Chick tract


Chick tracts are short evangelical gospel tracts, originally created and published by American publisher and religious cartoonist Jack Chick. Since his death, his company has continued to print new tracts using other authors working for the company.
Although many of Chick's tracts express views that are generally accepted within Christian theology, several tracts have expressed controversial viewpoints. Most notably, Chick tracts were known for expressing strongly anti-Catholic views, as well as his criticisms of other faiths including Islam and Mormonism.

Chick Publications

Chick Publications produces and markets the Chick tracts, along with other comic books, books, and posters. Chick Publications has its headquarters in Rancho Cucamonga and a mailing address in Ontario, California.
The company estimates it has printed over 800 million tracts during its first 50 years of business. On its website they note that "Our ministry is primarily publishing the gospel tracts of Jack T. Chick, but we do occasionally publish a manuscript in book form." They state that if the content "educates Christians in one of the areas for which we have a tract, we would love to see it" and cite several examples; the online store lists nearly a dozen book categories.
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.

Format and storylines

The tracts themselves are approximately three inches high by five inches wide in dimension, and approximately twenty pages in length. 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 to stamp their name and address; Chick Publications is willing to print custom back covers, but at least 10,000 tracts must be ordered.
The storyline commonly features at least one Christian person and one or more "non-Christians". Depending on the storyline the "non-Christian" may be 1) a stereotypical "wicked person" a member of a "false religion" a "moral person" depending on "good works" to gain eventual entrance to Heaven. In these storylines, the Christian attempts to convert the non-Christian to Christianity, with the convert receiving entry into heaven, while the person rejecting the message is condemned to hell. The endings may feature a recycled scene in which Jesus Christ condemns or welcomes a character, an angel taking the believer to Heaven, and/or the non-believer meeting demons upon his/her arrival to Hell.

Themes

Chick tracts end with a suggested prayer for the reader to pray to accept Jesus Christ. In most of these tracts it is a standard sinner's prayer for salvation. 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.
Strips, Toons, and Bluesies, written by Douglas Bevan Dowd and Todd Hignite, stated that "it's safe to assume Chick saw at least some" Tijuana bibles since the books and, according to Dowd and Hignite, Chick tracts were "strikingly similar" to Tijuana bibles; like Tijuana bibles the tracts mostly targeted youth of lower socioeconomic classes and "were loaded with stereotypes". The book stated that Chick tracts contained "way-out, wild" portrayals of recreational drug usage and portrayed "the sexual revolution". In addition the comics included supernatural elements, occult rituals, torture, and cannibalism.

Controversies

Anti-Catholicism

is a frequent target of Chick tracts and other writings. No fewer than 20 of the tracts are devoted to Catholicism, including Are Roman Catholics Christians?, The Death Cookie, and Why Is Mary Crying?.
Elsewhere, Chick defended the controversial Alberto Rivera in at least one book and in an entire series of six full-length comics. Chick also asserted that the Catholic Church, in a grand conspiracy, created Islam, Communism, Nazism, and Freemasonry. 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". Michael Ian Borer, a sociology professor of Furman University at the time, described Chick's strong anti-Catholic themes in a 2007 American Sociological Association presentation and in a peer reviewed article the next year in Religion and American Culture.
Catholic Answers published a response to the claims of Chick Publications against Roman Catholics and a criticism of Chick Tracts in general called The Nightmare World of Jack T. Chick, detailing the inaccuracies, factual errors, and how a "typical tactic in Chick tracts is to portray Catholics as being unpleasant or revolting in various ways".

Anti-homosexuality

Chick tracts are unequivocal and explicit in their opposition to homosexuality, and repeatedly employ two anti-homosexual themes:
According to Cynthia Burack, Chick's earliest anti-homosexuality tract, The Gay Blade, borrowed several of its frames from a 1971 Life magazine photo-essay on the Gay Liberation movement, but with the images altered to make the gay men look more dissolute or stereotypically feminized.

Anti-evolution

Chick published several anti-evolution tracts, but Big Daddy? remains "the most widely distributed anti-evolution booklet in history".
Critics point out that the Big Daddy? tract mainly uses Kent Hovind as a reference, despite the fact that Hovind has no degrees from accredited institutions in the relevant fields, that the thesis referred to is considered to be of very poor quality, and that his claims are at odds with the published statements of experts in the field.
Big Daddy? is presented in the 2007 book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters as a "typical of the genre" example of just how "misleading and dishonest" creationist presentations are. The examples of the "deceptive and misleading" distortions, misrepresentation, and fabrications presented in that work regarding Big Daddy? are "Nebraska Man", "New Guinea Man", and the implication "Cro-Magnon" man was viewed as different from Homo sapiens.

