I remember Chick tracts well. I’m going to do a post about them when I’ve got a moment. They are not only scary they peddle false stories and are full of false accusations that some concerned and properly ecducated evangelicals have already exposed. We must not bear false witness and these tracts do. Will reveal all as soon as I’ve written the stuff up - nothing partcularly riveting; just tedious and shoddy and, I think, ‘satanic’ in the proper sense of the word.
All the best
Dick
I was a part of a discussion a couple years ago of people wanting to to make universalist “chick tracts”. I don’t think nothing came of it, but it would have been so cool! 
That would have been really cool Byonarn 
See below for I have a suggestion about how to do a counter judgement scene to Chick’s (great minds think alike!!!) 
I’ll have to ‘fess up’ here; I used to hand out Chick comics/booklets when I was a teenage fundamentalist – they’d been recommend to me by my elder and better ‘mature Christians’ you see as ‘these great little booklets’ and ‘ a really powerful presentation of the Gospel for today’. I now believe it was ‘sinful’ for me to hand them out because I think they bring shame upon the Gospel; but I did so ‘through ignorance and though weakness’ rather than through my ‘own deliberate fault’. So here am I taking responsibility for what I did by telling you what I, as an adult, think of/know about these booklets.
The booklets I remember clearly were ‘Bewitched’, The Gay Blade, ‘The Poor Revolutionaries’, and ‘Somebody Goofed’. In the last one I’ve named, I remember that in the closing scene a young boy is in Hell after being killed in a car accident by a newfound friend who has told him that it’s no great issue to accept Jesus. The young boy, when his friend tells him that they are in hell, shouts, ‘You goofed; you told me not to worry about these things’. At this the friend removes his human skin mask and lo! it is the fiend Satan laughing and scoffing – ‘It’s you who goofed little buddy – you didn’t accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal Saviour!’ And here in comic book graphics was portrayed the very real ‘Lord and Personal Satan’, well substantiated with Biblical proof texts in the space below the pictures.
I had an astute friend – an agnostic who I was always witnessing to – but he liked me and we remained friends. He pointed out to me something interesting about ‘The Poor Revolutionaries’ Chick comic. In this, the (Marxist?) revolutionaries have done the dirty work of Anti-Christ by overthrowing the state, and their three ringleaders are betrayed/executed by the same Anti-Christ. My friend pointed out that each ringleader was depicted as a stereotype – the Black Feminist, the Intellectual, the Jew. And I am grateful for his insight – it began to sow seeds of healthy doubt in me.
I’ll never forget the judgement scenes in Chick booklets. An enormous and faceless figure sitting on a gigantic throne dwarfs the solitary and wretched individual that stands before. Jurgen Moltmann the Universalist theologian points out that we will actually be judged together, not alone, and the judgement, however painful, is for healing between us. He also points out that the figure who sits on the throne of judgement has a face – the face of one like a Son of Man – namely Jesus, the same Jesus we meet in the Gospels. I’d side with Moltmann against Chick on this.
Regarding Chick as a false Accuser and False Witness – or at least a very gullible man, lead astray by his hate filled beliefs into the hands of fraudsters – I note that one of the heroes of the Chick ‘oeuvre’ is Alberto Riviera, who claimed to have been a Catholic priest and had inside information on a international Catholic conspiracy for world domination. Riviera was ‘exposed as a total fraud by non-Catholic (evangelical Protestant) Gary Metz, in two articles appearing in evangelical magazines:
See the following websites for the full story.
socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/03/ … ivera.html
thoushaltnotbearfalsewitness.wor … com/about/
Chick’s other heroic informant was a certain very shady John Todd –
‘Jack Chick’s comic book Spellbound features Todd appearing under his claimed “witch name”, Lance Collins. Spellbound claims the entire rock music industry is controlled by witches, who cast spells on the master tapes to cause evil spirits to follow all the recordings thus produced, resulting in kids becoming demon possessed from listening to rock & roll. The comic concludes with a good Christian record and book burning, during which a young born-again convert shouts “WOW! I feel F R E E!” upon seeing her heavy metal albums going up in smoke. Chick’s comic book The Broken Cross, featuring two evangelists busting up a Satanist cult that had taken over a California town, also cites Todd as its primary source. An early version of Chick’s anti-Dungeons and Dragons tract “Dark Dungeons” encourages readers to burn their occult books “including C.S. Lewis and Tolkien”; after people called B.S. on both of those Christian authors being so labelled, Chick said John Todd had been his source for this but removed it from later versions’.
