Vox Day devotes his April 18 column to savaging a Christian pastor, Rob Bell. What horrible crime did Bell commit to earn Mr. Beale’s enmity? Offer an alternative view for the Christian concept of hell.
As outlined in a Time magazine article, Bell’s view of Christianity is “less judgmental, more fluid, open to questioning the most ancient of assumptions,” and specifically that “history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God.”
That was too much for Day, who declared Bell’s teachings “pernicious” and “heresy,” and that they “eviscerate Christianity itself, as they not only remove the very purpose for the Word becoming flesh, but render both the Crucifixion and the Resurrection entirely irrelevant.” But he couldn’t stop there — he had to go the Godwin route:
In much the same way that the camp guards of the SS-Totenkopfverbände once reassured Jews lined up for their lethal showers, Rob Bell is now encouraging those who stand in that line to remain there calmly awaiting their eventual destination instead of urging them to repent and remove themselves from the black parade. And in doing so, he is much more aptly described as a servant of hell than as a minister of Jesus Christ.
Day also drops a bizarre reference to “the secular cult formerly known as the Episcopalian Church,” and this may the first and only time that a right-wing columnist has begun a column with lyrics from the nu-metal band Disturbed.