Over at ER's place he features three posts on those classics of theological literature, the Jack Chick tract, a sample cover of which is to your left. Whether you have consciously been aware of them, I am sure you have seen them; I usually find them in bathrooms - rest areas, restaurants, airports - either left by someone who had read it, or by someone from a church where spreading them around is part of their evangelizing.
In the course of his discussion, the good Mr. Redneck offers one point with which I would disagree. He insists that, as hokey as they are, the tracts are allegories, simplistic, yes, but bearing a truth nonetheless. By calling them "allegories", I do believe that ER is saying that Chick does not understand his little stories to be literally true, but rather representative of larger truths (a point he makes in his latest post). I believe that Jack Chick's little comic books are representative of the reality he lives. It is for that reason I find his attempts at proselytizing through these little books so hilarious.
If the folks who published The Onion took themselves seriously, we would worry about them. In the same way, Chick Publications takes itself, and its mission, very seriously. To try to let them off the hook by saying that these are modern parables and granted some elevated status does a disservice to Chick. This is his beliefs, in the same way that I have mine, and others have theirs. Sad to say, this makes them funnier - this is the way Jack Chick actually sees the world, from Satanic hippies sacrificing children to the Divine viewing booth where we replay our lives on the big screen. While ER's attempt at a sympathetic defense of Chick is admirable, I do believe it is ultimately misguided, because I think he is in deadly, earnest seriousness, portraying his own interpretation of Biblical truth as it encounters the world. In that respect, the tracts are reduced to parody.
For an example of a tract, if you never had the pleasure, Chick has a website!
