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Parent company | Chick Publications |
---|---|
Founded | January 1, 1960 |
Founder | Jack Chick |
Country of origin | USA |
Headquarters location | Ontario, California |
Nonfiction topics | evangelical gospel tracts |
Official website | www |
Chick tracts are short evangelical gospel tracts in a comic book format, originally created by American cartoonist Jack Chick in the 1960s. His company Chick Publications has continued to print Chick's work, as well as tracts in a similar style by other writers. Several tracts have expressed controversial viewpoints including strong anti-Catholic views and criticisms of other faiths.
Chick Publications produces and markets the Chick tracts, along with other comic books, books, and posters. [1] Chick Publications has its headquarters in Rancho Cucamonga, California, [2] and a mailing address in Ontario, California.
As of January 2015, Chick Publications had produced over 250 different titles, about 100 of which are still in print, and are available in over 100 languages. [3]
As of 2024, 24 tracts, including The Lost Continent from 1971, were not available on the site and were most likely withdrawn after their first publications. At least 10 of the discontinued tracts, like the infamous Wounded Children from 1983, were recovered by people that owned them while 14 others were declared lost.[ citation needed ]
The tracts themselves are approximately 3 by 5 inches (8 by 13 cm), and approximately twenty pages in length. [4] The material is written in comic book format, with the front panel featuring the title of the tract and the inside back panel devoted to a standard sinner's prayer. The back cover of the tract contains a blank space for churches distributing the tracts to stamp their name and address; Chick Publications is willing to print custom back covers, but at least 10,000 tracts must be ordered.
Chick tracts end with a suggested prayer for the reader to pray to accept Jesus Christ. In the tracts dealing with "false religions", the prayer includes a clause to reject these religions. Included with the prayer are directions for converting to Christianity, which is also repeated on the inside back panel along with steps to take should the reader convert to Christianity. [5] [6]
In Strips, Toons, and Bluesies: Essays in Comics and Culture, Douglas Bevan Dowd and Todd Hignite compare the format of Chick tracts to that of Tijuana bibles, and surmise that Chick was familiar with that medium and wrote with a similar audience of lower-class youth in mind. [7]
Some tracts, like Let's Fly Away [8] and The Throw Away Kid, [9] portray the subject of child abuse. The earliest on the subject is Somebody Loves Me, which focused on a young boy being bludgeoned to death by a drunken guardian after not getting enough to pay on the rent. [10] Some others, like The Outcast [11] and The Secret, [12] portray subjects of domestic abuse, which one of the latest tracts, God's Little Angel (published by David W. Daniels), had a non-explicit reference to this issue when the mother answers her little daughter's question about their separation from her abusive husband/parent and refused to return to him. [13]
Other tracts portray themes of the apocalypse, particularly the Futurist interpretation of the Bible. Some of the tracts that explicitly describe this belief in detail include Almost Time, [14] The Beast, [15] Camel's in the Tent, [16] Global Warming, [17] The Great Escape, [18] The Last Generation, [19] Love the Jewish People, [20] The Only Hope, [21] Somebody Angry?, [22] Then What?, [23] Things to Come?, [24] Where Did They Go?, [25] Where's Your Name?, [26] Who is He?, [27] and Why Should I?. [28] In the tract The Great Escape, [18] for example, the land of Magog from Ezekiel is claimed to describe current day Russia, Gomer is claimed to be Germany, and the figure Gog of Magog is described as the political leader of Russia, although it isn't specified which. In another tract, The Last Generation, [19] a future which fits the Futurist belief of the pre-apocalypse is described. Here, Christianity is punishable by death, and the children's schoolteachers are witches whose teachings include witchcraft and reincarnation.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated Chick Publications as a hate group due to the anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, and homophobic rhetoric found in Chick tracts. [29] [30]
The Hindu American Foundation has stated that "Chick Publications promotes hatred not just against Hindus, but also towards Muslims, Catholics, and others". [31]
