Performing Salvation: Fear and Hope in Heaven's Gates & Hell's Flames

The evangelistic drama Heaven’s Gates & Hell’s Flames (HGHF) promises audiences a glimpse of “what happens one second after you take your last breath.” I argue that HGHF capitalizes on audiences’ simultaneous fears and hopes for their afterlife future by cultivating affective experiences to instill a distinct soteriological message and teach appropriate moral behavior. Originating as a camp ministry in the late 1970s and now performed globally through Reality Outreach Ministries, HGHF dramatizes scenes of sudden death and final judgment in which characters are welcomed into heaven or dragged into hell. By rapidly switching between the two extreme affective registers of hope and fear, HGHF allows audiences to vicariously experience both their anticipation and anxiety for the afterlife. Drawing on my ethnographic research at rehearsals, prayer meetings, and performances, I show how these imagined futures are embodied and repeatedly reenacted, shaping evangelical understandings of salvation, morality, and behavior in everyday life.