Evangelicalism On The Harbor & The Rise Of Christo-Fascism

How the Faithful Baptist Church Of Aberdeen uses a 60 year old comic strip to spread its bigotry

By Raccoon & Fox

Content Warning: Extreme Christo-Fascism, Sexual Assault, Anti-Semitism, Homophobia, all the phobias, and well everything this is not a fun article

 

When we first encountered the Faithful Baptist Church of Aberdeen it was with the sad and lonely experience of discovering a bag of literature taped to a community board downtown often unused for anything else. We searched around for anyone who was distributing them, but there was no one there. Someone had simply taped these here for people to find and then left. Curious, we looked at the literature contained within the Ziploc bag. What we found was to start us on quite the exploration of a colorfully hateful man and his biblical comic book empire officially labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Themes included homophobia, transphobia, anti-Islam, anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, Christian conversion, anti-evolution, and just tons of stuff about Satan. As usual the depictions of Satan and his ilk are far more artistically brilliant and fantastic than those of the boring Godly beings and people. We soon found ourselves commenting on the excellent illustrations of evil things that clearly held lots of real estate in the minds of the illustrator. At this time, none of us had any idea what the logo on the back of the pamphlet meant. When it said “Chick tracts”, this author assumed that was the name of the church group handing these things out.

Boy howdy were we in for a surprising story — not only that of Jack Chick, but that of one of his devout followers: Pastor Eric Anderson, of Faithful Baptist Church of Aberdeen.

In this article we will be telling both these men’s stories, as far as we know.

We will also look at the church Pastor Eric is running, and we will connect this local preacher to the national trend of evangelical Christians towards authoritarian fascist tendencies.

We will explore what the churches actions in town are, why they are posting these out of date and hateful tracts around our town, and what we can do to resist this religious incursion on right wing Christo-fascism into our community.

Chick Tract History

Chick tracts are perhaps the most printed and distributed comics to ever come out of the United States, printing more copies of their comics than Marvel.

You may never have heard of these little pocket sized hate crimes but they have been a staple in American evangelical culture since the ’60s and have even been parodied in an episode of the animated TV show “Rick & Morty“.

To understand what Chick tracts are and their relationship to the Faithful Baptist Church Of Aberdeen, we must first look at the life of their creator Jack T. Chick.

Born in April 13, 1924, in the neighborhood of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, he later moved with his family to Alhambra. There Chick was active in the high school drama club. According to Chick, he was not religious in high school. After graduation, he continued his drama education at the Pasadena Playhouse School of Theater on a two-year scholarship.

In February 1943, during World War II, Chick was drafted as a private into the U.S. Army. He served for three years in the Pacific theater, serving in New Guinea, Australia, the Philippines, and Japan working in cryptography, though he did not see combat. Chick credited his time overseas for inspiring him to translate his tracts into many different languages and said that he had “a special burden for missions and missionaries”.

After the war, he returned to the Pasadena Playhouse and met his future wife while working on a production there. Lola Lynn Priddle (1926–1998), a Canadian immigrant, came from a very religious family, and Chick has said that she was “instrumental in his salvation”. Priddle and her parents introduced Chick to the Charles E. Fuller radio show The Old-Fashioned Revival Hour, and Chick said that he was converted while listening to an episode of this show.

After converting to Christianity, Chick wanted to evangelize others, but was unwilling to talk to people directly about religion. Ironically or not Chick circumvented this by taking inspiration from a tactic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which Chick had heard about from missionary Bob Hammond. Hammond was a broadcaster in Asia on the US propaganda network Voice of America, and he was aware of the success of the CCP spreading Maoist propaganda among ordinary Chinese citizens in the 1950s through the distribution small comic books.

