Beware that “haunted house”. And “Jesus Ween”, too.

Christ, what is it with the Religious Reich? Bad enough that they had to steal all our Old Religion holidays out from under us and try to turn them into things they are not. Now they’re relying on them as a source of crapaganda, with heavy overtones of gore-porn:

PASADENA, TX (KTRK) — A local church is using a haunted house to get what it says is an important message across. A local mother says her children not only heard the message, but they saw it as well — and she is not happy about it.

Linda Ybarra says she bought tickets to Hell House in Pasadena for her family this weekend. She didn’t expect that her son would see graphic scenes about going to Hell if they didn’t accept Jesus as their savior.

Ybarra says she and her 14-year-old son thought they’d get a good scare this Halloween at the haunted house, and she expected “the usual Halloween things. You know, zombies and ghouls and goblins. That kind of thing.”

But the horror fan says the experience her family got inside the haunted house left her feeling violated. She says she is upset that — under the guise of an ordinary haunted house — serious moral issues were raised that she has not yet had the chance to discuss with her child.

“There was a young lady lying on a gurney, and two nurses. And one of the nurses was reaching into the lady and pulling out a bunch of gunk, and throwing it on the floor,” Ybarra said, describing an abortion scene at the haunted house.

Ybarra says the actors were depicting far too realistic scenes about abortion, suicide and other sins. She says the Hell House flier’s warning about violent content was too vague for what patrons are walking into.

Um, nurses “reaching into the lady and pulling out a bunch of gunk, and throwing it on the floor” is NOT a realistic portrayal of what goes on during an abortion. Not even remotely. Do the organizers of this “Hell House” not realize that Jesus doesn’t like it when you lie?

Apparently not.

Pastor Lamont Melrose says this haunted house isn’t about scaring people with the idea of fake ghosts.

“The material we are using to scare people is reality,” Melrose said. “We want to give people the horror of what it is to go through an abortion. We want to give people the horror of what it is to deal with a rebellious son that commits suicide.”

Melrose explained that patrons aren’t allowed to turn back because of safety concerns in the small, dark space.

He says the mission of Hell House is to lure people to Jesus by the end of the show.

Fishers-of-men FAIL.

I think there needs to be a new Halloween awareness campaign. Not just a “beware of tampered candy/razor blades in apples” type thing, but “Beware of anything called a Hell House/run by fundamentalist preachers” type thing.

And on that note, kiddies, beware of Jesus Ween.

This Halloween, a Calgary-based Christian organization is asking Toronto households to respond to trick-or-treaters with a simple phrase: Jesus Loves You.

JesusWeen, a non-profit founded in 2002, promotes the distribution of Bibles and other religious paraphernalia to trick-or-treaters. The movement doesn’t intend to deprive children of sweets, but wants parents to also consider doling out Jesus-themed postcards and pamphlets.

The initiative is an “alternative for anyone who chooses not to celebrate Halloween, and especially for most Christians,” according to the JesusWeen website.

For the past few weeks, Toronto organizers have been petitioning churches and canvassing at local shopping centres. Roughly 500 area churches have been made aware of the program, said John Crowne of JesusWeen’s Toronto office. Other grassroots marketers have posted flyers in grocery stores and on car windshields.

The website states that 2011 efforts are focused on Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton.

JesusWeen also encourages participants to forego “evil”-looking costumes in favour of all-white attire.

I don’t know about you, kiddies, but just seeing that name makes me want to shout the praises of the Holy Cock.

Gimme dat ol’-time religion…and join me in a chorus of “What a Friend We Have in Venus”, won’t you?

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7 Responses to Beware that “haunted house”. And “Jesus Ween”, too.

  1. richmx2 says:

    If the “treat” is a Jesus-tract, one good trick deserves another… whatever happened to the good ol’days of soaping windows, and TPing and rotten eggs? Not to mention cow tipping?

  2. Polaris says:

    When I was in Catholic grammar school we were required to make our fist confession at age 7. The church was right next to the school building and we were herded to the church during the regular school day to confess the terrible sins second grade students are capable of committing.

    My confessional priest advised me to not commit such and such sins again because if I died of a heart attack before I made it to my next confession to be forgiven I would burn in Hell forever and ever. 🙂

