Tracts Chick?

Jack of Spades

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This kind of thing is really what made me start questioning Christianity several years ago. The attacks on Catholicism are nauseatingly evil.

Well, from purely historical point of view, Catholic Church has done more crimes against humanity and humans than all of the present day rapper thugs, serial killers and drug cartels put together have. So, it's in a way not a bad target to attack. It's either accurate, or very close to say that CC has been the most powerabusing non-state organization in the entire human history.
 
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redblue22

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I've never heard of this before. Do people hand this stuff out?

You've never heard of tracts? Usually, tracts are small 3 X 5 inch papers that have a message to consider. Often the information is about religion or politics and why you should believe A, B, or C. People hand them out, put them on a table to pick up, or leave the paper where someone might find it. Chick tracts are the same thing but use comics to present their religious ideas. The idea is pretty much the same as when people hand out fliers for their grocery store or a local concert.
 
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Cimorene

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You've never heard of tracts? Usually, tracts are small 3 X 5 inch papers that have a message to consider. Often the information is about religion or politics and why you should believe A, B, or C. People hand them out, put them on a table to pick up, or leave the paper where someone might find it. Chick tracts are the same thing but use comics to present their religious ideas. The idea is pretty much the same as when people hand out fliers for their grocery store or a local concert.

Nope. Never heard of it. I'm young, maybe it was more common back in the day or something.
 
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Hetta

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Well, from purely historical point of view, Catholic Church has done more crimes against humanity and humans than all of the present day rapper thugs, serial killers and drug cartels put together have. So, it's in a way not a bad target to attack. It's either accurate, or very close to say that CC has been the most powerabusing non-state organization in the entire human history.
All churches have done questionable things, and worse than questionable, and continue to do questionable things. I'm not commenting on that. I'm commenting on the actual "tract" shown on the link, which is, imo, evil in its depiction of Catholic priests. The Chick tracts point hatred unreservedly at the Catholic church, while failing to note that many Protestant leaders/churches/movements have their own evil within. It's unreasonable and hateful.
 
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Jack of Spades

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All churches have done questionable things, and worse than questionable, and continue to do questionable things.

CC has committed at least one full scale genocide, Albigensian Crusade. It was a medieval version of the Holocaust. How many genocides I'm supposed to ignore before I can declare an organization to be evil without it being hateful thing to say?

I'd say Chick going after CC is a "Right guy, wrong crime" - type of situation.
 
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Jane_the_Bane

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Chick Tracts read like parodies, pretty much demonstrating Poe's Law.
What they say about the mentality of those who take them seriously and use them as a witnessing tool is quite disconcerting. Their Biblical exegesis paints the picture of a monstrous, faceless celestial dictator whose only concern is attracting as many lickspittles as possible, while simultaneously obsessing about cruel torture as punishment for the most innocuous things (rock music, role-playing games). And their portrayal of non-Christians betrays the worst about the mentality of those who produce, disseminate or consume them.

I once saw an actual parody of these comics that replaced God with Cthulhu, urging people to become cultists for the sake of being eaten first by the Great Old One. They were virtually indistinguishable in terms of how they portrayed their respective divinity.
 
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Jack of Spades

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Chick Tracts read like parodies, pretty much demonstrating Poe's Law.
What they say about the mentality of those who take them seriously and use them as a witnessing tool is quite disconcerting. Their Biblical exegesis paints the picture of a monstrous, faceless celestial dictator whose only concern is attracting as many lickspittles as possible, while simultaneously obsessing about cruel torture as punishment for the most innocuous things (rock music, role-playing games). And their portrayal of non-Christians betrays the worst about the mentality of those who produce, disseminate or consume them.

Chick's God is like an image of Idi Amin, guy's a total joke for an outsider. But for someone who actually lived under his rule, there is nothing hilarious in him, he is a stuff of their nightmares. Likewise, Chick's & co:s God might be funny for people who never believed in it, but for an ex-fundie like myself, it's a lot more sickening image to think.

I get it though, if I read of someone having been a hostage of a deranged clown singing Christmas carols compulsively, I'd have to struggle too to see the serious side of it.
 
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Hetta

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CC has committed at least one full scale genocide, Albigensian Crusade. It was a medieval version of the Holocaust. How many genocides I'm supposed to ignore before I can declare an organization to be evil without it being hateful thing to say?

I'd say Chick going after CC is a "Right guy, wrong crime" - type of situation.
I don't have a dog in this fight, and never said you couldn't say the CC is evil. That's entirely up to you. But the CC is hardly the only organization or ... power structure (lost for words ??) guilty of genocides. I didn't know about the Albigensian Crusade. That's something new to me. And I didn't say that YOU were hateful, but that the tracts (in general) are hateful.
 
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Cearbhall

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1. What do you think about people handing out religious literature and tracts? Why?
I've never heard of anyone converting because of a religious pamphlet that was carelessly and impersonally handed out. My childhood church didn't do anything like that.
 
