J. C. Chick Publications
Growing up, my family attended a few different churches. This was mainly due to my mom following a pastor she had known for a very long time, the Reverend Haskell Sides. This man had a booming voice and a commanding presence. I can still hear his rich baritone voice and see his beaming smile. He was a pastor to his
flock, and a fire-and-brimstone preacher in the p
ulpit. But this post is not about him, it's about a little thing that was at a church we attended from when I was 4 to 8 years old. This was Westside Baptist Church.
It was started as a missionary chapel in a Quonset hut. As an offshoot of the Tabor City Baptist Church, the "Mother Church", it completely severed all ties and put up its own building less than a quarter mile from my parent's home. Within walking distance, which was how I got there most Sundays and on Wednesday nights.
Before I could actually read, I devoured comics, and Westside had a rack of J. C. Chick tracts which were free for the taking. As the sermons were over the head of & very boring to a four year old and attendance was mandatory(though my dad never went), these comic booklets were a great way to keep me occupied and quiet during the morning worship service. Though after a few weeks, one of the scary old men told me to stop taking so many. Thus after each service, I would return the booklets to the rack to avoid this geezer's wrath!
Even today, these little booklets can be found in the oddest places. In the condiment rack at a diner, tucked into a stack of tourist brochures, on the back of a toilet tank in a john, J. C. Chick winds his way throughout the byways of the USA!
Most everyone has seen a Chick tract, even if they didn't bother to pick it up and read it. Over 900 million of the 3 x 5 inch gospel comics have already covered our planet, left aboard buses, benches, bathrooms-- nearly everywhere. Some people find them offensive, since the cartoons often promote Christianity while criticizing other religions and alternative lifestyles. Many find these comics inspirational, interesting, conspiratorial, humorous, and/or fun to collect!
A brief portion of his wikipedia biography page:
Jack Thomas Chick (April 13, 1924 – October 23, 2016) was an American cartoonist and publisher, best known for his fundamentalist Christian "Chick tracts". He expressed his perspective on a variety of issues through sequential-art morality plays.
Jack Chick's earliest professional cartoons showed little hint of the kind of comics he became famous for. On 16 November 1953, the first episode of his single-panel cartoon series 'Times Have Changed?' (1953-1955) appeared in print. The cartoons are set in the Stone Age and mostly feature anachronistic jokes. Cavemen and -women are depicted interacting with dinosaurs, mammoths and saber tooth tigers, while living in a 1950s-style modern society.
Many of his tracts accused Roman Catholics, Freemasons, Muslims, and many other groups of murder and conspiracies. His comics have been described by Robert Ito, in Los Angeles magazine, as "equal parts hate literature and fire-and-brimstone sermonizing".
Chick's views have been spread mostly through the tracts and, more recently, online. His company, Chick Publications, says it has sold over 750 million tracts, comics tracts and comic books, videos, books, and posters designed to promote Evangelical Protestantism from a Christian fundamentalist perspective. They have been translated into more than 100 languages.
Chick was an Independent Baptist who
followed a premillennial dispensationalist view of the End Times. He was a believer in the King James Only movement, which posits that every English translation of the Bible more recent than 1611 promotes heresy or immorality.
Chick believed in an ultraconservative version of Protestantism and many of his stances aren't unusual for fundamentalist evangelists. His comics are fiercely opposed to abortion, pornography, premarital sex, feminism, homosexuality, the evolution theory, science, freemasonry, atheism and any religion other than his own. But even within this niche, the stories have extraordinarily eccentric viewpoints and mind-bogglingly weird plot twists. According to Chick, Satan forms a direct alliance with the Roman Catholic Church, who are responsible for all evil in the world. If one is to believe Jack Chick’s tracts, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, Communists, Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan are all front organizations of the Vatican. Chick was personally convinced that the Pope ordered the USSR to conquer Israel and that atheists are sometimes demons in disguise. Following his logic, the Catholic Church was behind the assassinations of both Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, the failed murder of Pope John Paul II, both World Wars and the Holocaust. In 'My Name... In the Vatican?', the tract states that the names of "every Protestant Church member are recorded in the Big Computer in the Vatican".