  3. Jim Hadstate says:

    I must have gone to a different Catholic school/church than Polaris, because our priest (who later became the Archbishop of Panamá) was of a much kinder gentler persuasion. We were told that we were to confess 2-3 things such as have we ever stolen any marbles from someone during a game of marbles. Or had we ever done something our parents told us not to. Then the priest would give us some things to do to repent from our sins and then he would give us an absolution for all our previous sins, even the ones we forgot or hadn’t confessed if we were truly sorry for having done them. My penance was to say the rosary 10 times and then think about the things I had done and think of how I could have done things differently.
    As for the holy roller haunted house, isn’t it ironic that the kids of the holy rollers will call a high school kid who worships as a Roman Catholic a “Mary Worshiper” of an “Idolator” for worshiping statutes of Christ. But then they adopt the religious holidays that the despised Roman Catholic Church adopted to proselytize the “pagans” and keep them happy be including one or two of their holidays but re-naming it. And taking one or two of their Gods and re-naming them saints to make the newly converted happy. But who ever expected consistency from the Religious Reich (I REALLY like that ‘Bina.)
    And these same holy rollers will go out and spend a fortune on a day that the Catholic Church basically picked out of its collective backsides at the council of Nicene, the Bishops selected the Day that Christ was born, since nobody remembered anymore by that time. The only thing that everyone agreed on is that it was cold, and since most to the pagan converts had a festival at mid-winter. So the delegate-Bishops all agreed that an average of the mid-winter festival days would be the official birthday of Christ. Some consistency, huh?
    It would be nice if someone could set up shop next door with big signs announcing the false advertising of the hypocritical wingnuts next door and have a real horror house on their site. Some fun huh? Except you would have to guard it 24-7 because those so Jeeeezzzzuusss Chriiiist, fiiiiillllled wiikiiffff ttttthhhh spiiiiiirrrrrriiiittt hypocrites next door would surely try and burn you out despite the part about doing unto others as you would have others to unto you. Were havin’ fun now, aren’t we?

  4. thwap says:

    There should be a “Wasted-Life House” where people go in and see how fucked-up they can get believing that all sex is the work of the devil, unhappy couples living together in misery, psychotic priests and pastors molesting them and/or stealing their money, wars of religions, nightmares over fear of damnation, etc., ..

  5. Sabina Becker says:

    Ha…I see it made Jezebel:

    http://jezebel.com/5855085/woman-trapped-in-anti+abortion-haunted-house

    The comments are fabulous. Click the “All” link at the bottom of the post and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s a sampling:

    I spent the first 15 years of my life in a church that eventually got mixed up with this Christian Fellowship Ministries denomination of which this church in this story is a part of.

    My dad started doing the House of Horrors at our church in Los Angeles back in the late 80s, but not to the extent of this. Yes, it was a “ministry tool”, but it wasn’t forced upon you like these are. There were the stereotypical goblins, ghouls, zombies, what have you. I was one of the zombies! Oh, and one year I got shocked in an electric chair with some crazy special effects! It was awesome. It was just your regular old haunted house, until the end.

    The end had the one and only Christianish scene which, in two minutes, took place in Hell wherin God saved you from Hell. And then a happy ending. Smileys and flowers for all.

    Now, while I don’t agree with the idea of this whole House of Horrors thing (and neither does my dad, mind you) anymore, it was nowhere near to the extent what this church is doing.

    The worst thing of all, is my dad was the first one who did this in the denomination, and ever since these churches saw that, they have been taking his structure and making it worse and worse (and more Christianized) with every year.

    We left that church and denomination long, long ago, and my dad stopped doing the House of Horrors a couple years after starting it, because the church wanted to make it just like the one in the story, with all the abortion scenes and what not.

    I applaud and am proud of my dad for sticking up for his idea of what the House of Horrors should be, but I am now depressed to see what kind of a monster this idea has become within this denomination.

    Oh and also, the guy who runs the denomination (Wayman Mitchell) is a dirty old fucking man.

    Also:

    I went with friends to one of these “Hell Houses.” We intended to protest it, so we figured that we should actually see it for ourselves. It was awful. We had a friend whose brother had recently committed suicide, so the suicide “room” was particularly painful (and rage-inducing) for her.

    At the end of the Hell House, you are generally ushered into a room with chairs, where there is bright light, gold lamé, and a wind machine. There is someone playing Jesus and there are angels. The whole set up led my best friend to say one of the funniest things I have ever heard: “Welcome to Heaven. Please stay to the right.”

    And:

    In the awesome book Rapture Ready! by Daniel Radosh, which talks about Christian pop culture, he took Jay Bakker (the heavily tattooed son of Jim and Tammy Faye, who’s also a preacher) to a hell house, and Jay was PISSED: “If someone was even considering looking into Christianity, would you still feel that way after seeing that? You’d be like, fuck that…Maybe they forget that their stereotypical characters represent real people, and they’re telling them, basically, ‘you guys are worthless’. When they put down gay marriage, they’re devaluing people’s love for one another and their relationships…Doesn’t gospel mean ‘good news’? That wasn’t good news.”

    At which point I got a massive crush on Jay Bakker.

    Sounds like Jay got the good-soul genes from his mom, Tammy Faye, who, despite her runny mascara and tacky outfits, was genuinely loving and gay-friendly, and not one for condemning anybody a little bit different. Amazing how many children of the Religious Reich turn away from that as adults, and end up preaching against it.

  6. Snarla says:

    The bible’s solution to a rebellious son is to kill him. That little twerp will never commit suicide then!

    • Sabina Becker says:

      It blows my mind that anyone would think suicide was an act of rebellion. The last time I had suicidal thoughts, rebelling was the furthest thing from my mind. I was ill and in great pain. If that’s “rebellion”, then these people are sicker than I was.

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