Churches have been criticized for distributing Chick tracts. In October 2011, the Northview Baptist Church in Hillsboro, Ohio, gave out copies of the Chick tract Mean Momma [32] along with candy at Halloween. [33] The church received complaints from parishioners, and its pastor apologized for issuing the tracts, saying that, "Our church does not endorse this type of extreme methodology that was represented in this particular tract, and we can assure you that we will not let this happen again ... our church is a loving church that loves souls and wants to do all we can in our community to help as well as spread and share the Gospel message of Christ." [34]
Avon and Somerset Police investigated the distribution of Chick publications in Bristol, England, in July 2020 as hate speech due to the tracts' homophobic and anti-Semitic messaging. [35] Some tracts were banned from being republished for their notorious nature. At least 24 tracts are not available on the Chick Tract website as of 2024. One notable tract, Wounded Children, depicts Satan robbing a young boy's innocence while exposing him to homosexuality before reaching adolescence. [36]
Catholicism is a frequent target of Chick tracts. No fewer than 20 of the tracts are devoted to Catholicism, including Are Roman Catholics Christians? [37] (arguing that they are not), The Death Cookie [38] (a polemic against the Catholic Eucharist), and Why Is Mary Crying? [39] (arguing that Mary does not support the veneration Catholicism gives her). [40] One notable tract, Mary's Kids, focuses on an elderly Catholic member who disapproved of her son marrying a Pentecostal woman and then teaching their young daughter about the Virgin Mary. The mother convinces the elder that Mary was not a perpetual virgin after confronting her about the fact that her Catholic priests were sex offenders. [41]
Several Chick tracts have featured the ideas of anti-Catholic conspiracy theorist Alberto Rivera, [42] [43] [44] such as claims that the Catholic Church created Islam, Communism, Nazism, and Freemasonry. [45] For example, in the tract Love The Jewish People, one line reads: "In 1933, Catholic Germany, serving under the Vatican, launched a 20th-century inquisition, murdering 6 million Jews." [20] In The New Anti-Catholicism, religious historian Philip Jenkins describes Chick tracts as promulgating "bizarre allegations of Catholic conspiracy and sexual hypocrisy" to perpetuate "anti-papal and anti-Catholic mythologies". [46] Michael Ian Borer, a sociology professor at Furman University, described Chick's strong anti-Catholic themes in a 2007 American Sociological Association presentation [47] and in a peer-reviewed article the next year in Religion and American Culture. [48]
American Catholic apologetic group Catholic Answers has published a critique of Chick's anti-Catholicism entitled The Nightmare World of Jack T. Chick. [49]
Islam is also regularly targeted by Chick tracts, and more than ten tracts have been published on the subject. The most notable of these is Allah Had No Son, first published in 1994. [50] In this tract, a Muslim is converted to Christianity when he is told that Allah is a pagan moon god. The tract Camels 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. [51]
Chick tracts' depiction of Islam has been frequently criticized. In December 2008, a Singaporean couple was charged with sedition for distributing the Chick tracts The Little Bride [52] and Who Is Allah?. [53] The tracts were said to "promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between Christians and Muslims in Singapore". [54] [55] The Chick Publications website has consequently been blocked in Singapore. [56]
In 2014, the Chick tract Unforgiven [57] was distributed by Bible Baptist Church in Garden City, Roanoke, Virginia, drawing outrage from the area's Muslim community. Hussain Al-Shiblawi, a local man interviewed by WDBJ-TV, explained that while the pamphlets he received from the church every Sunday were usually inspirational, this tract upset him: "It basically indicated that the people are violent, the religion itself is violent, and the facts in here are not true." Bible Baptist Church said that they did not write the tract and simply distributed it. [58]
Chick tracts are unequivocal and explicit in their opposition to homosexuality, and repeatedly employ two anti-homosexual themes: the belief that God hates homosexuality and considers it to be sinful, and the idea that the true nature of homosexuality is revealed in the Christian interpretation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis.
