One Anti-Catholic Hero of the Twentieth Century
Sadly, his influence on Protestant Evangelicalism has been huge. And the eschatological polemic his teachings strike is very straightforward: Catholics are going to hell—and they deserve it if they don’t repent and believe in the real and pure (read: Protestant Evangelical) gospel. Tragically, for all its straightforwardness, some Catholics seem to forget the thesis of a Chick Tract (or not know of it to begin with).
Especially when it comes to politics.
During this strange time when the Stars and Stripes align Catholics and Protestant Evangelicals who seem to think that they share a common cause and political identity that comes wrapped together in an American flag, we find a group of anti-ecumenicalists practicing something like ecumenism. But it is fake. It is fake if one of them—or both, as the case may be—thinks the other one is damned to hell as a matter of religious principle. (As if the tiny little detail about the Church being the Whore of Babylon was too unimportant to get in the way of nationalism.)
No, I am not trying to poo-poo ecumenism; after all, one of the articles of faith of this unholy political alliance is that the ecumenical movement is corrupt.
What I do think is that Catholics and non-Chick Protestants (who are many!) should read through his website every so often just be reminded that this is very real. And, perhaps, we might even think twice when they hear of the “good work” being done by Protestant Evangelicals (like Tim Tebow’s dad) who use Chick Tracts or alike.
Think I am overreacting? Take a look at this Q&A from his website.
Or, read this except from “Are Some Roman Catholics Saved?” also found at the Jim Chick website.
Just as you cannot mix fire and water, neither can one be a saved person and remain a faithful Roman Catholic… The Roman Catholics are as lost as the poor African witchdoctor or Hindu… We urge you to pray for the Roman Catholics and to witness to them as never before. They are lost and need a living Saviour, not one dead on the cross. Those who insist that there are saved Roman Catholics either do not know that Bible or do not know Roman Catholicism.
Or, even better yet, read a Chick Tract!
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Excellent post, Sam.
It has occurred to me that the Catholic right is in some respects riding the tiger in their alliance with the evangelical right – there are deep wells of anti-Catholic bigotry in the south, and Catholics better pray that these folks never get the United States declared an officially “Christian” nation, because that will most certainly exclude (eventually, anyway) what they consider to be “non-Christian denominations” like Catholicism. This combined with certain authoritarian tendencies (to put it delicately…) I’ve noticed in the character of the religious right might lead to rather dire outcomes indeed for Catholics in America.
Most Evangelicals don’t take Jack Chick very seriously. What is sad and more worrisome is that they take more articulate but like-minded spokesmen such as James White and John MacArthur seriously.
Just a side note to the Catholic neo-cons of the world and their supporters such as George Weigel, Michael Novak, Fr. McCloskey, etc… who believe so strongly in the late Rev. Neuhaus’s ECT project. As we saw with the Opus Dei candidate Sam Brownback, and in an earlier campaign waged by Pat Buchanan, the Evangelicals are just never going to get behind your guy. Ever. They aren’t. Understand? Especially if he’s viewed as an apostate like Brownback was. They are not going to go for a Catholic any more than they will for a Mormon, no matter how conservative he is on social issues. Drop these pretensions to a partnership.
One of the funnier things he has written in his “Chick Tracts” has been that the IHS on a host stands for “Isis, Horus, & Seb, the gods of Egypt” LMAO
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0074/0074_01.asp
Here’s the link to where I found it
The dynamic isn’t as dire or clean as Matt presents it. I have plenty of Evangelical friends and family members who now consider Catholics – including me – to be Christians. A lot of the polarization of forty years ago (when Chick got his start) is gone, and many Evangelicals credit their close work with Catholics on the pro-life issue for helping to broaden and moderate their views on ecumenism.
I think it is rather a big jump to go from wacko Jack Chick tracts and compare it to somethings as diverse as Evangelical Protestants.
I am not sure what is unholy about this poltical alliance that is an alliance on many fronts. Over the decades one of the benefits of this alliance is that Catholics and Evangelicals have got to know each other. Anti Catholicism has gone down.
A prime example of this is the Making Men Moral conference where Evangelcials (with heavy weights like Robert George and Baptist AL Moher) came together to discuss all sort of things from the political to the natural law.