Chick also began working with a prison ministry and created a flip chart of illustrations to use with his presentation. He hit upon the idea of creating “witnessing tracts”, abominable illustrated evangelical gospel comics that would become known as Chick tracts. These tiny picture books are printed on cheap paper then distributed to people directly or indirectly: left in phone booths, tables, laundromats, school lockers, car windshields, etc. (to non-fundamentalists, this is known as littering)

In 1960 while working for the AstroScience Corporation (a maker of tape recorders and avionics for the U.S. government) in El Monte, California, Chick self-published his first tract, Why No Revival? He paid for it with a loan from his credit union. He published his second tract, A Demon’s Nightmare, in 1962 then decided to create more tracts and began “using his kitchen table as an office and art studio”. Christian bookstores were reluctant to accept the tracts as the outright bigotry and conspiracies raised red flags for most denominations, yet they were popular among missionaries and churches looking to proselytize and colonize in various places across the world.

In 1970, Chick officially established “Chick Publications” in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. Initially, Chick wrote and illustrated all of the comics himself, but in 1972 people began to notice a sharp increase in the quality of the illustrations. Jack Chick claimed to be the sole artist until 1980, when Fred Carter was identified in an issue of Chick’s newsletter Battle Cry as a artist for the tracts. Carter was a Black artist who used realism, heavy shading, and a remarkable attention to detail in the work Jack claimed as his own. This was in stark contrast to Chick’s cartoonish style. In addition to being exploited by Jack as the artist for many of his tracts, Carter also painted the oil paintings seen in The Light of the World, a film Chick produced that related the Christian gospel.

Chick’s art is often extremely antisemitic, with evil characters often having large, stereotypical Jewish noses. The Death Cookie, although an attack on the Catholic Church, featured such Jewish-coded characters, including Satan. Chick also practiced other stereotyping in that many of his negative characters are overweight, and that virtually any overweight person in a Chick tract is bad. Thus overweight people join a large number of groups on Chick’s bigotry hit parade. Also, male villains are frequently balding with feeble comb-overs, while True Believers generally have good heads of hair.

Chick tracts tend to read like what they are: the hateful and fearful ramblings of a Christian white supremacist filled with antisemitic, anti-Catholic, queerphobic, racist and patriarchal bigotry among many other targets. Their author’s works resemble the sort of fire-and-brimstone conspiracy theorist writings that makes Pat Robertson look compassionate and mellowed out in comparison. The tracts create an “us vs. them” mentality where those who accept the message are part of the righteous few and the rest are sinners in league with the Devil.

Chick tracts are printed in-house by Chick Publications and retail for around 16 cents each. Bulk discounts are available, and a number of tracts, especially those printed in more obscure languages or ones that have gone out of print, are available only in bulk sales of 10,000 copies. Just about all of Chick’s tracts are available for online reading, and even as apps for Android phones, presumably to show to others while “witnessing”.

Six of Jack Chick’s comics feature Alberto Rivera specifically: Alberto, Double Cross, The Godfathers, The Force, Four Horsemen, and The Prophet. Rivera was an anti-Catholic religious activist who claimed to have been a Jesuit priest before becoming a Fundamentalist Protestant. Rivera was the source of many of the conspiracy theories about the Vatican and the Jesuits espoused by Jack Chick.

Most of these can be viewed in their entirety on the company’s website. The most popular Chick tract was This Was Your Life! It has been translated into around 100 languages, and many other tracts are available in widely spoken languages such as Arabic, German, Spanish, and Tagalog. Several of Chick’s tracts have been translated into less widely-spoken languages as Blue Hmong, Huichol, Ngiemboon, Tshiluba, and the constructed language of Esperanto. The international and multilingual reach of Chick Publications has assisted in inflating the rise of far right religious fundamentalism across the world from people like U.S. president Donald Trump and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and neo-fascist Prime Minister of Giorgia Meloni of Italy.

Per their own update on their YouTube channel, Chick Publications recently moved more than one million tracts to the Philippines while giving others to missionaries to spread amongst the Ukrainian refugees fleeing the 2022 Russian invasion. The tract This Was Your Life can be seen here being read by a Ukrainian refugee child after some series of unfortunate events had placed one in their hands.

