What denominations believe/promote Jack Chick the most?

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“Jack Chick: This was your life!”

An article by a (now Baptist) friend who grew up reading Jack Chick tracts.
At the end, I cannot render final judgment: Jack Chick went to hell, or Jack Chick went to Heaven. But I do suspect he’s in Heaven. Because crazy Christians sometimes do mean well. Yes, even if they claim Catholics eat “death cookies,” or “Harry Potter” fans worship Satan.

Like Catholicism and fantasy novels themselves, Chick Tracts are an absurd mess of grace and idolatry, truth and lies, and artistic skills that reflect God versus artful lies that do not.
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I first heard of Jack Chick in the early 1980s from a kid in my junior high school. He was a member of the Assemblies of God and that is the only time that I have ever seen the Jack Chick comic books in print.
 
I read ‘em when I can get ‘em. Some of them that focus on people turning away from sin and to Jesus, without the anti-Catholic stuff, aren’t bad. I have a collection of about 20. My buddy has a couple hundred.
 
I have found that most people that tend to be of the Jack Chick ilk, are those who belong to various Baptist denominations. I live in the Southern United States, so it may just be that’s what I’m around.
 
I saw it in the bathroom at Kroger, I can’t say that’s an inappropriate place for it
 
Guilty of starting some of them, although that has more to do with where I live
 
I never heard of Jack Chick or ever saw any of his tracks. The first I heard of them was on CAF and I have been a Protestant all my life.
 
Count your blessings. I feel like he is what non Christians think all of Christianity is like.
 
Cor_ad_Cor said:
I don’t think it’s a denominational thing so much as a church-by-church, congregational decision. In my experience, especially in smaller, rural fundamentalist evangelical churches of any denomination, you’ll find the local leadership make these determinations and the rest of the people are usually unlikely to question it from their preacher or elders.
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This is what I was thinking. Jack Chick’s claims are so outrageous that it seems he wouldn’t attract any sort of “mainstream” denominations, but instead fringe, back-woods, non-denominational churches led by conspiracy theorist pastors who tell their congregations to believe Jack Chick, which they do because they’re told to since they’re essentially part of a borderline cult in that they don’t get out much.

But again, it surprises me Assembly of God would promote Jack Chick because he accused them of being part of the Illuminati before he got into the anti-Catholic stuff. How do members of the Assembly of God who believe Jack Chick live with this? Are they just not familiar with Chick’s past claims?
 
Why does everybody get so wound up over the parts of Jack Chick’s message that are poorly founded (like the Vatican conspiracy stuff or the “Death Cookie” comic) but ignores the parts of his message that actually contain a good bit of truth and might help people?

The guy’s comic books are full of sinners, potential suicides, criminals, people in jail, people on the verge of suddenly dying, etc, some of whom find Christ in the nick of time and others of whom reject Christ and go to hell.

I agree they are not exactly at the level of Brothers Karamazov storytelling, but many of them are good stories. “Holy Joe”, “Kitty in the Window”, “Bad Bob”, they could all help somebody or bring them to God. I really believe the guy was making a sincere effort in his mind to do the Lord’s work, and probably brought some people to God.
 
A few nuggets of truth do not make up for the lies and outright calumny he poured out against our Faith. His promotion of the disgraced con artist Alberto Riviera long after mainstream protestant publications had discredited him is proof that he was wedded to his hatred of Catholics.

In addition his incredibly harsh, apocalyptic views were a blessing to Atheists to brand all Christians as irrational, anti-science lunatics.
 
Yes I loved those parodies. Even better than the originals in my opinion. The idea of being eaten by the Elder gods is perhaps a more uplifting fate than what Chick anticipated for most people.
 
Many of Chick’s admirers are scoffers who have no intention of taking his warnings of hellfire to heart. They get some sort of ironic amusement out of his depictions in comic-strip form of sinners being pulled this way and that on their way to salvation or damnation. It might fairly be said that they constitute a cult following, just as a rock band or a movie with few but intensely devoted fans has a cult following.