In his comics, Jack Chick names various media as the Devil's tools. To lure people away from the "good" path, Satan apparently created rock music, Halloween, Wicca, New Age, 'Harry Potter', 'Family Guy', 'Dungeons & Dragons' and even sports. In short, Jack Chick's vision of Hell seems more bleak and narrow than Hieronymus Bosch, since it's nearly impossible to avoid "sinning".
Follow the link after this selection of various tracts(at the very bottom of this blog entry) to see more of the imagery which I was exposed to as a preschool child. I assure you that you will be shocked!
Be prepared to have your eyes bleed and your brain to convulse at the outrageousness of some of these! You could draw the conclusion, as the realization seeps in that these tracts have been disseminated throughout the US since his first comic in 1960, that many of the wingnut rightwing politicians started their fall through the rabbit hole by reading Mr. Chick's tiny little comics/tracts. As you plod through these tidbits, take time to ponder and think how big(or small) of a leap it would be to go from the thinking found in these tracts to Jewish space lasers starting forest fires, or an orange-hued, pussy-grabbing conman could convince religious folks to make him the leader of the free world.
Religion has such a hold on the populace and not much will change in that regard. The fact that Gen Z and most Millennials are not falling for it is refreshing.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan
BTW, the most common theme of all the tracts was getting right with God, becoming "saved", asking God/Jesus to forgive you of your sins, or else you bound for Hell and that everlasting lake of fire. And what constituted a sin in Chick's world was not much at all. As shown in this example giving one of the sins which will condemn a person to eternal damnation!
From the very first tract: 'Why no revival?' (1961).
Mama's Girls' (2012)
Sometimes the details would change...
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And here is a selection of the tracts with some commentary!
Every booklet ended with this page with clear directions on what to do to join the ranks of the good guys!
Now, this is how they should have ended as these tracts are toxic af!!!
As you read through these tracts, you will find that Mr. Chick's God is... how to put this diplomatically? Um, a bit of a dick. as below:
Hippies, revolutionaries, Communists, any counterculture activism scared tf out of Chick as seen in the following:
Some folks are evil from birth, like BAD BOB!!!!
The tract, "This Was Your Life!" was the Masterpiece of J. C. Chick's massive library of tracts! It was the most popular as it hit at everybody, especially the regular churchgoer. It was always displayed at the the top of the rack. It was also included in every possible combination of tract assortments available for purchase from Chick's publishing house. He adapted this story several times to target specific groups as you will see in the panels I have added from those tracts. Watch the different imagery used with each group and how different Bible verses are used for certain panels. What people will do for money!
The "normal" version
The black version
Several decades after he produced this tract, Chick realized there was a whole new market for them if he just altered his drawings a little. So same theme, same drawings, but now the characters are black. Even the angels are black.
The Muslim version.
This came at an even later date as Chick wanted to arm good Christian folk with tracts to convert the Muslim Community in the US.
It's striking is how Chick adapted this tract by showing Muslim practices so well.
The white woman version.
The black woman version.
This panel shows the women standing apart from the men.
It also shows the deceased wrapped in a shroud. Known as kafan, this process involves wrapping the deceased in a plain, white cloth for burial. It's tradition to use three pieces of cloth for men & five pieces for women and then secure the kafan with strips of cloth torn from the larger pieces for transportation to the funeral site.
Notice that the Muslim man is clothed when called from the grave.
In this series, only the Muslim understands what is happening and is looking forward to the afterlife.
The portrayals of each as toddlers is hilarious.
Guys tell dirty stories, women try bi & threesomes!!!
Guys lust after women, women leave their husbands and children to marry another man! WTF?!?