The people distributing these tracts often target children handing them to kids at churches, lurking outside of schools,  and all sorts of locations that children might be present. The cartoons are horrifying to children and teach them that they are always one worldly decision away from eternal damnation. Chick tracts also warn against making the “wrong” friends, following the “wrong” teachers, and reading the “wrong” books, etc., lest children fall for a trick by the Devil in disguise. All this serves to isolate Christian fundamentalists, “saved” from the rest of society.

Chick had limited personal contact with the public; he gave only one known professional interview after 1975. The lack of available public information about him created some speculation that he was a pen name for unnamed authors. Chick died in his sleep at age 92. His body was discovered on the evening of October 23, 2016, in his home at Alhambra, Calif. The interment was private. (Artist Fred Carter died a few years later May 9, 2022.)

But that’s enough about Jack Chick and his horrific legacy, lets dive into some of the content of these tracts  and the tropes within them so we can begin to understand the hateful, fearful, and conspiratorial minds of Jack Chick, the congregation of the Faithful Baptist Church Of Aberdeen, and their Pastor Eric Anderson.

Chick Publications have released well over 250 titles and we could not begin to dissect all the bigotry and conspiracies that fill the pages of these projects in white supremacist proselytizing propaganda nor would we. Instead we would like to share just a small handful of reviews of their tracts that we have discovered and written to showcase the machinations behind the minds of Jack Chick & Pastor Eric Anderson.

Chick Tract Reviews

Chick Publications have released well over 250 titles and we could not begin to dissect all the bigotry and conspiracies that fill the pages of these projects in white supremacist proselytizing propaganda nor would we. Instead we would like to share just a small handful of reviews of their tracts paired with choice clips from them that we have discovered and written to showcase the machinations behind the minds of Jack Chick & Pastor Eric Anderson.

The Last Generation

Starting off we have a tract written by Chick in 1972 diving into conspiracies about the “New World Order” and the persecution of Christians. “New World Order” conspiracies are white nationalist talking points spread by many pundits on the right wing media circuit such as Alex Jones that trace their roots back to Nazi antisemitic conspiracies about the “Elder Protocols of Zion” Sometimes certain Chick tracts are occasionally updated and reprinted, as in the case of The Last Generation, the entire plot is altered based on what Jack Chick’s pet issues are at the time.  While the publication from 1972 is as ludicrous as the version of Chick’s site today, the deterioration of his writing and plot are clear to see between the two versions but we will be focusing on the most recent version.

This is one of the tracts drawn by Fred Carter, the other artist for the company. He’s far more talented than Chick himself. It’s like he threw every EVIL cliche he could into one cover. KKK, United Nations, drugs, a peace symbol (which is really the sign of the Antichrist!) and a doctor’s symbol. Wait, what’s evil about doctor’s staffs? Is it that psychiatry generally doesn’t advocate taking a rod to your child? And why is the top of his pointy hat cut off when there’s plenty more cover above him? This one is about a Christian family who’s son has been turned against them by the New World Order apparently made up of witches and satanists. The family tries to talk little Bobby out of this new world’s evil ways; telling him not to sacrifice animals, as his teacher recommends, but to love them. This results in Bobby realizing his own family are heretics of the New World Order, which wants to enslave humanity and feast on their misery.

After Bobby threatens to turn them in for even speaking the name God, they all turn to the story of Revelations for comfort. They yearn for the day when God returns and takes them to Heaven, leaving the sinners to seven years of trials and tribulations. At school Bobby is introduced to a New Age Healer who tells Bobby they are hunting Christians and that he will get a BIG reward if he turns in any. The World government will take them away to be “treated” for their illness. Bobby’s first victim is his Grandpa who can’t resist telling Bobby the truth about God creating the universe. These healers proceed to torture and implant pain inducing microchips in his Grandfather in a vain attempt to turn him from his beliefs. After fleeing to a cabin to escape this persecution, the rest of the family is turned in by a rogue uncle, but just as the healers smash down the door to take them away the rapture occurs and they are taken away to be with their lord while the rest of the non believers, including little bobby perish in their wickedness.

