Church invented Hell and Heaven to 'control the masses', says retired Bishop

A retired bishop has controversially claimed that life after death in heaven and eternal damnation in hell are scare tactics invented by Church in a bid to control the masses. According to Express UK, John Shelby Spong, who is a retired bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US, doesn’t believe that Mediveial-era representations of the afterlife are accurate. In a recently unearthed interview from 2006, Spong said that he doesn’t think hell exists and further revealed that he believes in life after death, but don’t think it has got anything to do with “reward and punishment”. 

In the interview, Bishop Spong explained why he thinks the idea of paradise-like heaven as a reward and the fiery pits of hell as punishment for sin is a human concept and not an entirely spiritual one. He said that religion is always in the control business and that is something people don’t understand. He said that if heaven is a place where one is rewarded for goodness and hell is a place where one is punished for evil, then the idea sort of control the population. 

Spong called hell a part of the control tactic and added that Church created this fiery place to “scare the hell of out people”. It is worth mentioning that Bishop Spong is a staunch believer in reforming Christian dogma and he has been challenging the Church on what he thinks are outdated or dishonest practices and beliefs. He had also published his 12 Points of Reforms in 1989, where he challenged the biblical story of creating in a post-Darwinian world. 

Church of England rejects the idea of hell 

In this book, Spong had written that the “miracle stories” of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity. He had also said that the hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behaviour control mentality of reward and punishment. “The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behaviour,” Spong said. 

Moreover, previously, a Church of England commission had rejected the idea of hell many people ascribe to today. The report published by the Church’s Doctrine Commission said that hell is not a medieval-styled subterranean world full of fire and pitchforks. Instead, the report claimed that hell is not eternal torment, but is the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God. 

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