Views on Satanism and Satanic influence

The concept of malign influences led to the theme of spiritual warfare being frequently portrayed in the tracts. Chick considered all forms of witchcraft to be demonic, regardless of whether it was "white witchcraft" or "black witchcraft". Gladys is an example of one of Chick's tracts on this issue.
Consistent with his views on demonic influence, Chick also considered Halloween to be "the devil's holiday" and opposed Christians celebrating it, with one notable exception – Chick did not oppose Christians engaging in the traditional Halloween custom of passing out candy to neighborhood children, considering it to be an opportunity to present the Gospel message via his tracts.
Based on Chick's views on Satanism and Satanic influence, Catholic Answers states 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."
The tracts' claims about conspiracies are based in large part on the testimony of people who claim to have been members of these groups before converting to Evangelical Christianity, most prominently Alberto Rivera and William Schnoebelen. Many of Chick's critics consider these sources to be frauds or fantasists. One such case was "The Prophet", a tract containing a fantastic tale related by Rivera of how the papacy helped start Islam that turned out to have no basis in reality.

Parodies and popular culture

In film

Some cartoonists have published parodies that mimic Chick tracts' familiar layout and narrative conventions. Examples include:
The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated Chick Publications as an active hate group.
The group was listed due to its strong anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, and anti-homosexual rhetoric. Chick's views on homosexuality have angered gay activists since his first tract on the subject in 1972.
Chick's critics have accused him of misrepresentation.
The Hindu American Foundation put out an electronic PDF paper called "Hyperlink to Hinduphobia: Online Hatred, Extremism and Bigotry Against Hindus" which contains a section on Chick's site; the paper ends with the statement "Chick Publications promotes hatred not just against Hindus, but also towards Muslims, Catholics, and others as is evidenced by the following titles of their tracts: 'Last Rites – When this Catholic dies, he learns that his church couldn't save him'; 'The Little Bride – Protect children against being recruited as Muslims. Li'l Susy explains that only Jesus can save them'; and 'Allah Had No Son – The Allah of Islam is not the God of creation.
The content of That Crazy Guy! was changed after the rise of the AIDS crisis. Also, the ending to The Poor Little Witch was changed because the urban myth which states that "every year in the U.S. at least 40,000 people... are murdered in witchcraft ceremonies" turned out to be false and was removed from the tract. Chick Publications depicts Paganism and Neo-Paganism as forms of Satanism, a position Neo-Pagans and other observers strongly dispute.
The Chick Publications website is blocked in Singapore. In December 2008, a Singaporean couple was charged with sedition for distributing the Chick tracts The Little Bride and Who Is Allah?, said to "promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between Christians and Muslims in Singapore".
In October 2011, the Northview Baptist Church in Hillsboro, Ohio gave out copies of the Chick tract Mean Momma along with candy at Halloween. 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."
In 2014, the Chick tract Unforgiven was distributed by Bible Baptist Church in Garden City, Roanoke, Virginia and drew outrage from the area's Muslim community. The tract tells the story of an African-American man who, while in prison, is coerced into joining the Islamic faith and changes his name to Muhammad. Upon his release he threatens his Christian grandmother. Hussain Al-Shiblawi, a local man, told WDBJ-TV that he gets pamphlets from the church every Sunday and that they are typically inspirational, but that this one was different. "It basically indicated that the people are violent, the religion itself is violent, and the facts in here are not true," he said. "It shows him trying to kill his mother saying, 'If you weren't my grandma, I'd kill you where you stand, Allahu Akbar. In one scene, the grandmother begs Lamont to return to the Christian faith, telling him he will "die in sins" and be unforgiven by God if he does not. But the young man is not swayed by her pleas. "I choose Muhammad! And I hate your Jesus, your Bible and you!" he screams. "Get out of my house, you infidel!" Bible Baptist Church said the church did not write the tract and simply distributed it.
In July 2020, UK Police investigated the distribution of Chick publications in Bristol, England.

Citations