorizing fear and love, it is hard to name an act violent or not without fully taking in the circumstances. The Christians in Hell House deem things bad so that goodness can be found in having faith in Christianity. Violence is not as simple as it used to be in the early stages of human development when it was purely for means of survival. It now has a lot more political systems and human rights that need to be taken into account. So as some Christians are quick to point out violent acts to missionize the goodness in their religion, does not mean they have the right to not act peacefully towards violent actions.


*Excerpts taken from: http://www.donniedarko.org.uk/script/