Reading Time: 9 minutes In this installment, we discover what happens when someone chooses the wrong flavor of Christianity — and it is a dire warning indeed, if a completely false one. Today, Lord Snow Presides over a contemporary denominational squabble that reveals all too much about its target audience.
Jack Chick
Posted inReligion
The Hated Stereotypes in “This Present Darkness” (LSP #91)
Reading Time: 11 minutes Last time, we touched on how this book both derived from and defined those wild and woolly years. This time, I’ll show you the biases and prejudices that seethe and pulse under its oh-so-purple prose. Today, Lord Snow Presides over This Present Darkness: a book that revels in its pure hatred of outsiders.
Posted inReligion
Chick Tracts: A Cultural Artifact, Cheap at Twice the Price.
Reading Time: 7 minutes We idealize the stuff we liked, gloss over and forget the stuff we didn’t, and glamorize in our minds what is more of an emotional state than actual events. And if we happened to be in our teens and young-adulthoods during a particular era, that’s the era where our nostalgia will be the strongest and most emotionally resonant. Well, for people in their late 30s and early 40s, that era is going to be the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s. That’s why the people who seem the most persuaded of Chick tracts’ effectiveness are older fundagelicals. These tracts came along at a very pivotal moment in their culture–a moment long gone, and a moment many of them dearly wish they could have back.
Posted inReligion
A Jack Chick Retrospective
Reading Time: 9 minutes In a way, it’s more important to understand Jack Chick’s role in shaping right-wing Christian culture than it is to understand Jimmy Swaggart’s contribution to the mindset. For good or ill, Jack Chick was modern American fundagelicalism. I’ll show you what I mean by that today.
Posted inReligion
I’m Still Not a Francis Fangirl.
Reading Time: 12 minutes I’m still not a Pope Francis fangirl. Here’s why.
Posted inReligion
Defining Moments: Lying for Jesus, Library Edition.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Biff was so proud of himself, but I was so horrified.
Posted inReligion
Captive Audiences.
Reading Time: 11 minutes Hi and welcome back! Today we’re going to talk about something else I noticed about that post Sensous Curmudgeon did about Jack Chick and his chiropractic visit. Namely, we’re going to talk about Christians evangelizing people who don’t have a choice about listening or not. It’s nothing less than a form of religious abuse, and […]
Posted inReligion
Chick Tracts Are Awesome (for Non-Believers).
Reading Time: 11 minutes I ran into his tracts many years ago, when they were a lot more popular than they are now. It’s weird to run into Christians who’ve never seen them, let’s just put it that way, because evangelicals and fundamentalists alike of a certain age are well-familiar with these little bitty comic books.
Posted inReligion
My old church found its tipping point
Reading Time: 11 minutes I heard today that some restaurants are ending the tipping practice in favor of paying full-time real wages to their staff, and it made me think of my old Christian peers and how happy they undoubtedly are to get that news, because now it means they don’t have to make excuses anymore for why they […]