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Jack of Spades

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I don't have a dog in this fight, and never said you couldn't say the CC is evil. That's entirely up to you. But the CC is hardly the only organization or ... power structure (lost for words ??) guilty of genocides. I didn't know about the Albigensian Crusade. That's something new to me. And I didn't say that YOU were hateful, but that the tracts (in general) are hateful.

Yeah, Chick is living in a conspiracy theory - bubble, where every problem gets solved by God sending the ideological opponents to hell. I have no sympathies for him. But neither I have very much sympathies for one of his targets, the Catholic Church, just for different reasons.

Albigensian Crusade was basically a medieval version of the Holocaust, with one crucial difference, it was succesful. If the crusade had never happened, chances are that today, large parts of Western Europe would formally confess religion called Catharism, instead of Catholicism. The Cathars were annihilated and the religion never recovered. It was getting popular at the time, but is practically uknown today, "thanks" to the epic genocide which destroyed it.
 
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gord44

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The Cathars were annihilated and the religion never recovered. It was getting popular at the time, but is practically uknown today, "thanks" to the epic genocide which destroyed it

I believe that was where the term 'kill 'em all and let God sort them out' came from. Although i think it was originally 'kill them all. God will know his own'.
 
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Jack of Spades

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I believe that was where the term 'kill 'em all and let God sort them out' came from. Although i think it was originally 'kill them all. God will know his own'.

Yup, that's where it originates.

The Papal legate giving the order was actually partly quoting the Bible, 2. Tim 2:19: "The Lord knoweth them that are His"
 
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Jane_the_Bane

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Yup, that's where it originates.

The Papal legate giving the order was actually partly quoting the Bible, 2. Tim 2:19: "The Lord knoweth them that are His"
This statement is apocryphal, but it reflects the spirit of the Albigensian crusade very well.

It's not as if the rest of Christendom performed any better than that, though.

Martin Luther wrote lengthy tracts on how the Jews were to be expelled from their homes and put to forced labor, their synagogues destroyed - basically creating a roadmap for the holocaust. (Nor was it an accident that the so-called "Reichspogromnacht" took place on the night of his birthday.)

Johannes Calvin had the Unitarian Michael Servetus burned at the stake, arguing that it would be immoral to allow his "poison", i.e. non-trinitarian Christianity, to spread.

The Anglicans performed ethnic cleansing on the Irish under Oliver Cromwell, and so on and so forth.

Anti-Catholicism has a long tradition in US protestantism (particularly fueled by the rise of the KKK, but that's just an aside), yet it seems to be a clear case of: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

Contemporary American evangelicals are among the most avid supporters of the death penalty, are the most likely to approve of torture, the most likely to be divorced, and account for a disproportionate amount of prison inmates.
 
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Jack of Spades

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It's not as if the rest of Christendom performed any better than that, though.

Martin Luther wrote lengthy tracts on how the Jews were to be expelled from their homes and put to forced labor, their synagogues destroyed - basically creating a roadmap for the holocaust. (Nor was it an accident that the so-called "Reichspogromnacht" took place on the night of his birthday.)

Johannes Calvin had the Unitarian Michael Servetus burned at the stake, arguing that it would be immoral to allow his "poison", i.e. non-trinitarian Christianity, to spread.

Sure, nobody's been a saint, expect the saints, and not even all of them have been.

As I am sure you already know, Luther promoted another mass murder too, suppression of the peasant rebellion which ended in slaughter of the peasants, partly thanks to him. He has earned a place in history as a merciless promoter of violence.

The case of Calvin is somewhat standard (theological) power struggle -related blood-shedding. While it's obviously dirty event in his life, I think there is a difference in magnitude between cleansing of political opponent-individuals, and that of promoting, planning and actually waging a campaign of total annihilation against an element of population.

What makes the Albigensian crusade stand out is the religious nature of it, it was from the start a campaign of the church. While some other crusades were simply campaigns of conquest wrapped in religious rhetoric, or far more complex entanglements of religious and political factors.

My motive for bashing CC is not theological, I don't mind many elements in Catholic faith that make standard protestants puke. What makes me angry is their self-proclaimed role as a superior moral authority and the long list of crimes that say the church should be anything but.
 
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Jane_the_Bane

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My motive for bashing CC is not theological, I don't mind many elements in Catholic faith that make standard protestants puke. What makes me angry is their self-proclaimed role as a superior moral authority and the long list of crimes that say the church should be anything but.
Oh, I definitely share that stance. Especially in light of the fact that the morality they preach is pretty abominable in many instances, if you ask me.
 
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Jane_Doe

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1. What do you think about people handing out religious literature and tracts? Why?

2. What do you think of chick tracts in particular? Why? www.chick.com
1. Handing our religious literature and tracts that promote faith and share your true goodness with the world is a great thing.

2. Chick Tracts only sow falsehoods about other faiths, trying to tear them down with lies. They are horrible.
 
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Robban

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1. Handing our religious literature and tracts that promote faith and share your true goodness with the world is a great thing.

2. Chick Tracts only sow falsehoods about other faiths, trying to tear them down with lies. They are horrible.

Similar to politics.
 
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