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Souls on Ice
Kirk Cameron, lefties and the politics of self-hatred.

It’s a Wednesday, and I’m at Six Flags Darien Lake, your typical vast concrete amusement paradise in the middle of nowhere, this particular nowhere being a spot in Western New York not far—geographically or spiritually—from Attica. I’m there attending a special event: a Christian youth rally called "Kingdom Bound."

The vast park grounds are teeming with pale, pear-shaped Believers, people in ketchup-stained 4XL t-shirts that say things like "Jesus: the original blood donor" and "Satan is a nerd." Trying to keep a low profile, I’m sitting on the ground in a place designated on the park map as the "Worship Tent."

The speaker looming above me on the podium is Kirk Cameron, the former teen star of Growing Pains. Wide-eyed and dressed like a Gap model, he is talking in the cheery voice of his sitcom alter ego, Mike Seaver, about Hell and eternal conflagration.

Cameron is a hardcore fire-and-brimstone type, only with the delivery of Tony Robbins. Ecumenically, he makes Chuck Colson look like Mr. Rogers. His pet idea is that evangelicals in the past hundred years have concentrated too much on trying to convince people that turning to God will improve their lives, give them peace of mind, etc. He believes that the fear-of-eternal-torment aspect is the much more fruitful strategy. Thus he is inclined to metaphors like: God as a parachute that one wears not to improve one’s flight, but because…

"You might fall 25,000 feet to the Earth at any moment, and PERISH!!!" he shrieked, his eyes filled with what looked like real human fear at the idea.

As he spoke, a giant screen behind him lit up. The apocalyptic message read, in fat white letters against a neon blue background:

THERE IS A GREEN SAAB
NEW YORK LICENSE 64B 322
WITH ITS LIGHTS ON

On drugs, I would not have been able to handle this scene.....