RIP Jack Chick, father of the Satanic Panic

A kid once brought some Jack Chick tracts to our regular D&D session. A good laugh was had by all. This was in Texas in the very early 80s, lots of mean Christians but also some real genuinely kind ones too.

My next memory of them is a few years later when a group of Christians came down to one of the Dallas punk clubs and were handing out sandwiches Jack Chick comics in the parking lot. I remember being surprised that a huge mohawked guy I knew ended up debating theology with them for quite a while and seemed to be winning. Fortunately the Dallas punks were pretty decent on the whole and didnt give this Christian group any trouble for telling them they would go to Hell™ unless they accepted Jesus.

Not specific to anyone in particular but unfortunately this is exactly the feeling I have as an observant Jew sometimes here and much more so elsewhere.

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An enormous statue of christ, proposed and constructed with the help of the catholic church, 2/3rds the size of the statue of liberty, overlooks Rio at the most visually prominent peak in the area. Visible from a hundred kilometers in most directions.

And here I am thinking the KJV has a prohibition of making monuments in high places.

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Actual sandwiches? Tempting, but I’m not taking a sandwich from some rando outside a club.

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The statue of Christ, the Redemeer. It is a famous tourist spot. It started a boom of Christ statues in my country. You can see huge monuments like this one even in small and humble villages.

http://g1.globo.com/sp/ribeirao-preto-franca/noticia/2013/04/monumento-no-interior-de-sp-quer-roubar-cena-do-cristo-redentor.html

But despite the majority of the population declare themselves Catholic, we have seen a continuous growth of Protestants in the country. Today evangelicals even have a strong representation in the national congress.

The country is changing. Is it good? Is it bad? I have no idea. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Only people who read the future in tarot cards, tea leaves or sociology book are sure of the answer. :wink:

Bu I never saw something like these religious comix here… As I was a gullible kid, I´d be scared for life after reading it.

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We are in interesting times, that’s for sure.

I have very strong feelings about the catholic church, and the evangelicals, but I’ll leave my diatribe for another day.

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I once got a little booklet handed to me on the street in that style. I wonder if it was drawn by Jack Chick (texts were in Dutch). I found it hilarious but mysteriously it failed to convert me to christianity.

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Apparently I deleted them but I took pictures of some Chick tracts I found on the bus one day. This was a month or two ago. On the back was a purchase form.

The fact that Chick tracts solicit money adds insult to insult.

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That was unintentional - I think it was my coat-tails whipping about in my ecstatic fervor.


Not everyone is required to mourn a passing.

Not everyone is required to thank a homilist for being told how hateful they are.

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I don’t expect thanks.

I don’t even expect mourning.

Rubbing the hate in my face was a bit much.

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We should have a holiday of such trolling ideas… A day where we all do stuff like what @ActionAbe mentions… Paying it forward, with tricks.

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Trick and Treat

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Considering that I had a few of those sandwiches myself and am here to tell, not everyone has bad intention.

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How did I not know this was a word before? It’s the perfect describer of those that use the biblical faith as excuse to browbeat, belittle, bludgeon, and beat their way into power and other people over the skull while demanding special privilege in society. Not very christlike at all.

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Well far as I’m concerned you’re welcome at my table bro.

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Being happy someone is dead is not hate, it is honest recognition of the harm he inflicted on the world.

Imagine the good in anyone as makes you happy, but nobody’s also rubbing anything on anyone by feeling that the world is that much brighter with his passing.

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I mean, crusties aren’t as choosy (uh, unless they’re vegan.)

Wrong place and time. I was talking Dallas in the mid 80s.

I feel bad about the damage he did in the world, but I’m not happy he’s dead. My world is not a brighter place now that he’s gone. In fact, I didn’t even realize he was a real person until I heard he died. My world is the same as it ever was.

The damage he’s done did not start with him, and it won’t end with him.

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Hatred doesn’t disappear, but the less persons we have disseminating racial, religious, and gay-hatred, the better.

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First, every human death is a human sadness, regardless of how much we may agree with or even like the human in question.

Second, I honestly confess I am conflicted about his passing as an artist and creator. He rode trends in American so-called Conservative so-called Christian bigotry, which affected many lives for the worst.

I am conflicted because he was also a true American artist with a real pulp flair. Not just ironically, he really could tell a compelling story. It’s just a shame his fantasy tales weren’t taken as fantasy, even by him. He was also a pioneering businessman, self-publishing decades before today. Again, it’s a shame the product he pushed had such terrible ideas in it.

I also enjoyed reading those terrible stories, because the mixture of the bad ideas and the passion with which he told them wasn’t just ironically entertaining - it was unintentionally revelatory of an entire mindset. Really a mindfield of compartmentalized morality that was so much plainer in the clarity of panels and word balloons.

I do hope that wherever he may be he is learning and growing in ways he didn’t while he was among us on Earth. And I hope and expect that we will continue to grow past the ideas he sincerely believed in as well as made a good buck from, so it recedes ever further into the past behind us.

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