     

                

The Poor Revolutionist

Written in 1971 this tract takes on the same red scare fear mongering that was highly prevalent amongst conservatives during this time. Painting broad stokes of the civil rights movement as communists and there for evil and disease that must be eradicated from the blue blood of America. Chick was heavily Anti-Catholic and his loathing for Catholicism is prevalent throughout his works, despite spreading the conspiracy that the Vatican was responsible for the creation and growth of communism (As well as the Holocaust) those themes are not touched on in this tract outside of one of the revolutionaries being depicted as a Catholic priest as per the clerical collar around their neck. In this tract some communist revolutionaries have their meeting broken up by comrade Paul’s little brother preaching the word of God at them. This result in this comrade beating his brother within an inch of his life and telling him to stop with all the Christian stuff.

Once the code word: Bedlam is relayed to all the rebel cells, the revolution begins. First thing to go are the cops (or pigs) and all their families. Without police looting and murder starts to rise, and fire engulfs the city. The “liberation forces” begin to round people up into detention camps, with many of these citizens bringing their own concealed guns to shoot the communists with. Paul eventually gets shot and is taken away to heal where he learns that there is no more food left and people are afraid to go outside. After about 30 days the nation falls, this is largely due to a lack of armed citizens since years of gun registrations have dwindled the population of gun owners. The foreign armies of communists then begin executing anyone deemed a capitalist for owning a car or house or a toothbrush.

Paul is shown his little brother Jimmy at the gallows before he is hanged, where Jimmy tried one last time to convert his brother. The typical turn of events then occurs where the revolutionists are hunted by the new communist regime for being revolutionists. They too are rounded up into camps and executed. When they are whisked away to Heaven to face judgement Paul’s name is not written in God’s little book of names so he is cast into the lake of fire for all eternity. Though we are unaware of what involvement if any the FBI had in the assistance in making this tract, their is archived documents showing a letter in which Jack Chick wrote directly to J. Edgar Hoover asking for resources that would assist him in writing this tract, you can view that document at this link here.              

Home Alone

Unfortunately, this is one of many tracts feeding into Groomer Rhetoric against the Queer community such as we discussed in a previous article on a Christmas charity drag show in Aberdeen Wa. It takes on tones of the cries for “Freedom Of Speech” When these same reactionaries are called out for their bigotry as well as downplaying the AIDS virus as a gay disease, a tactic used by the government and medical industry during the height of the AIDS epidemic that resulted in thousands of deaths not only in the queer community but society at large.

Written in 2008, this tracts begins with a family in need of a babysitter after theirs is involved in a car accident. Luckily Coach Brad steps up to watch the young Charlie. Coach Brad’s first act is to start talking to Charlie about being gay, saying how cool it is to be gay. This is described as Brad “making his move”. He tells Charlie how people are BORN gay and don’t choose it, while the tract itself lets the reader know that in fact Brad was raped in juvenile detention by two older men and that’s why he is gay now. It was this rape that brought him into the homosexual world. Without knowing anything about God and his love Charlie is defenseless against the older Brad, as the two are watching TV late into the night.

As the child is molested we see a few panels about what lead up to this moment in the wider culture. People in schools are taught about LGBTQ+ rights and how tolerance means hurting homophobic people. Gay TV, gay films, Gay news. It’s everywhere you look these days. The tracts continues with the gays all getting AIDS because it is spread by “promiscuous gay men”. In a nod to the age of this text the disease is referred to as GRID, or Gay Related Immuno Deficiency Disorder. We are then treated to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. But the tracts then makes clear that even if Charlie accepts the gay lifestyle,God sent Jesus to die for his sins. Charlie tries to tell Brad this but he doesn’t want to hear it. One year later Brad is dead of AIDS and Charlie is born again. The tract ends with its usual calls to pray their prayer of forgiveness and repent of all your sins and accept Christ as the Lord God. Yadda Yadda.      