Again Chick listened to the false witness of a fraud about organised Satanic cults, The Wikipedia article on Todd is well sourced –
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Todd_(occultist
I need to do another post on the Satanic Panic here sometime to give balance to my account here. But for the moment I will just say that these conspiracy theories of world takeover by Freemasons, Illuminati, Witches, or whatever all follow an archetypal pattern. This is based on ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ a forgery made by the Tsar’s secret police in nineteenth century Russia alleging a plot by International Jewry to take over the World. The Nazi’s were much inspired by this document, and today it is revered by the ‘Christian’ Identity movement as well as, depressingly, doing the rounds in the Muslim World.
I guess as Christian Universalists we need to believe in a conspiracy of hope rather than/stronger than a conspiracy of evil. For those of us who find the image of God playing a trick on the Devil in the Ransom theory of Atonement helpful, I would suggest that this image expresses a ground for our hope – God uses the force of evil to defeat itself, almost like a judo throw.
Oh my. Fortunately, I was spared these in my childhood, being instead exposed to tons of JW’s (which I still appreciate). But I became familiar with these when exploring Christianity. Awful, awful. Leading little ones astray if you ask me…
Tbh, Chick Tracts are something that could really wake some ECT’ers to their doctrine because they’re quite horrid in the manner in which they’re written. Consider this, for instance: chick.com/reading/tracts/0009/0009_01.asp
It’s basically denouncing human existence from start to finish. “Long trip from the cradle to the grave”? The whole outline of it is as if birth is something negative. And, tbh, in light of ECT, it is. “Crap, I’m born, what do I do?”
Hi Sobornost,
Thanks for that thoughtful review. You are far more gracious than I am.
This man has emotionally abused millions, especially children. I half-jokingly suggested to some friends we mount a class action against him. No doubt he’s made a fortune from his odious little tracts. 750 million copies!
Lol. I remember Chick tracts. TBH I always found them hilarious. Such ridiculous characters ( anyone remember the kid who turned murderer because his parents taught him to believe in Santa Claus?!). And the misinformation was also laughable. Before he changed his premarital sex tract into a story about AIDS, it was about herpes. The absolute nonsense he spewed about herpes was plain ridiculous.
Worst of all were his Starsky and Hutch esque Crusaders comics. Nearly every one was filled with drawings of inquisitional torture. Sigh!
If you google it, you can find parodies people have done. They’re very funny!
Tbh, it’s still difficult for me to find them funny. They hit too close to home to some doubts and fears I had when I was very little and someone taught me about Hell where bad people go. The language is very similar.
Would anyone be interested in starting a project to create a UR version of a chick tract? Perhaps we could start another thread about it and hammer out a script, then find someone to draw the scenes and such…
That is so lovely to get such an interesting and spirited response from my opening up this thread again ; I always fear that I may have served up another slice of Old Sobornost’s Stodge Cake to give everyone indigestion – but this time I got the mix right it seems. You may be aware that this is continuing part of the conversation on the ‘Satan – Personification or Person’ thread. I had just started to become sceptical about treating this as an abstract, intellectual exercise – proof texts for and against please - and thought it was high time we looked at an example of someone a lot of us will know of who really did believe with all of his heart in a personal Satan.
All of the replies thus far are great, in my view. Can I be so bold to respond to something about each in turn?
Hi Bird – I’ve looked at the link – all those smiley happy people that just live Chick tracks (along with the little girl!!!). They remind of all those smiley happy faces that turn up to grace celebrations of the smiley happy reigns of all the dear leaders/great dictators of modern times!!! Ghastly!!!
I presume that by the ‘JWs’ you mean the Jehovah’s Witnesses? Obviously I don’t agree with them theologically – and nor do you, I think – but I will say that when I get into conversation with one of them on my doorstep I always feel reassured to know that they are thinking I will merely be annihilated if I don’t convert, and therefore they are not having twisted fantasies about my possible eternal torment. I also note that one of the kindest, sweetest people I have ever worked with is a JW – she’s second generation rather than a new convert (and, in my experience, its always the new converts who are the trickiest customers, whatever the faith). IN addition I remember that my Chick book loving fundamentalist church friends once held a lecture entitled ‘How to break a Jehovah’s Witnesses Faith’ – even at the time I felt ashamed.