I can never recall when I was on the “inside” of the evangelical world any real hatred of Catholics or shunning of them. As a Catholic that lives in the Bible Belt while there is disagreements over practices of faith my views are respected. In fact that is part of the social contract of the Jesus soaked South. There are in a average town a variety of Protestant beliefs that are opposed to each other. Yet we all get along, we all have our kid sleep over at each other houses, and all socialize.
I think there is a much more common perception that we are all in this together as our common Christian Faith is under relentless attack.
The drivel I read in the Washington Post On Faith page (including the outrageous attack this week) , astonishing columns like Dowd wrote in the NYT this week, and the various attacks on the Church by mainline more liberal Protestants on Orthodox Catholics and Evangelcials are the new Jack Chick tracts of the day. If we are looking at unholy poltical alliances perhaps we should be looking elsewhere.
The vicious attacks against the Catholic Church are not so much occuring in the publications of mainstram Evangelcials ( Catholics are treated very fairly in the their banner magazien “Christianity Today” but are occuring much more in the secular press and the Academy.
A few years ago when Bobby Jindal was running for Governor he was mocked for some his religious experiences that he talked about. The Louisina Democrat party ran basically a Anti Catholic attack on him in the northern Protestant Parishes. While the Catholics Bishops were largely silent it was the hardcore Evangelcials and Pentecostals from the Pastors to the people in the pews that were quite vocal in their digust over that.
I am under no illusion that many of friends and indeed family think my Catholic beliefs are false. I just never took it personally or took it as some threat.
There is a constant need to battle the false beliefs of course that people have about Catholics. But on the Catholic side there is a need to do the same and that even anti Catholics are our brother and sisters in Christ.
I am really steamed at Jack Chick. I read his tracts years ago and became excited about joining the deep Satanic mystery cult. I wanted that Death Cookie more than anything in the world. Then I joined. I was a little alarmed when I went through RCIA. Nothing about dancing star clad around a fire, no demons showing up, no getting to commit sins with cheap confession. But I persevered- maybe the deep secrets were only for the initiates. Now after 25 years of being Catholic I still haven’t found the Church Jack Chick promised. It’s all either “community” and holding hands and singing Kumbaya while saving whales or incense and transcendent beauties and communion with the divine. WHERE ARE ALL THE HARLOTS AND FREE SEX? I feel ripped off. Maybe now that the Church of Henry the 8th is coming in things will finally be like Jack Chick promised. I can only hope
Uggh! I was raised in an evangelical home and subjected to Jack Chick and I still get pissed when I find one on my windshield or in a bathroom stall. Jack Chick’s ability to terrify me of hell still haunts and baffles me, even though I have moved on from his anti-Christian theology.
Somewhere in cyber space, there is a cartoon from the Wittenburg Door magazine that depicts Jack Chick being sent to hell. It’s pretty funny stuff, if you can track it down.
I have to echo Hesiodos’ sentiment here. I had an aunt who converted to evangelical Protestantism, and her husband had Jack Chick comics lying around. All the pictures of Isis as the Virgin Mary seemed really cool to me. But all I got in CCD growing up was “Kumbaya” and how much Jesus loves you. If Jack Chick is reading this, I hope he e-mails me. I have facts about Catholicism in Mexico that would make anyone’s skin crawl.
But the broader issue is the overall decline of the “thickness” of Catholic identity. It is hard to say that Catholics worship statues when churches these days hardly have statues, and even when they do, you hardly see people “worshipping” them. It is hard to speak of the “death cookie” that Catholics adore when your neighbor is handing it out wearing a track suit. In the end, Catholicism in this country has always had the inferiority complex of being “unAmerican”. Catholics, both left and right, have tried to counter this by making an “inculturated” (read: de-cultured) Catholicism more in tune with the American ethos (felt banners, folk Masses, etc.), or by trying to re-make it into the de facto church of the right (just as the Episcopal Church used to be the Republican Party in prayer, many see the Roman Church as taking its place in that distinction).
If Catholicism ever becomes hegemonic in this country (which I find highly doubtful), it will do so at the price of having to water itself down even more, until it becomes the pro-life, Purpose Driven Life, megachurch rite of the Holy Roman Church.
In my experience, most evangelicals don’t take Jack Chick seriously – but if you get into any kind of debate with them, they’ll make the same points he does.