Now, this is a trip, the white dude and the black guy were shown to be some sinning MFs, but the Muslim was shown to be a good, decent, and devout man! Muslims are required to do good deeds at all times as a perquisite to get into heaven. Giving alms to the poor, visiting the sick, being a good family man, and making a pilgrimage to Mecca are expected of all Muslims. Christians can be slimeballs as long as they are saved & ask for forgiveness of their sins. They really don't have to do any good things.
And women are much worse than men as they have additional sins added in their panels. Gossiper, drugs, witchcraft, lustful, & PORNOGRAPHY!!! This is proof that men NEVER watch pornography!!!
And instead of the bored churchgoer, the Muslim is portrayed as devout yet again.
Notice that Chick acquiesced to one huge tenet of the Muslim faith by not depicting an image of God. In Islam, God is never portrayed in any image. The Quran specifically forbade ascribing partners to share his singular sovereignty, as he is considered to be the absolute one without a second, indivisible, and incomparable being, who is similar to nothing, and nothing is comparable to him. In the Hadith (quotes, events and experiences from the life of the Prophet Muhammad) it is said that the idolatry and the creation or worship of images is prohibited – it is deemed disrespectful as stated above and the only One able to create is Allah. Thus the glowing ball hovering over the spot where God was sitting on his throne in the other tracts. Chick is also implying that The Christian God is different than Allah(which is just the Arabic word for God)
Now for the women's panels: what is interesting here is that they reject Jesus because their professor would flunk them. I guess this is Chick's way of implying that if women get an education/go to university, they will reject salvation. WTF?
The churchgoing men have one reaction.
The churchgoing women have a slightly different reaction, which seems a bit progressive by calling out intolerance and hate! WT flyingF?!?
And Chick had to add several panels for the Muslim man. He had to be shown not wanting Jesus after his Christian friend tries to convert him. But he is happy with his own religion thus turns down his friend's offer. He is obeying the tenets of his religion and does not want to follow the "prophet" Jesus. What is strange is that at the end of the exchange, the Muslim man blames his actions on his pride.
Now notice that even GOD has got some extra pigmentation in this version!!!
WTF is going on here? Does Chick think people want a God in their image? Or is it that God has different images thus explaining how humans are of different races, since he created man in His image?
Again the Glowing ball of light for the Muslim's Christian God.
In the black version, Chick just had to show the brother going into the flames and his genitals are the first thing to BURN! Way to go, Chickie, hit a brother with some gruesome ass imagery of a man going down in the fiery pit and torch his cock too!!!
And here, Chick has the Muslim mention Jesus which is a subtle dig that the man was mistaken by believing in Allah. A different Bible verse on this one.
There is a simple solution that will make everything better!!! Finally the white and black dudes get their shit together and start being good people.
Now the following panel is interesting as this behavior is expected of all Muslims as a part of their faith as good works are demanded as a condition for going into heaven after death. This is why the man says he is doing it because he loves Jesus, not just to get in to heaven. An interesting note is that before, he was shown giving money to the poor, now he is shown giving money to the church instead.
The covers of these various redesigned tracts
Modern Preachers will find the devil influencing popular culture in order to recruit people into evil in order to turn them turn away from God. Chick has gone after so many of our cultural icons through the years. Anything that could be supposed to be conceived of by Satan to lure the masses to the dark side and away from God. It could be anything at all, from the TV shows Bewitched & I Dream of Jeannie back in the '60s, to Dungeons & Dragons, the Walking Dead, virtual reality, and other things the masses enjoy today. If it had magic, monsters, fantasy, horror, etc., then to Chick(just like many ministers in small churches around the US today), it was a product of SATAN!!!(Ominous music and eerie smoke and lighting effects)
Chick continued these attacks against popular things up until he died. This was to illustrate all the tools in Satan's toolchest.
