Weird Tract Number 68: Collegiate Challenge Magazine, Fall 1973 by Campus Crusade for Christ

Troy Davis writes:

I previously wrote about my extreme distaste for the ideology and tactics of Campus Crusade for Christ.  I just received this Campus Crusade magazine in the mail; I bought it online.  It contains a short superhero story ("The Last Adventures of The Old Wonderman") that is surreal. I have included the entire two-page story at the end of this post.  It's a shockingly puerile, barely-coherent story--which makes it par for the course for Campus Crusade. It's the story of Wonderman, a washed-up superhero who is brooding in his apartment when Pleasureman crashes through the window and explains modern hedonism; Wonderman punches out Pleasureman, not for B & E but for wanting to have a good time (Wonderman should change his crimefighter name to WetBlanketMan).  Captain New (who apparently also broke into the apartment) gives encouragement to Wonderman and they form a crime-fighting team. That's it.

If you're appalled that someone considered this idiotic pabulum as reading material for college students, you have your head on straight. It's moronic drivel. I'm appalled but not surprised. I read John G. Turner's  biography of Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright and it mentioned that in the early 80s, Tim LaHaye's idiotic book The Battle for the Mind was a big hit with the Campus Crusade crowd.

Notes: On page two of the strip below, the footnote refers to "Captain New's secret" on pages 38 and 39; those pages contain Bill Bright's "The Four Spiritual Laws." . . . I have written about how Campus Crusade's tract "The Four Spiritual Laws" had an effect of religious tract history: Jack Chick saw the tract and decided to make Chick tracts pocket-sized . . . In the wake of the success of the comic book debut of Superman in 1938, there were several imitators. Comics legend Will Eisner did Wonder Man in 1939 in the book Wonder Comics for Fox Publications. DC sued and it was the only issue.

The Museum of Weird and Demented Religious Tracts is a project of Les Zazous Postmodern Art Galley of Bellaire, Ohio. Read the Welcome Statement of The Museum here.

For more on the gallery, check out the web site here and the gallery's Twitter handle is @ZazousLes.  The Twitter handle for the museum is @WeirdTracts

The index of tracts for the museum's website is here. 

Contributions of weird tracts to the museum can be made by mail: send your weird tracts to Les Zazous Postmodern Art Gallery 3475 Guernsey Street, Bellaire, Ohio 43906.

Weird Tract Number 67: "The Facts on the New Age Movement" by John Ankerberg and John Weldon

Troy Davis writes:

As a fan of fringe religion, I enjoyed watching John Ankerberg's Christian apologetics TV show back in the 1990s. Ankerberg had debates with various apostates and followers of creeds containing extrabiblical revelations. This 48-page booklet from 1988 takes on the New Agers.

It's a standard fundy take on the movement. The booklet received back cover plaudits from Dave Hunt (one-time collaborator with Ed Decker; for more on Decker, click here and here) as well as Hal Lindsey's then-sister-in-law Johanna Michaelsen who cashed in on the 80s Satanic Ritual Abuse Panic by claiming that she was a reformed-by-Christ former aide to a  "psychic surgeon" (I saw Michelsen on The 700 Club and she claimed that what she was doing was not sleight-of-hand flimflam but as a New Age healer, she supernaturally removed cancers from people and that she had been elbows deep in the bodies of her "patients"). The booklet discusses Michaelsen's story and treats it as real.  The last page has an ad for the hokey documentary Gods of the New Age (watch it here).

Note: This is one of a series of books Ankerberg wrote for Harvest House.  The imprint for Ankerberg's books makes use of a pun in his name. Here is the logo:

The Museum of Weird and Demented Religious Tracts is a project of Les Zazous Postmodern Art Galley of Bellaire, Ohio. Read the Welcome Statement of The Museum here.

For more on the gallery, check out the web site here and the gallery's Twitter handle is @ZazousLes.  The Twitter handle for the museum is @WeirdTracts

The index of tracts for the museum's website is here. 

Contributions of weird tracts to the museum can be made by mail: send your weird tracts to Les Zazous Postmodern Art Gallery 3475 Guernsey Street, Bellaire, Ohio 43906.