Weird Tract Number 87: "The Mini-Skirt Speaks" by Don W. Hillis (Pilgrim Tract Society)

Troy Davis nwrites:

I haven't counted the number of tracts in the museum's collection, but it's in the tens of thousands. Most of them have the standard anodyne accept-Jeebus message; only about five percent of them are truly demented. That's okay because one percent of tens of thousands is still a buttload of material.

It's also good to keep in mind that the museum is actively seeking out new bizarre tracts. There are plenty of tracts I've heard about or seen on the Internet that the museum doesn't have so there are there is absolutely no fear that this website will ever run out of material.

Recently the museum received a treasure trove of demented tracts, some of which are long sought-after treasures. I received the sampler from the Pilgrim Tract Society and it is good stuff. The crown jewel of Pilgrim's sampler is "The Mini-Skirt Speaks." I had seen the cover of this tract on the Internet and thought it might be a parody. Efforts to find the tract had been elusive until now.

This, like many of Pilgrim's tracts, is a reprint of another company's tract from decades ago. This tract originally came out probably around 1970.  This mini-bio is the most I could find on Hillis' life; he served as a missionary in India from 1937 to 1953 then went on to author many books from the fifties through the eighties. In 1959, he wrote a 48-page Catholic-baiting booklet "If America Elects a Catholic President," in anticipation of JFK expected 1960 candidacy; Hillis dedicated it to "the thousands of Christians who have suffered for Jesus' sake at the hands of Romanism."

I've decided to reprint the entire tract because of its so-bad-it's-good quality from Hillis' Neanderthal view on rape and sexual desire as well as its ham-handed narrative style. I haven't fixed my scanner yet so apologies for the quality of the pics.

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.