Chick's first tract on the subject, The Gay Blade, was originally published in 1972. [59] This tract asserted the existence of the gay agenda and urged homosexuals to repent. The Gay Blade was revised in 1984, and is now out-of-print except by special order. According to Cynthia Burack, this tract borrowed several of its frames from a 1971 Life photo essay on the gay liberation movement, but with the images altered to make the gay men look more dissolute or stereotypically feminized. [60]
Later tracts on homosexuality depict gay rights activists as aggressive and prone to violence. In Doom Town, Chick claims that HIV-positive gay men plan to donate blood illegally to protest a lack of federal funding for HIV/AIDS research. [61] In Sin City, gay rights activists attack a pastor protesting a gay pride parade, beating him so badly that he is subsequently hospitalized. [62] Other tracts, such as Home Alone, have promoted the gay recruitment conspiracy theory and alleged that gay and lesbian individuals are more promiscuous than heterosexual ones. [63]
Chick's claims about homosexuality have angered gay activists. In 1974, members of the Gay People's Liberation Alliance and the Women's Coalition protested the distribution of Chick tracts at Iowa State University, claiming that they provided an inaccurate representation of gay and bisexual people. [64]
Chick published several anti-evolution tracts, but Big Daddy? (which also attempts to refute the existence of the strong nuclear force) [65] remains "the most widely distributed anti-evolution booklet in history". [66] Critics have pointed out that Big Daddy? mainly uses Young Earth creationist Kent Hovind as a reference for its claims, despite his lack of scientific credentials. [67] [68] [69] [70]
Big Daddy? is presented in the 2007 book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters as "typical" of the "misleading and dishonest" rhetoric of creationists. [71]
Gladys is an example of one of Chick's tracts on astrology, witchcraft, and Satanism. [72] The Poor Little Witch depicts child sacrifice and the ritual drinking of the child's blood by Satanists. [73] Catholic Answers stated that "Chick portrays a world full of paranoia and conspiracy where nothing is what it seems and nearly everything is a Satanic plot to lead people to hell." [49]
Some cartoonists have published parodies that mimic Chick tracts' layout and narrative conventions. Examples include:
Within Christianity, there are a variety of views on sexual orientation and homosexuality. The view that various Bible passages speak of homosexuality as immoral or sinful emerged through its interpretation and has since become entrenched in many Christian denominations through church doctrine and the wording of various translations of the Bible.
Within the Muslim world, sentiment towards LGBTQ people varies and has varied between societies and individual Muslims, but is contemporarily negative. While colloquial and in many cases de facto official acceptance of at least some homosexual behavior was commonplace in pre-modern periods, later developments, starting from the 19th century, have created a generally hostile environment for LGBTQ people. Most Muslim-majority countries have opposed moves to advance LGBTQ rights and recognition at the United Nations (UN), including within the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) people frequently experience violence directed toward their sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression. This violence may be enacted by the state, as in laws prescribing punishment for homosexual acts, or by individuals. It may be psychological or physical and motivated by biphobia, gayphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, aphobia, and transphobia. Influencing factors may be cultural, religious, or political mores and biases.
Jack Thomas Chick 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.
Fred Waldron Phelps Sr. was an American minister and disbarred lawyer who served as the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, worked as a civil rights attorney, and ran for statewide election in Kansas. A divisive and controversial figure, he gained national attention for his homophobic views and protests near the funerals of gay people, AIDS victims, military veterans, and disaster victims who he believed were killed as a result of God punishing the U.S. for having "bankrupt values" and tolerating homosexuality. Phelps founded the Westboro Baptist Church, a Topeka, Kansas-based independent Primitive Baptist congregation, in 1955. It has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America". Its signature slogan, "God Hates Fags", remains the name of the group's principal website.
Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric comprises themes, catchphrases, and slogans that have been used in order to demean lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is widely considered a form of hate speech, which is illegal in countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.
The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an American, unaffiliated Primitive Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, that was founded in 1955 by pastor Fred Phelps. It is widely considered a hate group, and is known for its public protests against gay people and for its usage of the phrases "God hates fags" and "Thank God for dead soldiers". It also engages in hate speech against atheists, Jews, Muslims, transgender people, and other Christian denominations. The WBC's theology and practices are widely condemned by other Christian churches, including the Baptist World Alliance and the Southern Baptist Convention, and by politicians and public figures, including former U.S. President Barack Obama.
