Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell: A Novel by Stan Rice, part four. Even in Hell, They Know Racism is Stupid

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

In the Billy Stormfield novel, the only people who were in Heaven were the Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, who spent all day every day killing each other, and then they would resurrect and do it again the next day. War is the ultimate good and pleasure for godly people at least according to the fundamentalists of these two monotheistic religions. And the Christian fundamentalists were racists, who required that schools teach that Black slavery was a good thing for everyone, including the Black slaves themselves. (This is not too different from the history requirements that almost got adopted in Oklahoma in 2025.)

In Rice’s novel, one racist (Stonewall) got tired of this and slipped off to find some peace and quiet. He found it in Hell. He also found a former history teacher from Oklahoma, a Black woman named Philomena. As is nearly inevitable in novels (Rice’s novel is clever but is more of a fable than a novel), they realize how stupid it is for the white (and Black) leaders to teach that they should hate the other race, and they fall in love. The climax of the novel is when they get married.

Given what Twain thought about slavery, he could have put a similar scene into his book about the original Captain Stormfield. For whatever reason, he did not.

Two Gods

Do the major monotheistic religions all worship the same God? Both Christianity and Islam claim to worship the Jewish Old Testament God. But if you go by the actions of religious people, there are actually two different Gods that they worship.

The first God is the one who created the universe recently, who created it and all of humankind to be the property of angry men with guns, and who plans for angry men with guns to bring it to a violent end in the near future. This is the God whom right-wing Christians and jihadist Muslims worship. They hate each other, but they worship the same God who has the same commandments.

The second God is the God of love who pervades the universe and wants us to take care of the world. This is the God whom moderate Christians and Muslims worship.

Moderate Christians have more in common with moderate Muslims than they do with right-wing Christians. And, though neither of them wants to hear this, right-wing Christians have more in common with jihadist Muslims than with moderate Christians. The fact that right wing and moderate Christians both claim to worship the same Jesus appears to mean nothing.

More Scriptural Justification for Killing

In previous entries, I have criticized fundamentalist Christians for using the Bible to condemn people who disagree with their doctrines. In fact, the Old Testament often calls for the killing of people who disagree with them.

These fundamentalists seem to ignore the distinction between the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament called for the stoning of people having sex outside of marriage. But when hard-line religious people brought to Jesus a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, Jesus forgave her. (One of course wonders what happened to the man, whose sin was apparently excused by the religious authorities.) Clearly Jesus was preaching a message of forgiveness rather than of condemnation: a code for a church rather than for a government. But modern Christian fundamentalists continue to quote Old Testament condemnations of people they do not like, especially gays and lesbians, even though the man whom they revere as Lord and Master disregarded Old Testament condemnations.

In most cases, this takes the form of white conservative Christian preachers condemning other people. But not always. Let me mention some counter-examples.

Many white fundamentalist preachers are infamous for using their oratory and organizational structure to defraud money from their followers. There are more examples of this than you can shake an assault weapon at. But there are a few examples of black evangelists bilking their poor black followers also. One example is from Tulsa, where I live. Willard Jones, a black Baptist minister, defrauded the community center that he led of $933,507 and he had $390,061 of unreported income in 2011. He got caught in 2014.

But the most famous example of religious oppression outside of white Christian fundamentalism is from radical Islam. I have written little about it, since it is a relatively minor force in the United States, especially the fundamentalist Christian stronghold of Oklahoma. But I want to discuss it briefly now. Islam, like Christianity, has many moderate adherents who do not believe that God, or Allah, wants them to condemn all the people that their religion condemned many centuries ago. My comments, therefore, are limited to Christian and Muslim fundamentalists.

The Koran does not have Old and New Testaments. It has version of one book, authoritative and inerrant for all time, according to conservative believers. All the following quotes are from Quran.com. And here are some of the things that the Koran says:

8:60: And prepare against them [unbelievers, according to verse 59] whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows.

8:65: O Prophet, urge the believers to battle. [Unlike Jesus, Mohammed did not say that “my kingdom is not of this world,” thereby indicating a spiritual battle.]

9:5: And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. [At least, we can take comfort that this is followed by “But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.” But Muslim extremists kill other Muslims more often than they kill people of other religions.]

9:30: The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allah;” and the Christians say, “The Messiah is the son of Allah.” That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved [before them]. May Allah destroy them; how are they deluded?

9:123: O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness.

22:19-20: But those who disbelieved will have cut out for them garments of fire. Poured upon their heads will be scalding water by which is melted that within their bellies and [their] skins. [This is in the context of Hell for non-Muslims.]

47:4: So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either [confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command].

It seems to me, then, that one of the principal dangers in the world is fundamentalism, in which people use their sacred writings as a justification for oppressing or even killing people of other religions, particularly pagans. And some creationists (especially at the Institute for Creation Research and Creationism.org insist that evolutionary scientists are pagans. There is no hope for the world unless the adherents of all religions agree that God is love, rather than believing that God wants all followers of other religions or of no religion to be dead.

Wishing You a Quiet New Year

This past year, as every previous year, I have written a lot about loud, bloviating fundamentalism. I have tried to avoid discrediting all religion when I criticize fundamentalists. But I want to take a moment to indicate that the purpose of this blog is not to attack religion as a whole but just doctrinal religions that make people think they have the final answers to every question.

Fundamentalist religions tend to be loud. Their preachers are loud and relentless. They give you no time to think for yourself and to consider possibilities other than the stark black-and-white choices they have set before you: to agree with they say (Heaven) or to doubt it (Hell). Even during times of supposedly silent prayer in a conservative church, the organ plays melodies of hymns that tell you what to think. At least that is the way it is in fundamentalist Christianity, and I suspect (without direct knowledge) the same is true in Islam.

In this sense, fundamentalist religions resemble entertainment. Many modern movies consist of nearly continuous action. If you stop for a moment to think, you might get attacked by orcs, so you have to keep slashing with your sword. That is, these movies are like video games. And, as in video games, all of the characters are unchangeably good or bad. Genre fiction also never takes time for reflection. There are movies and literary novels in which you have to think about which direction the characters will choose and in which good vs. bad is not always very clear. But these reflective movies and books make a lot less money than action movies and genre fiction.

The big churches that sell religion and the big corporations that sell entertainment do not want you to take time for reflection. Fundamentalist religious leaders worry that, if you think for yourself, you might become a Quaker (if Christian) or Sufi (if Muslim). You might be less useful of a follower, less likely to give money to a church, less likely to take up arms when called to do so. And the corporations are afraid that you might have a good time by doing something that does not require you to make a purchase.

I wish for you, in this coming year, freedom. And you can find freedom by taking time to think carefully for yourself. Walk in the woods and notice things. Shut up and listen. Read the Bible, and think about what Jesus and the prophets said rather than what the big preachers say. Do not be afraid to be alone with your own thoughts.