Ya know Jack Chick, right? The guy who back in the day who made little comics with the theme of Evangelical Christianity. My dad gave me two of them around a few years ego, one of which I lost. The comics seemed cool and legit, right?
But, there's a problem.
Chick made a few comics mentioning how rock music is of the devil basically and we should stop listening to it, and, according to what I saw on Wikipedia, he believes witches invoke demons and spells into the music, basically, there's occultic stuff going on (which is practically my phobia).
So, I just wanted to ask this question:
Why does he think this? Is he right, or is he wrong?
Chick's peculiar brand of Fundamentalism was rooted in the culture and times in which he came to prominence, which would have been right about the time when rock'n'roll was emerging and which was frequently cited as being "evil" by certain cultural conservative forces of the time. This isn't surprising, as this wasn't the first time people accused certain music of being evil, the same was done in previous decades with music such as jazz and the like.
To be frank, I think this kind of "this music is evil" mentality from those times was largely rooted in racist attitudes, because such music was seen as "black music".
I'm not saying Chick was a racist here, only that opposition to musical genres in the early-mid 20th century tended to be racially motivated and charged.
Chick's brand of Fundamentalism was also heavily conspiratorial. Chick Publications rather freely and uncritically believed anyone who claimed to have inside information about various anti-Catholic and anti-Muslim, and anti-"fill in the blank here" conspiracies. Which is why Chick believed, and taught, that "the Vatican" was responsible for the creation of Islam, was responsible for the American Civil War, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the creation of the Soviet Union and Communism, et al. Basically anything Chick believed to be bad in the history of the world could be attributed to Catholicism, which he believed was actually a continuation of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian paganism.
Where did Jack Chick get his ideas about these things? From various non-credible sources. For example Alexander Hislop, Charles Chiniquy, Alberto Rivera, John Todd, and a few other well known hucksters.
Chick's publications can be pretty rightly described as hate literature under the guise of Christian evangelism. But the only thing one is really going to get from those Chick Tracts is a whole lot of lies, conspiracy theories, hate, and an incredibly perverse version of Christianity.
-CryptoLutheran