How Nineteenth-century spiritualists “abolished” the concept of ​​hell to handle social and political concerns

Between Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, drivers pass a billboard on Interstate 71 that has gained some notoriety online.

Since 2004, a black sign reading “HELL IS REAL” has stood on this flat stretch of highway. The H in “Hell” is painted red, a color Christians have long related to sin and Satan.

The developer who put up the warning, Jimmy Harston, has put up similar signs throughout the Midwest, including ones that ask, “If you died today, where would you spend eternity?”

For years, this symbol of confrontation was primarily a neighborhood attraction. But it gained greater notoriety when Ohio's two Major League Soccer teams, Columbus Crew and FC Cincinnati, named it 2017 matchup “Hell is real.” The sign has now been created TikTok content, T-shirt Drafts, cups And Decals. But it also reflects the real belief in hell that the vast majority of Americans hold today, at the same time as numbers are declining.

A Gallup Poll 2023 found that 59% of respondents consider in hell while 67% consider in heaven. The number of people that consider in hell is way higher amongst those that discover as Protestant Christians (81%) and Republicans (79%).

Belief in hell persists within the United States, but that wasn't all the time the case. In my research on spiritual communication In Nineteenth-century American culture, I discovered an organized try and “abolish” hell by spiritualists, who were the fastest-growing religious movement of the century.

Spiritualists believed that individuals could maintain communication with the living even after death. They were convinced that communicative spirits played a very important role in coping with essentially the most pressing social and political problems of the time, which could be unimaginable if souls were damned. This idea was a cornerstone of their practice and a driver of their politics.

Hell hath no fury

In many traditions, including Catholic Christianity, belief in everlasting destiny prevails, but within the settler colonies of America, the Protestant faith predominated.

Puritan clergyman Michael Wigglesworth's epic and best-selling poem “Day of Doom“, written in 1666, shocked generations of believers with its vivid depiction of “that lake yonder where fire and brimstone flame.”

A century later, revival minister Jonathan Edwards warned of the “terrible pit of burning flames of God's wrath” and waits for the unrepentant.

On the fringes of organized religion, nonetheless, were believers involved in alternative afterlife. The Swedish theologian and scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg, for instance 1758 speculated that “the world of spirits is neither heaven nor hell; but it is a place or state lying between the two.”

After the sisters, Swedenborg's ideas received public attention within the USA Kate and Margaret Fox of Hydesville, New York, reported “knocking” and “knocking” noises of their home. The knock appeared to reply to the sisters' questions, and shortly they claimed they may have conversations with the deceased. From this domestic drama emerged a national and international phenomenon that reoriented people's relationship with death and provided balm to those that mourned.

Among the Foxes' early supporters were Quaker activists Isaac and Amy Post. Isaac Post became the medium of writingRecording alleged spirit communications from luminaries reminiscent of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte in addition to on a regular basis people.

Spiritualists believed that after discarding the body in death, the spirit would proceed its journey to heaven. A spirit's job was to assist those still of their body create a greater, fairer world. Through mediums, séances, and object manipulation, spirits were believed to give you the option to enlighten the living by giving them a glimpse of life on a broader plane of existence.

Spiritualists believed that embodied life was narrow and filled with prejudices, desires, needs, and conflicts. His 1850 book states: “Unique revelations“Spirit medium Eliab W. Capron recorded an insight he said he received from the spirit of radical Methodist preacher Lorenzo Dow, who had died 14 years earlier: “The Presbyterians say hell is a place of fire and brimstone, which… Soul burns forever. It's not like this. Hell is man’s own body, and if he escapes from it, he escapes from bondage.”

Fire of reform

By neutralizing the specter of hell, spiritualists believed that even deeply corrupted spirits could spur the living to progressive reform.

At a gathering of self-proclaimed “Friends of Free Thought” in Vermont in 1858, referred to as Rutland Free ConventionSpiritualists and social reformers debated the query of hell in relation to issues reminiscent of slavery, capital punishment, and motherhood.

Lecturer and psychic Andrew Jackson Davis cheekily announced to the Rutland audience“Hell has undergone the most profound changes and improvements in the hands of spiritualists.” By caring “less about the fear of the devil and more about the actual need for good,” people were in a position to act meaningfully to handle real social problems , slightly than fighting what Davis believed were imaginary problems.

Spirit medium Ascha Sprague linked the assumption in hell for the continued existence of the death penalty In American jurisprudence it’s asked: “Who blames man for hanging his brother between heaven and earth, when he has been taught to believe that Almighty God, infinite in power and wisdom, will in a moment plunge him into a burning pit?” “Never save him?”

In other words, spiritualists warned that the concept of ​​hell allows people to stay complacent: hell is supposed to punish the brutal slave trader, the cruel prison guard, the merciless factory foreman, and the abusive husband. Hell offered believers the chance to shirk the responsibility of addressing the burning social ills of the here and now. By abandoning the “bottomless pit in which they were taught to believe,” Isaac Post quoted a ghost sayinga brand new ethos of urgent and comprehensive reform could emerge.

Even today, some spiritual activists view belief in hell as an obstacle to systemic social change. For example, a jail abolitionist Hannah Bowman wrote in a 2023 collection on spirituality and abolition: “To the extent that hell is defined by coercion/confinement, separation, and retribution, it is to some extent related to all societal and governmental interventions based on these practices.”

To hell and back

Extinguishing the fires of hell was challenging within the Nineteenth century United States, especially at first of the Civil War when mass death fueled apocalyptic rhetoric. The promise of God's “terribly swift sword” of judgment was sung within the canonical words from “Battle Hymn of the Republic” by suffragist Julia Ward Howe.

Spiritualism's popularity waxed and waned after the war, and its reformist tendencies largely faded. Mass casualty events reminiscent of war and flu led to periodic revivals, particularly the séance culture. But belief in hell ultimately remained stable in America and rekindled within the mid-Twentieth century.

The reasons for this range from a decline in religious belief between the world wars, to a subsequent religious revival, to the horrors of the war itself. His 1949 memoir states: “To hell and back“World War II Lieutenant Audie Murphy recounts the spontaneous verses of a comrade. “Oh, gather around me, comrades, and listen as I speak of a war, a war, a war during which hell is six feet deep.” Hell was in every single place.

Cornell University Roper Center survey from 1957 – in the midst of the Cold War – found that 74% of Americans surveyed believed in an afterlife, but 84% believed that the dead were unable to speak. These modern trends show that belief in hell captures the zeitgeist of an era. It ebbs and flows with attitudes toward justice, human suffering, and even the health of the planet.

The “Hell is Real” sign has undergone the same transformation. Last summer, street artist LISP taped a cutout of a cartoonish red devil to the highway sign and shared it sting operation on Instagram. “Is nothing sacred?” one user asked, poking fun on the sign's iconic, if peculiar, status. The sign has now replaced with a brand new, a visual reminder that for some people belief in hell won’t ever die.