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According to the world of J. C. Chick, Protestantism is the only way to go. While there is never a denomination mentioned in his tracts, in the latter years it skewed more towards evangelical fundamentalism. H e's against any group that doesn't have the same religious views as him.Through his comics, Chick attacked Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, Muslims, and the biggest enemy of them all, Catholicism!!! The tone of the tracts have toned down greatly from my childhood, but there is no love for these other beliefs. One big difference is that his anti-Semetic tracts have vanished. I found the Rabbi Waxman booklet below on a cached site along with many of the older, more explicit ones. I will limit this post to the ones I had selected when I decided to first write this. I do see a few more posts coming out on the work of Mr Chick. This was at the end of one tract and helps sum up so many of Chick's comics--If it isn't the Protestant Jesus, leave it be!!!
Following are tracts specifically naming and ripping into the points about those beliefs which he took issue. There are some huge contradictions to find if you look for them. I will gather some up for another post. But here I have shown multiple tracts about the same topic and when you compare them, you can see the message either changes or doesn't fit what he has said previously.
##################################################################Of course he didn't like the Mormons as shown in this one.
The worse of the worse were the Roman Catholics of whom he wrote the most tracts and mentioned in so many others. To him, the Catholics were the pure creation of Satan. But too much doesn't quite jive as he overlooks or flat out ignores the actual history of the Catholics. And he doesn't explain how the true church, which he follows, came into existence. The knowledge is out there for anyone who wishes to see it. But he had a point to make, and he made sure to show things as he both saw them to be and how he believed it existed. Enjoy his vilification of the Catholics, and remember that I have only shown a small example of what he wrote.
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And, of course, the Roman Catholics were the architects of the Holocaust too.
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And you knew Chick would go after the worse religion in an Evangelical Fundamentalist's eyes--the Muslims!
Camel's in the Tent claims that Muslim immigration will lead to the establishment of Sharia law in the United States and the forceful conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. 
From another anti-Islamic tract:
I wondered where Chick got some of his theories from. He did mention "former Jesuits" who relayed this story or imparted those secret truths to him. This was Alberto Rivera was an anti-Catholic religious activist who claimed to have been a Jesuit priest before becoming a Fundamentalist Protestant. Rivera was the source of many of the conspiracy theories about the Vatican and the Jesuits espoused by Jack Chick. Or I think Chick just made the shit up. Like this next one in which he says that Islam was invented by the Roman Catholic church! Where does he get this crap?!?Chickie Boy seems to forget what he had written elsewhere.
The Arabic people became multiple great nations sitting on a vast supply of oil!And most Arabs are Muslims who revere Abraham, their Jewish forefather, and the father of Semitic people in the Middle East, Both the Arabs and the Hebrews.
The Freemasons aroused the wrath of Chick as he made several tracts against them.I'm going to skip the setup to the pertinent part of this anti-Masonic tract.
He also went after the Hindus.
The Buddhists were slammed.
For Native Americans, Chick didn't even write anything. Maybe he saw them as dirty ignorant savages. Or unclean and filthy with sin, since the artwork does seem to imply this. Jesus will was them white as snow. Only when the Native is white is he good. What a fucked up message to convey. When I first saw the "Tree of Knowledge" in this one, I thought it was an Amanita muscaria mushroom! Actually, this was one of the several versions of the original tract entitled One Way which was later tailored for different ethnic & religious groups..
And, of course the Jews will be bashed as well, as they always make convenient targets.
In later years, Chick wanted us to Love The Jewish People as shown in this tract. But "Jewish People" is just his way of saying Israel as Evangelicals went from full-blown anti-Semitism to "Israel can do no wrong as it is helping to usher in Armageddon!" They are still anti-Semitic, but support Israel in an eerie, almost incestuous, love-hate relationship. Reminds of how gay Boomers hate themselves for marrying their beards and take it out on the younger generations who are open by being rabidly homo- & transphobic.
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When possible, why not throw all the bad guys into one tract?
Here you have the legal system, the Media, the Catholics, The Muslims, the Jews, the intellectuals, and the biggest boogeyman of all in the US, the ACLU!!!
