44 thoughts on “Jack Chick Redux”

  1. Dang, it’s not avail on Netflix or Blockbuster online. I need to kill my memberships to those liberal compromiser organizations!

  3. I watched a little of this on the Documentary channel a few months ago. It was actually kinda’ boring, which is why I didn’t watch the whole thing.

  6. LOVE this movie! The interview with Fred Carter is great. And Alberto’s wife is classic. Shame that they couldn’t get an interview with the man himself.

  7. A few years ago some indie filmmakers produced a collection of shorts based on Chick tracts. The title? “Hot Chicks.” Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38KzV1fk1x4

    Looks like they hauled out all the loons they could find for God’s Cartoonist. I was wondering what Kent Hovind had to do with Chick, but then remembered that, in the latest incarnation of his videos, he recommends the Chick comic book about how the Catholic Church started Islam. Like attracts like, I guess.

  8. Oh! And the brief clip of Alberto Rivera “preaching” on tv! I can’t get enough of this movie!

  10. @Jordan: dr dino says in the movie that chick is probably responsible for more people going to heaven than anybody else. Good stuff.

  13. Wow, I don’t want to watch it, but I kind of do. I’m torn and horrified all at the same time.

    I’ve never understood the pull of the chick tracks. The concept could be really cool if done right, but these straddled a fine line of cheezy/corny and dubious religiosity/irrelevance.

  16. It covered theology, art, and lunacy.

    Three subjects which are never very far from each other. 🙂

  17. oops, sorry. Not on hulu. I saw it a few months ago on the blog: Common Sense Atheism (no, I’m not an atheist, but a Christian philosopher who likes to keep up with what the other side is doing). Anyway, here’s the link but it looks like the feed is no longer available 🙁

    http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=5584

  18. “Now there’s a reaction I didn’t expect.”

    @Darrell – Heightened reality is interesting. An honest portrayal of fundy crazy is interesting for only so long. “Sad” is another term that came to mind while I was watching this doc.

  21. @Darrell You aren’t insinuating a fundy would’ve violated a copyright law to post it online somewhere are you? I feel a “shewbread” defense in the works! 🙂

  22. I passed out hundreds of these tracts when I was a member of fundy-mania. Is there anyway I can get my money back from Chick?

  23. These were the “good tracts” at my church. The alternative was the recycled paper, “Burn in Hell” tracts. I passed out a ton of those things. The more controversial and offensive, the better.

  24. @Richard Sullivan Is there anyway I can get my money back from Chick?

    I’ll say. What about all those poor trees that died just so he could tell everyone they’re going to hell?

  25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_Publications#cite_note-Company_Profile:Chi-0

    2.9 million dollars a year – nice little profit for Chick, Inc. (Staff of 35?)

    I don’t know how many people will refer to Chick Publications as a “ministry”. It’s a for-profit business (John 2:16). I have more respect for the likes of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan Publishing. Yes, they publish Bibles & other “religious” goods, but they make no bones about it – they are publishing companies and not a ministry. They are here to make money. Does it mean I won’t buy from Nelson or Zondervan? No, I just accept they are a business geared toward Christians. I just get tired of hearing & seeing the sheep getting fleeced.

  26. In Fort Worth, some organization throughs a haunted house in a large, abandoned building. A few days before Halloween, my old IFB church would hold what they called a “Tract Attack.” We would stand around outside the building at street corners and along the sidewalk passing out the various Chick tracts on Halloween. People thought we were passing out tickets or other material associated with the haunted house, so they received them gladly…just before many of them dropped them on the ground.

    Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers has posted what he’s convinced is the only recent photo of Jack Chick. You can view it here: http://www.jimmyakin.org/2007/02/the_face_of_chi.html

    and here:
    http://www.jimmyakin.org/2007/04/happy_birthday_.html

    Plus, you gotta read his telling conversation with Jack Chick: http://members.cox.net/jimmyakin/x-meet-jack-chick.htm

    Finally, don’t neglect to look up Alberto Rivera, John Todd, and Rebecca Brown on Wikipedia. It’ll blow your mind what absolute and total frauds they were! Someone should really make a movie. It’d be rated R for sure! And it leads me to believe that Chick refuses interviews, not because he wants God to get all the glory, but because he doesn’t want to be held accountable for continuing to sell the lies of those three people. If Akin’s conversation reflects reality, then Jack’s still persuaded they’re all true because “he prayed about it.” (Famous last words)

  27. John: I checked out several of your findings, all interesting, but what I am wondering is how does one become a Catholic after studying the Bible? I have heard, and read, of Catholic priests becoming Christians after reading the Bible, but never the reverse. Jimmy’s blog is interesting, nonetheless. My daughter-in-law went to church in Clarkston, must check on which one……hummmmm

  28. Catholics are Christians.

    Of course we can debate whether or not they are orthodox in their beliefs, or regenerate due to their soteriology, but they confess Christ and the triune God so…they’re pretty much Christians no matter which way you slice it.

