Weird Religious Tract Number 12: "Courtship and the Dangers of Petting" by John R. Rice

Troy Davis writes:

Anyone who collects religious tracts is probably familiar with the work of John R. Rice. Rice was a prolific and tireless writer of longwinded evangelical booklets in the Baptist vein. Most of Rice's writing are unexceptional in the context of weirdness but "Courtship and the Dangers of Petting" is amusing in the sense that an elderly man thought that young people would heed his old-timey advice on dating.

Excerpt:
     Strip tease and leg shows, bathing suits which unduly expose the body,
     particularly women's bodies, magazine stories and pictures that turn
     the mind specially toward lovemaking, the movies, the embrace of the
     dance -- these lead to sex desire and so to necking and petting. All these
     have broken down the modesty and natural inhibitions of purity, have
     even broken down the sense of respectability and decency, till on every
     bathing beach, in every darkened movie theater, on front porch swings,
     even on the dance floor and (most deadly of all) in automobiles far from
     [sic] chaparons, young people make free with each others' bodies; hug,
     kiss and fondle each other. They pet when there is no pretense for love
     nor holy intention to marry. They do it promiscuously, as shamelessly as
     the mating of promiscuous barnyard animals.

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 Religious Tract Number 11: "The Atheist Test" by Living Waters Publications

Troy Davis writes:

Living Waters Publications is run by evangelist Ray Comfort who is known for his public debates. I debated him, wearing my Hipsterman costume, when he and his crew appeared outside the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con. His debating style reminds me of John Ankerberg.

Living Waters has some clever tracts, including some facsimile dollar bill tracts so realistic that LW got into some hot water with the Secret Service.

The Atheist Test is nothing new. It rehashes the old "watchmaker argument," replacing a watch with a Coke can.

Booorrrrrrring!!!!!

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 Religious Tract Number 10: "The Hoax of Learning and Behavior Disorders" by the Church of Scientology

Troy Davis writes:

This tract, put out by the Scientology front group the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, is a screed against the use of stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall for the treatment of ADHD in children. The tract warns about the "hoax of ADHD."

The medical profession isn't sacrosanct. While there are serious voices that question at least the extent that these drugs are prescribed, it isn't advisable to get medical advice from a cult that teaches that psychiatric disorders are the manifestations of disembodied spirits killed by a galactic overlord named Xenu.

At the end of the pamphlet is a CYA warning: "No one should stop taking any psychiatric drug without the advice and assistance of a competent non-psychiatric medical doctor."

Note:  I wrote a comic book mocking Xenu and Scientology. You can read "Cocktale: A Modern Tijuana Bible" here.

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.

 

The Ralph Rusthoi Connection

Troy Davis writes:

Ralph Rusthoi (1913-1988) was a mailman who also ran a small Christian publishing house in southern California. He wrote some of the titles, such as Discovering Your Faith, but he mostly published other writers. Most of the books Rusthoi wrote and/or published were of the white-bread Christian variety--not the kind of work that would land on this website.

However, there were exceptions. Two Christian comic book tract writers who used Rusthoi Publications to print their works in the 1960s were Jack Chick and Vic Lockman (1927-2017). I'll elaborate on Vic Lockman and his comic book tracts in future posts but the amazingly prolific Lockman is an oft overlooked writer of weird and demented tracts. Like Chick, Lockman did mainstream comics--working for Disney and other publishers of children's fare.

Lockman's work on Christian tracts rivaled Chick for its unbridled nuttiness. Lockman did tracts that were pro-laetrile, pro-Apartheid, and anti-counterculture, e.g., the hilariously out-of-touch Hippie Come Home (the villain in this booklet is a dirtbag named Hanoi who has a third eye tattoo on his forehead).  Hippie Come Home is in the museum's collection and we'll feature it soon. (UPDATE: We finally featured it on the website; here is the article). 

NOTES ON VIC LOCKMAN:  In the 1970s, Lockman and Walter Lang take on ancient astronaut theorist Erich Von Däniken in the tract "Was God an Astronaut?" . . . Lockman goes into Bircher mode with the tract "Who's Calling The Shots?" . . . The museum featured Lockman's anti-counterculure tract Hippie Come Home. Read it here. . . Lockman and Walter Lang team up on an anti-evolution tract "Have You Been Brainwashed by Ape-Men?"