Jack threw all the bad guys together more than once. And he used horrible stereotypical images so there would be no question of which groups he was targeting.
Based on the rhetoric of this minister, Chick will make him a servant of Satan.
Chick hated more than other religions was that scientific fact which is still guaranteed to throw a fundamentalist into conniption fits today--EVOLUTION!!! And I was surprised as I glanced at the tracts available now in the 21st Century, that there are several mocking science in general. I just love how religion thrives on keeping the populace to be ignorant(sounds like a certain US political party). Sharing a common ancestor with today's great apes has been seen by the unlearned as humans being descended from monkeys, or as JC portrayed it on the cover of the following tract--gorillas! Without further ado, here's "Big Daddy?"
Just noticed the cover of this anti-evolution tract the lightning bolts signifying pain. Was Chick implying that someone had spanked the monkey???
The mom learned about evolution from her teacher!!! Another woman led astray by getting an education. so stay away from learning, you females!
If you believe in evolution, then you have definitely been brainwashed by Satanic teachers! Evolution goes against God's teachings(?) as science is bad and also a tool of Satan to corrupt us. Unless you are using science to do God's work, then it is okay, especially if you don't know exactly what science is since you spent most of your time in school singing hymns in your head to prevent any of that evil "learning" from getting absorbed by your brain thingy and corrupting your eternal SOUL!
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Many of the tracts are meant to be "educational & informative". And they are, much like most kids cartoons these days are "educational & informative", which means they are NOT! Much like "Big Daddy?" above, which has multiple footnotes if the reader would like to see the proof which debunks those nasty, diabolical evolution lies. You know about footnotes, right? Smart people use them to direct readers to the source materials so they can confirm for themselves the validity of the statements made. Personally, I had a wonderful Western Civ professor who taught how to determine if a source was good or not and if it should be used to validate what you are trying to prove in your paper. There are millions of books out there, but it is a given that most are not suitable to be used as a source in an academic-type paper, nor to prove a point in a mass-produced missive for all. Above, you will see in the "footnotes" the icr.org website which will supply tons of articles which cast doubt on evolution. If you do go to the website, you will find that it belongs to the Institute for Creation Research. In case you don't know about them, this is from their 'about' section: "At the Institute for Creation Research, we want you to know God’s Word can be trusted with everything it speaks about—from how and why we were made, to how the universe was formed, to how we can know God and receive all He has planned for us." Can you say "confirmational bias", kids? Most of Chick's tracts use the Bible as the "source" for most of their statement. Though on the ones which are about nonspiritual matters, they tend to use sources which are as trustworthy as the ICR above. Keep that in mind as you peruse the following tract.
The theme in the above tract above tract was repeated in others, that the Word of God was corrupted by the Devil!
mazingly that what stood out to me as a kid was how decadent of a life these people lived(or evil af), yet would guarantee entrance to Heaven by getting saved on their deathbed. Sort of like the time I asked the Mormon missionary kids why should I become a devout Mormon and follow all the rules and such, when my son could just have me baptized as a good Mormon after I die(I made some wheels start turning in those two kids brains that afternoon).
As a little kid, this tract really touched me. What happened to this poor child was so damned sad. And when the angel took him away was a gloriously happy moment! It made me realize that some kids had a very bad life. That if I thought my parents could be mean, some people had parents who were monsters!!! It made me feel lucky to have the life I had. Hey, no matter how rough things might get, at least I wasn't dying, after a horrible beating by an alcoholic parental figure, of starvation and exposure, in a crate in some dirty alley in an anonymous city!
In case you were not raised in the faith, a child was automatically allowed into Heaven. Until they reached the age of accountability, they had a free pass through the Pearly Gates. This age was viewed as around twelve years old. This is the age at which children of the Jewish faith undergo the ritual welcoming them into adulthood.
Read them for free here: https://www.chick.com/products/category?type=tracts
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