Hi Allan – (nice to know someone thinks I’m gracious; you should consult my nearest and dearest on this matter!!!)
I know you were only half joking about banning Chick tracts in some shape or form – but let me take this seriously for the sake of argument .I agree with you that they should not be distributed to young children and we should create as much hue and cry as we can in the media if we ever hear of this happening. With young people it gets trickier – there is an awful lot of very unpleasant stuff out there they are going to come into contact with in a naughty world. Good education in how to handle information, and preferably unbiased religious education will be a great help for them in negotiating this naughty world. Yes there are ‘real freedom of speech’ issues involved in trying to ban Chick tracts. However, some of these tracts do seem to cross the line between being deeply unpleasant and frightening and actually inciting hatred towards individuals and groups of people. All who love freedom should keep aware of this.
That’s an awful lot of copies sold. He may have been motivated by greed – but I doubt it; I imagine him as simply a fanatic who accidentally came up with a winning formula.
Hi Jael – well I agree that Chick booklets from my perspective today do seem absolutely ridiculous and hilarious (I love the God’s Own Inerrant Party’ spoof website that ‘warmly’ recommends Chick tracts - but then again I also found Mel Brook’s ‘The Producers’ very funny). We can cut very bad things down to size by having a laugh at them – true. But I also agree with Bird - if someone is affected by Chick booklets, emotionally and imaginatively, then they are not funny - at least for that person at the time (they may find them funny when they’ve ‘recovered’). And I remember trying to find them funny when I was rebelling against fundamentalisms but still a conflicted soul, and laughing with a rather conflicted and mirthless laugh at them. I guess whether you are ready to laugh at them or not depends on who much you have been conditioned by a religious psychology of fear – and some people from very hell fire and domination backgrounds are not conditioned in this way because they have been brought up to think that hell is for other people but not for them.
Byronarn – am interested but can’t commit too much at the moment.
Final thoughts – now here is some real Old Sobornost Stodge Cake, only for the committed!
It is often said on this site that we should not scapegoat people who are ECT believers. Many are fine people and well balanced and simply being faithful to scripture and tradition as they sincerely see it. Jason has cited G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis as examples, while acknowledging that Lewis wobbled on the issue of ECT. I completely endorse this view but would like to give it some nuance in connection with our discussion. There is a great difference between someone who has a notional view of ECT – it fits into a wider and more hopeful pattern of faith and belief that they affirm – and someone who has heartfelt belief in ECT and is obsessed with it. An example of the latter was Jack T, Chick and I’m happy to affirm that I think he was bonkers and that his beliefs only served to exacerbate his possibly clinical condition.
With Chesterton – he may have believed notionally in ECT but he concentrated on thoughts about the laughter of the universe in which grace competes with gravity (he was a merry soul). He also had a special love for the common sense of the ordinary working people –and the not particularly dogmatically religious people – of England. He didn’t mar his enjoyment of the everyday with gloomy imaginings of his blunt and earthy companions being destined for the eternal charnel houses. I think ECT disturbed Lewis far more, but then he was always verging on Universalism with his love of George MacDonald – and it appears that later in life he accepted the Catholic idea of Purgatory. (Perhaps his experience of the First World War had made Hell more of a reality to him than it was to Chesterton).
Both Chesterton and Lewis were very Conservative, traditionalist Christians – I’m not one of these but I have every respect for those who are, as long as their ‘will to conserve/preserve’ leads them ultimately in a loving and gracious direction (which it certainly did with Jack Lewis). One thing I think they both got wrong was having a far too rosy and romantic view of the ‘Christian’ past as opposed to secular modernity. Secular modernity has its big problems and potential for a myriad of evils – but these were also present in different forms in their idealised Christian past of Chesterton and Lewis (I believe Lewis, according to Alan Griffiths, became more aware of this in his last years). I think this romanticism made it easier for both of them to believe in ECT – because they were unaware that a minority tradition of Universalism has always existed, and so identified Universalism with ideas of decadent modernism.
As for the bloke who writes in praise/in defence of the strict Calvinist notions of election to salvation and reprobation to damnation in the ‘Universal Salvation? The Current Debate’ volume – in the biographical sketches in the front of the book he lists his hobby as ‘listening to jazz’. I hope he can forget the torments of damned when listening to jazz – and I suspect that even his belief in damnation is more notional than heartfelt.