NOTES ON JACK CHICK: In my introductory post, I listed just a few of the many rare and valuable objects from The Museum's extensive Chick-related collection . . . I discuss the role of Bill Bright's prolific tract The Four Spiritual Laws in leading to a format change in Chick tracts that was a key reason why they have become much more popular since the late 1960s . . . My thoughts on Jack Chick's spreading of the peace symbol/broken cross mythology . . .  Jack Chick's retro-futuristic car in the scarce 48-page version of "The Beast" . . . Chick tract parody "Constitutional Rites" . . . Chick tract parody "Donald Trump Is The Antichrist; Prepare for the Rapture!" . . .The 1972 Chick tract "The Last Generation." . . . The extremely rare 1970 Chick tract "Operation Somebody Cares" . . .The rare Chick Publications comic book "Jonah" by Chick and Fred Carter . . . The museum's prized cultural artifact, original art by Jack Chick. . . Jack Chick's cold war tract "Ivan The Terrible" . . . Article on Chick by fellow Catholic-baiting Bob Jones University magazine . . .Catholic-bashing tract by Chick's protege Alberto Rivera . . . Knock-off of a Chick tract by James Lloyd:"Left Behind" .  . . . Artifacts from the museum's collections:all of Jack Chick's high school yearbooks (which include the first published cartoon by Chick) . . . "Closet Witches" by Jack T. Chick (audio-cassette interview with Dr. Rebecca Brown and "Elaine").

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 Religious Tract Number 9: "Good News" by Campus Crusade for Christ

Troy Davis writes:

There's a special kind of loathing I have for Campus Crusade for Christ (now known as CRU). I went to college at Miami of Ohio, a hotbed of CCC activity. It all started when I was studying on the campus grass and a clean-cut guy approaches me and tells me he's doing a survey as a part of a class project. I was glad to help a fellow student. The first questions were innocuous enough but near the end of the survey, he started asking about my religious beliefs--that raised some YUGE red flags. My suspicions were confirmed when he invited me to a CCC meeting; I declined. CCCers sometimes refer this kind of thing to as "heavenly deception." I call it being a lying tub of shit. What a buzzkill.

I wasn't the only one at Miami U. put off by CCC and their deceptive tactics. During my junior year, someone on campus promoted a film purportedly about death; the promos made it look like it was going to be a serious examination of death and dying. About a week after the screening, I read a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper, The Miami Student, by a student who attended and said that it wasn't a scientific film about death but another of CCC's high-pressure attempts to proselytize.

At about the same time, a plucky group of Miami students created the student group, Students Against Campus Crusade (SACC). It mocked CCC and warned about its deceptive tactics, pushiness, and general lameness. Apparently, they infiltrated the Miami U. chapter of CCC because SACC regularly bought ad space in The Miami Student to denounce CCC's upcoming projects; I loved them.

I learned to hate CCC more when I read John G. Turner's Bill Bright and The Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelism in Postwar America. CCC's founder Bright was an authoritarian reactionary who despised the mission of higher education to create autonomous adults who think for themselves. Bright used vague Bible verses to justify the subjugation of peoples' intellect to CCC's goals. In "Jesus and the Intellectual," Bright writes, 

As I said earlier, there is a throne in every life. If you are on that throne — if you are deciding what to do with your life — it is quite likely that you are not a Christian. Christ says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock (the door of your heart — your will, your intellect, your emotions). If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in” (Revelation 3:20).

The Bible promises that “to all who received him [Jesus] ...he have the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). And “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Commitment to Christ involves the surrender of the intellect, the emotions and the will — the total person.

When I was writing the screenplay for the satirical film Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story, I discovered that the group of students performing the exorcism enlisted the help of CCC with this questionable task.  I am happy that the film could be used to mock CCC.

"Good News" (1970) is one of the anodyne tracts put out by CCC. It's the size of a Chick tract but the inside is in color.  This one seems to be aimed at children. Really weak stuff.

Note: Watch the Campus Crusaders fight the devil's spawn in Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story (the CCC member enters the exorcism at around the 7:00 point).
Here's a review of the film by noted film critic Richard von Busack.

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 Religious Tract Number 8: "Peace" by "Teen Challenge Institute of Missions"

Troy Davis writes:

When the anti-Vietnam War movement adopted the peace symbol based on a design from the initials of the words "nuclear disarmament," the reactionary right's response was swift and decisive: this was proof that The Beast itself wanted peace because the symbol was the appropriation of an anti-Christ symbol from the late Middle Ages: The Broken Cross (more recently, Pat Robertson has made this claim).  The John Birch Society's house organ American Opinion had an article on the matter in the early 70's. Heavies in the Jack Chick comic universe wore the symbol (see panel below from "The Last Generation"); Chick even titled his John Todd-inspired comic book "The Broken Cross."  When I was a kid, long after the war was over, the local Assemblies of God church had a tract denouncing it on their free lit table (Dang, I wish I kept my copy).

This undated four-page tract, circa 1970, was put out by Teen Challenge and written by DeVore Walterman (1919-2004), uses ersatz hip language to proselytize (Walterman was probably in his fifties when he wrote the tract). Examples:"PEACE IS NOT a political groove"; "PEACE IS NOT meditation or vibrations"; "PEACE IS NOT doing your thing"; "No man, I'm not putting you on. This peace is for real. Any other kind of trip is a bummer"; "You can rap all you want about peace, but unless you have it in your heart, you're batting the breeze"; "The Bible is the peace manual"; "Don't blow your cool and sound off 'til you've tried it"; "You're not the cool cat you pretend to be--when you're high, it's groovy. But what about coming down?"

