On this day Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, will be released. The publication date was to have been March 29, but the "firestorm" the author has "ignited" with his "hellacious" book, to quote from some of the articles about it, caused HarperOne to move up the date.
On this video, Bell, pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, talks about hell: "Ghandi's in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure?"
Just as Pope Benedict's book has ruffled the feathers of some Catholics who can't bear the idea that the Church “must not concern herself with the conversion of the Jews”, Rob Bell's book is being criticized by some Evangelical Protestants who can't tolerate his teaching that we'll all end up in heaven with our Creator, and hell will be empty.
What's your opinion? Is Ghandi in hell? What about your pagan ancestors?
The old priest who was chaplain at my high school, a former professor of theology at his order's seminary, editor of a scholarly journal published by Harvard, author of many books, etc., told my classmates and me in religion class that we had to believe in hell, but we didn't have to believe anyone was in it. That was decades ago. To hell with hell.
This is the link to Rob Bell's website.
This is the link to an article by Erik Eckholm that appeared in the New York Times on March 4.
This is a link to many more articles at Google News on Bell and hell.
Congratulations to Pastor Rob Bell on the publication of Love Wins.
UPDATE at 11:45, Tuesday, March 15. The book is sold out at Amazon. Way to go, Rob!
UPDATE, Friday, March 18. Thanks to the readers who pointed out that the link I supplied to a blog was to the wrong church. I've removed it. Apologies to Rob Bell and to all.