 

                

Doom Town

Written in 1989, this tract begins with a political rally in which it is claimed by a speaker that 12% of boys and girls are growing up gay, and that we should protect them from hate. Then the speaker calls for gay men to give blood, in what is called blood terrorism, in order to spur interest in studying AIDS. One of the attendants is saddened to see all this sin abound, and prays to God to meet and talk to at least one person here to convert them. After speaking with one person about how this was all just “Sodom and Gomorrah” all over again, he proceeds to tell in excruciating detail the story of Abraham and Lot and the cities of sin that were smited by God over 4,000 years ago according to the Bible.

The usual displays of homophobia are seen in this rendition of the Biblical story where these twin cities are destroyed for being full of, apparently homosexuals and child molesters. Since Lot couldn’t find the Lord 50 righteous people in the area, God agrees to spare it if he can find just ten. As the two angels sent by God enter the City Lot scoops them up so they don’t get insta-raped by the residents of the city. The crowd demand to have Lot turn them over and Lot attempts to appease them by offering his virgin daughter instead.

The Lord eventually blinds this crowd and saves Lot. As they are literally dragged from the City by the angels it is destroyed by fire and brimstone by God. Back to the parking lot of the rally, we learn that this Godly story teller actually cares about the homosexuals. Because of the truth of the Lord God this one homosexual is saved by praying, of course, the dumb little prayer in the back of the book.

Again we see not only inflammatory homophobic rhetoric but nods to groomer and patriarchal rhetoric as well. With lessons aimed at evangelicals that teach them that Homosexuality is a contagious virus that can be contracted by any form of deviation from male gender roles as well as the lesson that it is better to rape a female virgin child than it is for men to have consenting sex with other men. Truly despicable propaganda that results in much greater harm to the queer community by the reactionaries that believe this garbage.

                  

 

Its Not Your Fault

Released on the Halloween of 2009, we begin this horrific tract in the middle of a crime scene investigation where a boy in a foster home has taken his own life. His roommate, Ralph, is questioned by the detective about why this had happened to no avail. The caretaker says that another boy had also committed suicide there a few years ago. The detective, suspecting abuse, orders a physical for every child there. They contact CPS to remove the children while the results of the examinations are awaited. But after the Mayor reams out the police chief, the detective’s case is closed and he is told he is lucky to still have a badge.

At the new home Ralph reveals that it is the Judge in charge of his case and the old foster parents who were conspiring to abuse and molest the young boy. But the new mom, a Christian, tells him that having that sort of hatred in your heart is a bad thing and after telling this young child a war story from her time in Rwanda, she tells him that he needs to forgive his abuser and ask God to bless him. She tells him that after death God will judge them if they don’t repent and that it’s up to him to forgive these abuses and learn to love God, and pray for those who have hurt him. She tells him the story of Jesus’s death for his sins, and little Ralph becomes saved. The next day he receives a phone call that this Judge who had been abusing him had dropped dead of a heart attack, this is how the tract ends.

 

    

For those reading that need to hear it christian or not, you never need to forgive your abuser. This vile tract attempts to erase victims of assault by putting the burden of their assault on them for not forgiving their abuser under threat of eternal damnation vs. that burden being placed where it should be on the abuser. This is what Grooming looks like.

This is but a series of patriarchal brain Olympics used to keep victims silent and downplay the severity of their abusers, and finally, if the last tract was not enough for you to understand how fucking vile this content is and the danger it represents to our community as their messages are spread by peddlers of this filth such as Pastor Eric Anderson of the Faithful Baptist Church Of Aberdeen, we present to you the worst, most disgusting tract they had ever released, we did not have the fortitude to properly review this tract so we will be quoting a review by the anonymous author of jackchick.wordpress.com at length you can find more reviews of various chick tracts and their horrific messages on their website.


