Chapter I: Introduction

 

“You’re Going to Burn!  Burn Forever!”:  My First Encounter with Jack Chick (Critiquing Are Roman Catholics Christians?)

 

            In my childhood days, I attended a Baptist church—a Southern Baptist church, to be specific.  But I hated it.  I am more of an introvert than an extrovert, and being an introvert put a “target on me” that my peers in Sunday School exploited—not only my peers, but also one of my teachers. 

While I found Sunday School to be horrible, the actual “worship service” itself was even worse.  The pastor just went on and on talking about things that I did not understand, nor care about, to the point where I would constantly ask my parents, “Is it over yet?”[1]  After begging my parents to no longer take me to that church, and all the reasons why, we stopped going—and my Sundays became a “breath of fresh air.”

            Fast-forward to my teenage years, and I started to become interested in religion on my own.  I was still within the Christian tradition, but I wanted to see what “came first” within that tradition (I have always had a love for history).  My research led me to Catholicism, but there was one object associated with the Catholic Church that I found very appealing:  the crucifix.  There was something about the image of the crucified savior that I found interesting.  I had never seen the image in the Baptist church I grew up in (I guess due to a Calvinist influence),[2] and I wanted one.

            In my attempt to purchase one, I drove to Branson, Missouri, and eventually found a business titled “Word of Faith Christian Bookstore.”[3]  I walked around the store, but I did not see any crucifixes for purchase, so, eventually, I asked the clerk.

The clerk was taken aback by my question that he followed up with a question of his own:  “A Roman Catholic crucifix?”

  My contemporary self would have responded, “No, an Orthodox crucifix.  Or an Anglican crucifix.  Or a Lutheran crucifix.  Basically, anyone who disagrees with John Calvin on the use of religious images.”  But, I was 16 at the time, so I said, “Yes.”

            The clerk quickly left the counter and said, “I want to show you something.”

            He proceeded to take me to a revolving display rack that contained these tiny pamphlets.  One of them was titled, Are Roman Catholics Christians?  Of course, I answered in the affirmative, but he quickly cut me off.  Using the pamphlet, he told me how Catholics are not Christians, how Catholics are going to “burn in Hell,” and his hatred of all things Catholicism.[4]  I was unaware of it at the time, but this was truly my first encounter with Fundamentalist Evangelical[5] Protestantism, and my first encounter with Jack Chick (What the clerk showed me is what is commonly known as a “Chick tract”). 

What I intend to do in this entry is to critique that particular tract/comic book by posting the images from it.  In doing so, I am hoping to provide a defense for Catholics, who may be confused by the arguments put forward by Chick.  But at the same time, I am also hoping to engage in some dialogue with those who disagree with me, and agree with Jack Chick.  If I am so wrong, as those who agree with Chick would hold, then I ask them to refute me point by point, just like I am going to do with this particular Chick tract/comic.

Before continuing, there are four points I must make:

1.      I want to give a brief account of who Jack Chick was and some of his beliefs.

2.      I want to give a brief account of some of the themes found in Chick tracts/comic books.

 

3.      This point goes beyond my thesis, but it is something that should be made.  In a former blog, which I have since deleted, I wrote a critique of a YouTube video titled “The Thaw” from an organization called Reach America.  One person informed me that I essentially “wasted my time and intellect, responding to a bunch of teenagers reading from a script.”  While I suppose that is a nice compliment, the fact is that there were plenty of individuals who took what was in that YouTube video very seriously, and the same is true with the materials produced by Jack Chick and his organization.[6]

4.      In my response to this particular Chick Tract, I am not trying to convert anyone to Catholicism. I am simply providing a response, and I am approaching this topic from the perspective of a historian.  With a religious belief of any kind, there is only so much a historian can prove, as History is based on what is in harmony with the natural world.[7]

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[1]Let me try and explain my frustration with an example.  Let us say that a parent(s) took their five-year-old child to a lecture over Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.  The five-year-old child does not know who William Shakespeare was, who Julius Caesar—or the play about him—was, nor does he or she care, because he or she cannot understand what the person at the podium is talking about.

 

[2]John Calvin (1509-64), the French Protestant Reformer, was what is known as an “iconoclast”—a hater of religious images.  Calvin was fine with images that depicted the natural world, but not religious images.

 

[3]The physical building is now gone, as it was destroyed during the building of the Branson Landing, and, from what I can tell, the business, itself, no longer exists.

 

[4]And this was some hatred.  It went way beyond, “I disagree with the Catholics on this particular theological issue” to pure hatred.

 

[5]The term, “Evangelical,” can be difficult to define within the Christian sphere.  Many Baptists, Assemblies of God, or groups, which share elements of their theology would identify as an Evangelical.  Some Methodists and Presbyterians would also identify as Evangelical, and some would not.

 

[6]The clerk who showed me that Chick tract/comic book in the Summer of 1996 most certainly took its contents seriously.

 

[7]For example, I cannot, as a historian, prove the resurrection of Jesus, and I cannot do so for three reasons:

First, it is a violation of the natural world.  Dead people do not come back.

Second, sometimes people missee or misinterpret things and events.

Third, sometimes people just lie.

 

While I can state that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is historic, the key word is belief (people then, and now, believed that it happened).  I cannot prove the resurrection for the three reasons mentioned previously.  I can choose to believe it, and, as a professed Christian, I do believe it; but I cannot prove it.