The American Family Association (AFA) is a conservative and Christian fundamentalist 501(c)(3) organization based in the United States. It opposes LGBTQ rights and expression, pornography, and abortion. It also takes a position on a variety of other public policy goals. It was founded in 1977 by Donald Wildmon as the National Federation for Decency and is headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Alberto Magno Rivera Romero was an anti-Catholic religious activist who was the source of many of the theories about the Vatican espoused by fundamentalist Christian author Jack Chick.
Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy was a Canadian socio-political activist and former Catholic priest who left the Catholic Church and converted to Protestant Christianity, becoming a Presbyterian Evangelical minister. He rode the lecture circuit in the United States denouncing the Catholic Church. His themes were that Catholicism was Pagan, that Catholics worshipped the Virgin Mary, and that its theology was anti-Christian.
The Family Research Institute (FRI), originally known as the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality (ISIS), is an American socially conservative non-profit organization based in Colorado Springs, Colorado which states that it has "...one overriding mission: to generate empirical research on issues that threaten the traditional family, particularly homosexuality, AIDS, sexual social policy, and drug abuse". The FRI is part of a sociopolitical movement of socially conservative Christian organizations which seek to influence the political debate in the United States. They seek "...to restore a world where marriage is upheld and honored, where children are nurtured and protected, and where homosexuality is not taught and accepted, but instead is discouraged and rejected at every level." The Boston Globe reported that the FRI's 2005 budget was less than $200,000.
Opposition to legal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people exists throughout the world. LGBTQ rights opponents may be opposed to the decriminalization of homosexuality; laws permitting civil unions or partnerships or supporting LGBT parenting and adoption, LGBT military members, access to assisted reproductive technology, and access to gender-affirming surgery and gender-affirming hormone therapy for transgender individuals.
"Gay agenda" or "homosexual agenda" is a pejorative term used by sectors of the Christian religious right as a disparaging way to describe the advocacy of cultural acceptance and normalization of non-heterosexual sexual orientations and relationships. The term originated among social conservatives in the United States and has been adopted in nations with active anti-LGBT movements such as Hungary, Uganda, Russia and Turkey.
Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of Their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders is a document published in November 2005 by the Congregation for Catholic Education, one of the top-level offices of the Catholic Church.
A tract is a literary work and, in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the 21st century, a tract referred to a brief pamphlet used for religious and political purposes. Tracts are often either left for someone to find or handed out. However, there have been times in history when the term implied tome-like works. A tractate, a derivative of a tract, is equivalent in Hebrew literature to a chapter of the Christian Bible.
Courage International, also known as Courage Apostolate and Courage for short, is an approved apostolate of the Catholic Church that counsels "men and women with same-sex attractions in living chaste lives in fellowship, truth and love". Based on a treatment model for drug and alcohol addictions used in programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Courage runs a peer support program aimed at helping gay people remain abstinent from same-sex sexual activity.
The relationship between the Catholic Church and homosexuality is complex and often contentious, involving various conflicting views between the Catholic Church and some in the LGBTQ community. According to Catholic doctrine, solely having same-sex attractions itself is not considered inherently sinful; it is the act of engaging in sexual activity with someone of the same sex that is regarded as a grave sin against chastity. The Church also does not recognize nor perform any sacramental marriages between same-sex couples. However, the Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes that all same-sex individuals must "be accepted and treated with respect, compassion, and sensitivity," and that all forms of unjust discrimination should be discouraged and avoided at all cost.
The Catholic Church has been criticised in fiction, such as literature, film and television. Polemics have also been written on the Church and its practices. Some examples are the anti-Catholic stereotypes that filled Gothic fiction of Anglican England, the films of Luis Buñuel who took issue with the Church in Spain, the humor of some US television pundits like Rosie O'Donnell, and the rhetoric of some fundamentalist preachers.
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