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In the video game Avenging Angel, players are escorted through hellish visions of throbbing, intestinelike caves, where demons rip the flesh of the damned, and cries of eternal suffering echo throughout. The film What Dreams May Come shows a hell populated with the heads of the damned squished together in mud up to their necks, their mouths pleading, ''Help me.'' Graphic illustrations on the covers of comic books dramatize such titles as Hell Hound, Dance With Demons and Lord of the Pit.
Ironically, as much as popular culture sharpens our visual images of hell and its torments, both what hell is and why we end up there are undergoing a transformation in religion.
Most notably, Pope John Paul II told pilgrims this past summer that ''more than a physical place, hell is the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.''
Theology professor Lawrence Cunningham of Notre Dame University explains the pope's message in the context of a trend within Catholicism, in which ''there has been a shift away from emphasizing hell and damnation.'' This change can be seen, for example, in Catholic funeral Masses, at which white priestly vestments have replaced the former black ones, and such prayers as Dies Irae (''Day of Wrath'') describing the tortures of the damned have been replaced by others that emphasize hope and resurrection.
A similar modification is occurring in Protestant denominations. The doctrine commission of the Church of England recently recommended a hell of ''final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God'' instead of medieval fire and torment. And the newest Presbyterian catechism hardly mentions the subject at all. The diminution of hell in this version was a ''theological choice by the committee that goods news is more faithful to the gospel than bad news,'' according to George Hunsinger, director of the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton and a member of the catechism committee.
Of course, Christian evangelical denominations still believe in hell as a literal place and its tortures as real and eternal. Some host a play, Heaven's Gate and Hell's Flames, which graphically dramatizes heaven's rewards and hell's punishments.
Nevertheless, even among evangelicals, hell as a subject from the pulpit is less ubiquitous than before. The Rev. E.V. Hill, Baptist minister of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, explains that of the 500 congregations in his community, including many revivalists, he is part of a very tiny minority of clergy who ever preach on the subject throughout the whole year.
''The popular conception is that God is too good to allow a hell,'' he says.
And Pastor Von Lombard of the Fountain of Life Church in Fort Worth observes that hell is not common anymore, even among Christian ''televangelists.''
Why this growing disparity between a popular culture that obsesses with hell and religions that increasingly mute or refashion hell?
* The religious consumer.
''Today, we have a needs-based religion,'' Von Lombard says. ''The parishioner sees himself as more in need of hope, peace, love and marriage enrichment than needing to be saved from hell.'' That may explain why a recent Gallup Poll found that, although 73% of Americans believe in hell today as compared with only 54% in 1965, only 6% today think they personally will end up there, as compared with 17% in 1965.
* The American psyche.
According to Sukie Miller, who conducted a study on ''after-death'' published in Omni, we feel ''it is our birthright to be happy. We are guaranteed it in the Declaration of Independence. We feel entitled to it, and we'll sue somebody if we don't get it.'' And we also will redesign hell with that cheerful blueprint in mind.
* Christian ambiguity.
Some of hell's decline has to do with an ongoing ambiguity within Christianity as to what the biblical Matthew means when he warns that evildoers will be ''cast into a furnace of fire.''
While Augustine understood that painful flames sear the damned, he also mused that the fire was more ethereal than material. Martin Luther and John Calvin avoid all literal images, even as they talk of those who suffer isolation from God.
In the Hebrew Bible, there is no mention of hell at all, but only a deep ravine of rocky earth outside the Old City of Jerusalem, where the Israelites burned garbage and emptied sewage, and Sheol, a non-descript underworld into which both the good and the bad descended after death.
In other words, the meaning of hell in religion is remarkably fluid.
A hallmark of America is the freedom to accept or reject religion. In contrast, images of hell that threaten torture and torment coerce belief in God. Understanding hell as a metaphor is compatible with non-coercive faith, and also more in sync with our unique American religious vision.
Gerald L. Zelizer is rabbi of Neve Shalom, a Conservative congregation serving the Metuchen-Edison, N.J., area. He is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
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