Al the best
Dick
Could be interesting. There’s definitely nothing wrong with it, but I would prefer to stay heavily on the scriptural side. Chick Tracts go too far out into imagination for me. Tbh, I believe Jesus’s message is universal in general. You don’t need to add anything to it to make it so. ECT is always being stuck on top of Jesus’s general message, and I hate that. And I wouldn’t want to follow suit and try to stick a UR message on top, either. Anything beyond Romans 5 and what not is too much, but there is a lot in the Bible to highlight that is often skipped over.
Tbh, this makes me pretty interested in simply making short tracts on Christianity in general.
I generally felt JW’s had a more solid theology than most. I feel similarly about the Orthodox. I do not agree with either of them, but I don’t agree with a lot of people. The JW’s brought us a booklet once which was titled “The flames of Hell… or not?” Tbh, that helped calm me down. My parents were not religious but there was a strong religious whiff around the area.
There’s a suggestive incident in Dawn Treader where the crew mutiny against Caspian. He quashes the revolt by saying only a select few (the elect?) would be chosen to continue the mystical voyage into the Utter East. All the rest would be left behind. Upon hearing this, all the crew but one begged to be chosen, and were reinstated.
I cannot help but wonder if Lewis thought the threats of being shut out etc in the Gospels were designed to have a similar effect.
Hi Allan – that’s very interesting about how Caspain deals with th mutiny on the Dawn Treader, and I’m sure you are right here. Of course Lewis experience as a soldier in the first World War and the influence of his bother Warnie must have had a big influence on his view of God (as the experience of each one of us has influence on our own specific view). I think this is probably why he often thought in terms of war imagery so much, sometimes verging on dualism when he was young in the faith, but not so in the passage that you refer to.
What is fascinating for me is that this passage from the Dawn Treader reminds me of the arguments of the first Archbishop of Canterbury to publicly preach a hopeful universalism. He was Archbishop Tillotson (Archbishop of Canterbury 1691–1694). In a Christmas day sermon to Queen Mary – the wife of William III – he argued that the threats in the Bible did not have the same status as the promises. God is always true to his promises while he often repents of his threats. Therefore, we need to live in the knowledge that God may carry out his threats – in order to make us live well – but we may also can hope beyond this that all shall indeed be well. Tillotson also wanted the damnatory clauses dropped from the Athanasian Creed. His motivation in all of this was not ‘wishy washy liberalism’ but rather that being bought up in the sectarian violence of the English Civil War and being humble enough to understand the role played by his Church in the violence, he wanted the Anglican faith to truly reflect God’s Peace.
Bird and Byronarn - I can see Bird’s point here, on second thoughts. There is indeed a time to laugh, but the energy involved in producing tracts that are Universalist in message yet also parody Chick might be counterproductive because it is reactive (it could be a case of living against something rather than for something). I’m not sure it would subvert the understanding of people how are already Chick devotees; indeed it might do the opposite, make them renew their dedication to fighting the Satanic conspiracy of Universalists. We have to be gentle as doves but wise at serpents when thinking of strategies to deal with ‘Christian dualists’. Building friendships of trust and respect with people who have these beliefs – and I’m sure we will all come across them from time to time without having to seek them out – is, in my view, the most excellent strategy. You can be firm about what you believe without constantly provoking vexatious disputes. You can agree to differ and often find something that you can respect and love in a person whose ideas are completely alien to your own – and this is often Loves’ most difficult work in my experience.
In the UK we have a very famous sectarian Calvinist who is a public figure and a great beliver in laughing at the ‘Satanic enemy’. His catchphrase used to be ‘THE POPE IS THE ANTICHRIST’ – I use capitalisation with discernment here, for he has a very loud voice!!!. I speak of our very own Rev. Dr Ian Paisley from Northern Ireland. He has also come out with other gems in his time like – ‘I AM A MAN OF GOD BUT GIVE ME A GUN AND I’LL SHOW YOU HOW TO USE IT’. This latter statement refers to his role in the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. HE never explicitly incited violence against Catholics – but his words and actions did a lot to implicitly incite violence and a cycle of vendetta between Catholics and Protestants. However, he is a complex man; as an MP he has a reputation for impartiality in his dealings with individual Catholics; he is addicted to wine gums; his wife calls him ‘Honeybun; and he has a number of children, one a boy child who is following his father’s footsteps as a loud Calvinist – but he is fondest of his rebellious, artistic, bohemian daughter. Also, after having played such a negative role in the ‘Troubles’, now, as an older man, he has become far more conciliatory. We even appear to be growing fond of him as a ‘bit of a character’ over here. I won’t say he’s ‘a much loved public figure’ but now he’s getting old and mellowing…well, we British have a tradition of getting sentimental about our former ‘rude boys’ and ‘angry angels’ and making them into ‘National treasures’ – which I think is one of the more charming things about my country).