The back page of the tract (below; click on to embiggen) has the boilerplate fundy crap about The Broken Cross.

UPDATE: The museum has posted about other tracts with peace symbol/broken cross religious theme here and here.

Jack Chick's use of the peace motif:

(click on images to enlarge)

Chick tract vehicle adorned with peace symbol

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 Religious Tract Number 7: "Hooked For Good: The True Story of Sammy Hall" by Life Messengers

Love that Groovy 70s font!

Troy Davis writes:

Life Messengers was a Seattle-based Christian publisher, founded in 1944, that churned out books as well as Chick-style comic book tracts until they faded away sometime in the late '70s or early '80s. They published over 66 million of the tracts, nowhere near the billion or so Chick tracts sold, but it's an impressive number. Life Messengers tracts, for the most part, were never as interesting or inflammatory as Chick tracts but some are good reads and have a '70s funky vibe (e.g., the "Hooked For Good" cover font). We will review more of the LM tracts in the future.

Others have reprinted the tracts after Life Messengers went out of business. When I visited The Institute for Creation Research in the '90s, they sold LM's creationist comic "Have You Been Brainwashed?" the story of Duane Gish (read the tract here). About ten years ago, Canadian street preacher Erik Fountas of A New Thing Ministries revived the tracts for a while (with updated covers--see the image at the end of this post).

Sammy's breakdown

"Hooked for Good," a 1973 tract, deals with Sammy Hall (1945-2013) a rock musician who, with The Birdwatchers, had the minor hit in "I'm Gonna Love You Anyway"  in 1966 (great raw garage rock beat kind of reminds me of The Sonics). The tract shows that Hall had some degree of success as a rock musician (and a rock star's decadent lifestyle full of drugs and groupies).  However, he had a psychotic breakdown and found Jeebus and founded the Gospel group The Sammy Hall Singers.

Notes:  The legacy of Duane Gish, the subject of the LM tract "Have You Been Brainwashed," is dim; his contributions to science are slim but he is a cultural icon; the term Gish Gallop, referring to his shady debate technique of drowning his "opponents in a flood of individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument."

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 Religious Tract Number 6: "FLYING SAUCERS" by The Laymen's Home Missionary Movement

Click on to embiggen

Troy Davis writes:

This tract is by The  Laymen's Home Missionary Movement is one of the offshoots of the Jehovah's Witnesses that formed after the death of JW founder Charles Taze Russell. I don't know if they also knock on your door and bore you to death with their preaching.

This undated tract posits that flying saucers are not swamp gas, hoaxes, or extraterrestrial vehicles but are one of the supernatural demonic manifestations of the "great signs and wonders" that foretell The Second Coming.

This line of argument is similar to that put forth by Leon Bates in his radio broadcasts and the book Projection for Survival (mercilessly lampooned in Blab! number 4 by Daniel Clowes in the story "666: A Preview of the Coming Apocalypse." We will deal with tracts by Bates soon.

The tract is four pages with no pictures or illustrations and it full of Bible verses. Pretty weak stuff.

Here's Daniel Clowes on Leon Bates. I used this illustration as an inspiration for a panel in my Chick tract parody "Donald Trump Is The Antichrist."

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 Religious Tract Number 5: "The Crazy Crusader: Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha" by David Berg of The Children of God

Troy Davis writes:

The Museum of Weird and Demented Religious Tracts has several tracts from the bizarre and depraved sex cult The Children of God (now known as The Family International). This 1973 booklet was written by COG founder David Berg (using the pseudonym Moses David).  The artwork is by Hugo Westphal AKA Eman Artist (not a nice person) reminds me of underground comix artist Greg Irons. The text font reminds me of that used by Daniel Clowes in the Eightball series.

This booklet contains a rambling, barely coherent, and apparently stream-of-unconsciousness poem about the literary character Don Quixote. There's no price on it but there's a little logo with "Donation Suggested" on the upper right corner of the cover.

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.

Clowesesque Font?

 

Weird Religious Tract Number 4: "Christian Rock Exposed" by Terry Watkins for Dial-The-Truth Ministries

Troy Davis writes:

Terry Watkins has both barrels aimed at wolves-in-sheep's-clothing Christian rockers. He first takes aim at "queen-bee of Christian rock" Amy Grant whom he assails as an amoral homewrecker  (that hits close to home for me because when I wrote the short online film Ivy League Exorcist: The Bobby Jindal Story, I included a reference to Ms. Grant).

Watkins also takes on Christian rockers P.O.D., Stryper, Christian rock pioneer Marsha Stevens, Vengeance Rising, Michael English, Jars of Clay, and others.

NOTES: Watch our film Ivy League Exorcist below. A review by noted film critic Richard von Busack is here

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.