Once upon a time, a very, very fundamentalist cartoonist named Jack Chick had a fantastic brainstorm. "Hey," thought Chick, "if I just make up little cartoon books about people of many different cultures and religions going to hell and suffering, I can bring the unwashed millions over to the true religion: the acceptance of Jesus Christ!"
Chick (which is not, unfortunately, an anagram of "Christ") then went on to found a publishing empire. Spewing forth thousands of small illustrated tracts with titles like "Big Daddy?", "The Slugger", and "Where's Rabbi Waxman?", Chick Publications commands an enormous audience among the recently saved, soon-to-be-saved, and damned of America.
The best aspect of the Chick philosophy, (which appears to be some generic, fundamentalist Christianity with a zesty tang of anti-Catholicism) might be the ease with which the average consumer can become saved, under its guidance. Every one of the dozens of tracts carried by the Chick empire makes man's spiritual burden clear and simple to understand:
1. Repent of your sins.
2. Ask the Lord to forgive you.
3. Accept Jesus as your savior.
4. Die.
This whole thing can essentially be summed up with this colorful character:
who is a Jack Chick model of the perfect preacher.
All of this, of course, is campy good fun for all of us godless heathens. What's so remarkable about Chick Publications, however, aside from their ease of use (four easy steps to salvation! try it...today!) is the non-cartoon books they publish. Popular promotional slogans include: "Knock out Islam's 3 Main Pillars!" "Learn Mormonism's Secrets!" and "Scientific Proof That Evolution is a Fraud!"
In "Street Preaching: How to do it Right," readers learn the tools of the trade, and helpful tips such as "handling police encounters properly." (Hint: no matter what you think Jesus might have done, do not bite or scratch.) This is only the tip of the cross: A whole wealth of false-religion battling goodies is available to the resourceful Chick consumer.
Where are we left by all this? Well, if you think that Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, Jews, evolutionists and a whole host of other sinners are gonna burn, Chick provides the answers, and snappy cartoons to boot.
For the rest of us, the slow, tedious, often ineffectual and unpaved road of spiritual questing, prayer, debate, discussion and, yes, occaisional doubt lies stretched before us.
And I'm sure Jack Chick would want me to remind you: this is the road to hell.
— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)