 

Lisa

 

This shameful tract is no longer in print, and isn’t even available on the Chick Publications website. However, it is included in the book Hot Topics, in which Chick and the equally insane David W. Daniels tackle six of the “hottest issues of our times,” most of which seem to involve different permutations of gay people and child molestation. And Dungeons & Dragons for some reason. Lisa was first written and distributed back in 1984, but was quickly yanked for reasons that become painfully obvious once you actually read the damn thing. It tells the story of Henry, an unemployed and henpecked husband with a penchant for naughty videos. Oh, and apparently he’s been repeatedly raping his young daughter Lisa for quite some time. It’s not a well kept secret. Even Henry’s neighbor Charlie knows, and promises to keep quiet if Henry will agree to “share and share alike.”

We jump ahead to two months later. Young Lisa has been diagnosed with herpes, and the doctor confronts Henry with the fact that he knows Lisa was sexually abused. And then he calls the police and has Henry arrested. No, wait. That’s what a decent person would do. Instead, the doctor takes the opportunity to witness to Henry about Jesus.

The doctor explains that Henry isn’t responsible for his actions because “Satan is in control.” Fortunately, if Henry accepts Christ as his savior, Satan won’t be allowed to tempt him beyond what he is “able to bear.” That’s all Henry needs to hear! He drops to his knees, repents, and prays. And when he’s done, he feels clean. Hell, he’s practically glowing! So Henry returns home and tells his wife that the most wonderful thing has happened to him.

We then find out that Henry’s wife, Linda, knew all about his molestation of their daughter. However, Linda chose to turn a blind eye because she was molested as a child by her uncle. Linda tearfully confesses that she’s been taking out her frustration on Lisa as well, and that she has “really hurt her.” Fortunately, Henry knows how to make everything better. He prays with Linda, and she invites Jesus into her life. And then, ten minutes later, they cheerfully tell the tiny, teddy-bear-clutching Lisa that they’ve got wonderful news. “Your daddy and I will never hurt you again,” Linda says. “We love you, and Jesus does too.”

And so our story ends with poor Lisa suffering from herpes and the emotional scars of having been raped and abused by her parents (and a neighbor, who never gets mentioned again) Not to mention if we are to take the lessons learned in “Its Not Your Fault” Lisa will also be forced to face the fires of hell unless she forgives her parents and also says the fucking prayer. But it’s a happy ending, because Henry and Linda have become Christians after seeing the error of their ways. So the moral of our story is that pornography is bad. Oh, and apparently it’s okay to rape and abuse children as long as you ask Jesus into your heart when you’re done. Fuck you, Jack Chick. Just fuck you.


This tract was pulled out of circulation, but it has not stopped the damage it has done to the people that believe its message, original copies of this tract have sold on Ebay for hundreds of dollars to “fans” and “collectors”. These have all been but a sample of the horrific nature of the world view that Evangelicals such as Jack Chick and Pastor Eric Anderson of the Faithful Baptist Church Of Aberdeen project to the world and pull people into. It also inspired this song by Alice Donut about the dangers of Chick tracts. 

 

About The Faithful Baptist Church of Aberdeen

Middle aged balding white man with a mustache in a suit standing next to long haired woman with glasses, both smiling
Eric and Donna Anderson

Pastor Eric Anderson was born and raised in the greater Seattle area of Washington State. According to his website he accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior at the young age of 8. Before most children understand how to cook, he was dedicating his life to evangelical Christianity.

After training at Faith Bible Institute and Faithful Baptist College, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Theology. He mentions having been a pastor previously throughout Washington State at multiple “independent Baptist churches”.

He also has contributed to the continued colonization of Southern Mexico, building a church and pastoring there. Him and Donna, his wife, have dedicated their lives to “serving the Lord” and mention their desire to see souls converted to their brand of hateful religion and “saved” in the name of Jesus Christ.