As I have said, Rev. Dr Ian Paisley has always believed in laughing at Satan as a strategy to make Satan flee. I once saw a documentary about him. There was a social event at his Church with lots of people sitting in chairs having a good old sing song. They were having enormous fun and the Rev. Dr Ian was chuckling along merrily with the rest of them, gleeful at the very words of the song they were singing. The song? Well it was to the tune of ‘Home on the Range’, the state song of the American state of Kansas. But instead of ‘Give me a home where the buffalo roam’ they were singing ‘O give me a home when there’s no Pope in Rome’ so of course the chorus was ‘No, no Pope in Rome, When there’s no Pope in, no Pope in Rome’ and they rocked and swayed from side to side as they sang this, hugging their sides with laughter. And it takes all sorts to make a world I say!
A lot of UK comedians have had a lot of fun over Rev. Dr Ian Paisley. The best – and the only – hellfire sermon joke I’ve heard was made at his expense by an Irish comedian. This comedian imagined Rev. Dr Ian Paisley preaching about the last days, imitating the very loud voice of the Rev. You can guess the sequence – ‘WHEN THE MOON TURNS TO BLOOD…WHEN THE GREAT HARLOT OF ROME IS REVEALED IN HER SHAME AND HARLOTRY, DRUNK ON THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS AND MARTYRS…WHEN MICHAEL BINDS SATAN…AND WHEN ALL WILL STAND BEFORE THE GREAT WHITE THRONE…AND THERE WILL BE A GNOSHING, A GERNOSHING, A GERNNNOOOOSHING OF TEETH’. All of a sudden an old lady in the front pew interrupts him – ‘But I haven’t got any teeth’. And he replies – ‘TEETH WILL BE PROVIDED!!!’ (Perhaps it loses something in the translation 
).
All the best
Dick
I remember them. I also seem to remember that he was responsible for publishing some “satanic activity” exposure books by people who had reportedly been involved deeply in anti satanic/ witchcraft, etc. ministry, who later turned out to be frauds…
(No, not Mike Warnke; who also turned out to be a fraud, incidentally).
Hi Melchi - yes his Satanic fraud friend was John Todd (I’ve mentioned his in my opening post to re-start this conversation above and included a link on Mr Todd. I’m busy on another thread at the moment - but in a couple of weeks would like to start this conversation up again and talk about the ‘Satanic Panic’. I remeber it well adn still feel furious about some of the fallout from this exericse in bearing false witness (especially on the detection of sexual abuse in the UK, after so many false allegations were made). I hope we can have a conversation about this soon and perhaps swop stories and insights.
All the best
Dick
Actually, I was thinking of the Rebecca Brown books, which I believe he had a hand in as well.
Hi Melchi -
I’ve not heard of Rebecca Brown. What did she get up to in her spare time - nothing good I should think? Do tell more, adn about the Chick connection. any information we share on this horrible phenomena (that is, people tacking Chick tracts seriously) has to be worthwhile i think.
Did you ever know anyone who bought into Satan conspiracy theories?
Cheers
Dick
Yes, there were a series of books (3, I think) written by “Rebecca Brown, M.D.” back in the late '80s. I believe the first one was titled “He came to set the captives free”. I’m pretty sure it was Chick’s publishing company that published them. Some years later, Dr. Brown and Elaine were exposed as frauds, as well as mentally unstable. I’m fairly certain you can google it.
Oh, loads of Christians in the 80’s were eating this stuff up…
Absolutely, dude! I had this idea myself not too long ago and even came up with some half-assed ideas, heh. It’s awesome that someone else has thought of this, too!
I’m also a pretty good artist, so that solves that. And I’m an experienced writer and amateur theologian.
In fact, I was planning on doing them by myself, but I don’t have near enough time to spearhead something like that on my own. Glad I found this when I did.
So as to not hijack this thread, I created a new thread on this topic…
Good luck to you both on the unChick Universalist comix - I was a bit glum about the idea wasn’t I? Put it down to middle age .
Rich blessings on your project - look forward to seeing the finished product someday
All the best
Dick