  29. Thanks, Darrell. And Re. maria bergh, I’ve gone from fundamentalism toward some variety of high-church Christianity (Catholicism being one possibility) because of studying the Bible, not despite it. Bible study isn’t the exclusive purview of Protestantism or Catholicism, despite the noise on both sides of the debate.

  30. Jack Chick is an evil man propagating evil lies. He is a tool of the devil and hte personification of everything he claims the Catholic Church is.

    @Maria: I became Catholic after studying the Bible and comparing Catholic teachings to what the Bible has to say. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the best way to quickly find out what Catholics believe. Don’t forget to read the footnotes, which show the Biblical basis for our beliefs.

    I have never been more interested in the Bible since I became a Catholic.

  31. By linking to Akin’s posts, I’m in no way endorsing his Roman Catholic apologetics. Can’t personally understand how the Bible makes one Roman Catholic, but I can see how it makes one a biblical catholic in the ancient, pre-medieval sense, because that’s what it did for me when it led me to Reformed theology.

  35. @Jordan I hear ya on that. While I don’t have Catholic (as in RCC, not as in universal – I’m not denying a belief in one holy catholic and apostolic church) leanings, I do have very liturgical, high church leanings, not in spite of, but *because* of my study of Scripture. AT the moment I’m Presby and am a member of a low/mid-church Presby church, though who knows where I’ll end up. I visited a high-church Anglican church for Ash Wednesday and LOVED it. Last year I went to a traditional Lutheran church for Ash Wednesday and loved the liturgy there, too. For an introduction to liturgy, I recommend Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy.

    As for who is a Christian, the Apostle’s Creed is an early summary of core Trinitarian Christian beliefs. So is the Nicene. Read them.

    As I don’t think Darrell wants this blog to turn into my-church-is-better-than-yours, I’ll leave it at that. Now back to Chick tracts (wait, did I just write that?)

  36. If you can recognize a Chick tract by a split-second glance at its cover…you’ve been a fundy. Bonus if you can describe the basic “plot” without taking the time to read the title and/or open up the tract and read the inside.

  37. I’m in the Pacific Northwest and I haven’t seen any Chick tracts in public places, although I have seen them online. Would you say that Chick tracts are more a Bible Belt phenomenon?

    We came out of Mass one day to find our windshields plastered with Fundy propaganda. It was very insulting and just makes you wonder about the kind of people that will put fliers on the windshields of people who are in CHURCH. Of course the cowardly people who did it did not stick around long enough to confront us in person.

  38. Last time I saw a Chick tract was at a public restroom off I-75 in Ohio. In a stall. Perfect place.

  39. i find sooooooooo much more “Bible” in liturgy than i do in the fundy-style “let’s-read-a-verse-now-i’m-gonna-yell-at-ya-fer-an-hour” worship. granted, i went straight from baptist to Orthodox, so i’m not sure what goes on in Western high-Prot or RC liturgies, but i imagine it’s got a similar format: Lots of Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, some begging for mercy, Epistle, Gospel, some preaching, some smells, some bells, followed by some flesh-eating and blood-drinking. Worshipping with my nose, ears, eyes, touch, and taste.

    but then again, you never know when that Eucharist is going to turn out to be…

    …THE DEATH COOKIE!!!!!

  40. i forgot about my main point, which was, re: Maria Bergh: everybody reads Scripture through the lens of a tradition. if you’re looking for Catholicism, you’ll find it in the Bible. if you’re looking for Calvinism, Lutheranism, Fundyism, Adventism, or Mormonism, you’ll find them in the Bible, too. If you believe that Donkey Kong created the universe, you can probably find a verse to back you up. There’s a lot of information in the Bible. So i’m never surprised to hear that somebody read the Bible and came to a completely different conlusion than i did.

    as an aside, the fundy notion of reading the Bible and allowing the Holy Spirit to show you what it means, without reference to tradition, is itself a tradition (and a fairly recent one).

  42. I watched the whole thing last night and whoever said it was boring was spot on. I kept waiting for it to get better and then at about the 30 minute mark it became a personal challenge to just finish. A waste of 1 hour and 17 minutes. I do like that one of your readers could find a recent picture of Chick and the people that made the film couldn’t.

  43. This speaks volumes regarding the Fundy mindset. The line I enjoyed the most from the documentary was when the Chick-Cheerleader pastor said, “Chick said it, I believe it, That settles it.”

  44. HEY! Don’t knock Chick tracts. At least it was something amusing you could stick in your Bible as a kid to read during the sermon.

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