 

Beliefs

The Beliefs section of their website is extensive and seems to be a simple copy-paste of the Chick tracts website on similar topics. Under “The Scriptures” they say that the Bible is the divine revelation of God Almighty given to holy men through the supernatural Holy Ghost. The absolutism of the section is palpable. They go on to say how literally they take each any every word in this historically fluid document. They say that scripture is:

the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tried. Thus, the Holy Bible is our sole authority in all matters of faith and practice in our church and in our individual lives.
This reflects the extreme views of the modern christo-fascists who desire a theocracy is this country to combine the State and their version of church. But the right wing evangelicals who push this agenda aren’t exactly a unified coalition; the cracks and schisms in this religious block run deep and are all but irreconcilable. And yet, the quest for power can make bedfellows of some people who otherwise might be your mortal enemy. If there’s one thing we know about religious zealots is that they are quick to call a similar sect of believer heretics and move to eradicate them. The exact scripture this particular sect has chosen to represent the “one true word” is the 1611 English translation known as the King James Version (KJV), being the “pure, preserved Word of God for English speaking people, without any error, and thus without any need for correction or re-translation”. After some translational history they comment that not all Bibles are this so-called pure and preserved line of specific translations that back up their twisted views, and are to be “wholly rejected”.
 
The Faithful Baptist Church of Aberdeen quotes sometimes dozens of passages from the Bible for each section. One titled “The True God” explains that their church believes that God is the one and only God but affirms they believe in the three part nature of the deity. The standard explainers on each of these parts follows. The section on Jesus is the richest source of content to analyze here. They seem to take the virgin birth literally and accept fully the idea that a Holy Spirit impregnated Mary with the baby Jesus. It’s therefore not surprising they believe in the literal death and resurrection of Jesus and his ascension to heaven afterwards. They mention their belief in “the Rapture” interpretation of the book of Revelation, an “end times” prophecy literalists have been waiting for and perhaps trying to bring about for generations now. The rest of the paragraph details the fascination with the blood of Christ and detail its different perceived mystical properties. Again, they take time to let the reader know that they take this to be the literal blood of the sacrificed son of God and not some metaphor.
 
The Holy Spirit section of this screed is where they get into the method by which they get communications from their God. They say that this ethereal spirit force, “guides, teaches us all truth, comforts, calls to service, sanctifies, and bestows spiritual gifts upon the believer”. Clearly this voice in their head telling them what their doing is right is how they know what they’re doing is right. It is also the judge of a human’s morality and sin, as well as the force responsible for spiritual “gifts” for believers, like speaking in tongues, miracles, healing, and special knowledge. Their section on “Man” is broken into two parts: in the general they say the typical Christian views on man as made in the image of God and distinct from all other forms of life. They deny the existence of evolution by commenting that man is “not from previously existing forms of life”. The purpose of man is unsurprisingly the glorification of their God. They make it very clear that the biblical version of creation detailed in the book of Genesis is to be accepted literally like the rest of the Bible and NOT figuratively saying, “the teaching of evolution is to be wholly rejected”. Then comes the homophobia. They say that marriage is supposed to be between one man and one woman and call the LGBTQIA+ community “unnatural affections” that are “abominations” in the eyes of their God. In fact because of Adam’s fall from his happy state in the garden of Eden, all humans are positively inclined towards evil.
 
The section on Angels details mostly their views about the literal Christian Satan, giving him credit for being the ruler of this world. This clearly sets up the platform needed to advocate for supremely holy violence in the name of fighting the Devil on behalf of God. Then comes a Section on the wickedness of non repentant people and how they will be cast into the eternal Lake of Fire after death or this ever approaching Armageddon they yearn for. They mention in their section Sin that even Christians need to be ever vigilant in the face of their fallen nature to be wary of the temptations to the “flesh and sin” of the old nature, pre salvation. They are clear to draw a real and important distinction between that of the saved and unsaved, setting up a ultimately dangerous “us vs them” mentality.
 