Some such people collect Chick’s comics as a hobby. Many of them aim to own copies of every comic that Chick has ever produced; booklets that are no longer in print are particularly desirable. An acquaintance once told me that a comic book shop in Toronto sells them. He wasn’t sure if the shop sold new or second-hand copies. I wouldn’t be surprised if it got them directly from Chick’s people, who might figure that some comic fanboy might see the light upon reading one.

You might expect that such fandom would produce literature discussing Chick’s work. I know of a book purporting to be an unofficial yet comprehensive guide to it — not only the booklets, but also the full-colour comic books illustrated by Fred Carter and the Battle Cry newsletters. It contains a full (if rather snarky) description of the plot of every comic, and gives the going price for out-of-print comics and earlier versions of comics still in print.

I myself have about a dozen of Chick’s works sitting somewhere in my large and eclectic collection of comics. I first came across them many years ago as some of you folks did, finding them lying in phone booths and public washrooms. Whenever I found one, I read it, got the creeps from it, and promptly threw it away. Now I read them (and keep them) with mixed feelings. On one hand, I sympathise with the author’s earnest intention to lead souls to Christ as well as he knows how, and on the other hand I roll my eyes at the stuff about the “death cookie” and the Pope being the Antichrist.
 
What is truly strange is that only Catholics pray for the repose of his soul. Mr. Chick, may he rest in peace, now knows the truth.
 
Erikaspirit16 said:
I have a story that may amuse (or horrify?) some of you. Our town has an annual in-the-street fair, and some guy was passing out Jack Chick booklets. I took one, then put my left hand on his head, made a sweeping sign of the cross with my right hand, and–in Latin–said “In nomine patris…” It totally freaked him out. You could see it in his eyes. He thought I was cursing him or something. He’s probably still telling people about the day some witch put a curse on him. Great fun!
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Is there a reason that you said the prayer in Latin instead of the native language (which I assume is American English)?

I have been Catholic now since 2004 (I’m 62), but I still don’t understand Latin, and when I hear the Mass parts spoken in Latin, I don’t recognize them–I only know what they mean by following the missal.

I think you might have done much more good by praying “In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost” over this Protestant Christian instead of something that he didn’t understand. Protestants have no objection to praying in the Name of the Trinity. You might have opened the door to a dialogue with him that might have led him to investigate Catholicism more thoroughly.

But instead, you frightened him–I agree with you that he might very well think you were cursing him. What good did that do?

It made you feel good, and surely God heard your prayer and will find a way to work in that man’s soul to bring him to full communion with the Catholic Church. But how wonderful it would have been if you had prayed in a language that he would understand and that would have demonstrated that Catholics love God–the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

One teaching that fundamentalist Protestants have is that a follower of Satan will not be able to pray in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Had you prayed in English, that man would have been confused in a good way, because he would be faced with a “Catholic” (who, in his opinion, isn’t a Christian) who can still pray that sacred prayer! This would set him up for a study of what Catholicism really teaches! (Many Protestants will immediately begin a “study” when they run across something about God that they don’t understand. My husband and I did this and it led us to the Catholic Church!)

Anyway, lesson learned, I hope. Please pray in English (or whatever the native language is) when you are around non-Catholics and even around Catholics. Please keep the Latin for your private devotions and when you are in a setting where people are likely to know and appreciate the Latin prayers.
 
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In my evangelical protestant days, I probably distributed thousands of Chick publication tracks and had all the crusader comics also… I have to admit, they did get the people interested…
 
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I witnessed some folks from the Assemblies of God distributing Jack Chick tracts to passerby many years ago (United States), but most of the time the tracts are just lying around somewhere. Occasionally, the comics will be imprinted with the contact information of a specific church, but usually there isn’t any sort of indication of who distributed them. I’ve seen the tracts in a few European countries fairly recently, too.

I’ve always liked the illustrations.
 
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