by Kevin A. Beck
Hellfire and brimstone sermons have been a staple of Christian preaching. The “Turn or Burn” mentality has saturated both church and popular culture. In the pulpit and on the street, you have likely heard evangelists demanding that their congregations change their wicked ways or face the wrath of God. Once sitting through a particularly fiery sermon in church, I overheard a boy no older than six inquire of his grandmother, “Why is that man yelling at us?”
Immediately following the September 11 incidents, a well-known televangelist attributed the tragedies to God’s hand in retribution for America’s immorality. They had been warning us all along to turn or burn, and now they claimed a perverse vindication.
At the heart of the turn or burn message is personal morality. Each individual is called to change his or her immoral lifestyle and begin to live aright. Whoever ignored the warning and refused to amend her ways faces condemned by God to an eternal doom.
When I was an undergraduate, I regularly encountered a street preacher whom most of us students deridingly knew as “Brother Bob.” Brother Bob waved a Bible and hurled insults at the crowd. He indiscriminately accused the women of prostitution and the men of drug addiction. He instructed us filthy sinners to “turn or burn.”
Brother Bob employed two Biblical passages that I heard regularly in church. The Sunday sermons did not possess the same irenic tone as Brother Bob, but they contained the identical imperative: turn or burn. The twin texts are Luke 13:3 and 5 where Jesus cautions his listeners, “I tell you no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”
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