In Salvation  they assure the reader that this eternal Lake of Fire can be avoided through the typical revelations that Christians adhere to about the acceptance of Jesus and the prayers for redemption. Humans being, by default, evil and worthy of eternal punishment in Hell. They remark that if a sinner doesn’t do this they are to blame saying that it is nothing but their voluntary refusal to accept God’s free gift that condemns them to an aggravated punishment in Hell. They firmly lay the responsibility of getting someone to become saved at the feet of their God and not with them. They call out multiple other sects of Christianity that they claim practice false teachings. They say, “The false teachings of Calvinism (election, predestination, TULIP), Armenianism [sic] (universal salvation, falling from grace), sacramentalism (rites and ritual based), baptismal regeneration (baptism produces the new birth), and all other unscriptural methods of salvation are to be wholly rejected”. It is always necessary to be able to be the ultimate arbiter of who is and isn’t saved, who is and isn’t following the correct dogma.
 
They progress to offer some pedantic descriptions of what the theological definition of the church is and when it’s beginning really is. They say that the mission of the church is to, “evangelize the world, baptize believers into its membership, teach the whole counsel of God, sustain the Truth, provide Godly fellowship for its members, and, chiefly, to glorify God”. They further go on to detail what the proper methodology of a baptism is, and state that a proper one is a prerequisite for membership into a real church. Despite all the aforementioned literalism, they do say that for them transmutation of the bread and wine in communion into the actual flesh and blood of Christ to not be true and that they are mere symbols. One of the most disturbing sections titled Biblical Separation explains that good and proper Christians should isolate themselves around other Christians because the evil and spiritual compromise of the real world is “contagious”. They recommend separating oneself from “worldliness, modernism, ecumenicism, ecclesiastical apostasy, Neo-evangelicalism, the Charismatic Movement, and, thus, all churches and organizations holding to doctrinal compromise and error”. They even go as far as to say that having friends who are unbelievers is to be avoided. This is the basis for a real cult-like dependence on the community built up around the common belief. For more on these behaviors check out our piece, How to Spot if You’re in a Cult.
 
In another paradoxical move, the Faithful Baptist Church of Aberdeen states in their section Civil Government that despite previous claims that the only thing Christians needed to submit to was the Word and Law of their God, they also say that civil government is of divine appointment and for the interests and good order of human society. They say all those authorities are to be prayed for, honored and obeyed — but only so long as those authorities exert the will of their specific God. They do mention that religious organizations, such as themselves, shouldn’t accept help from the State — except of course for protection and “full freedom” in their pursuits. What pursuits? Well, like condemning vulnerable minorities to death because they are in league with Satan and working to bring about the literal apocalypse. The section on Human Sexuality is as homophobic as you would expect, but they make sure to slip in a transphobic comment in the end as well. They outright refuse to conduct same sex marriages and state that there is no mandate for them to do so. As expected, they finish this tirade with the section titled The End Times, saying that it is imminent. This has been true since it’s inception. They revert back to believing the words of the Bible literally when it comes to their interpretation of the tribulation, the rapture, and the Millennial Kingdom that comes afterwards. They anticipate 1000 years of brutally casting sinners into a lake of fire to “consciously tormented for eternity without end”, referring to this as a millennium of peace and righteousness.
 
On another page of the website they lazily detail their plan for your salvation, leaving it there for you to read and pray on your own. Not much for evangelizing, but with the method of distribution of their Chick tracts it is hardly a surprise. More copy paste from the tracts is found here, with the usual spiels about how nothing you can do is good enough and all you really have to do is pray this specific prayer and everything will be good. They implore the reader: “Please consider the two choices you have: 1) Do nothing about your eternal destiny, or 2) humbly confess to God that you are a sinner, you believe He shed His blood for your sin, you are sorry for breaking His laws, and ask Him to have mercy and forgive you of your sin.” After leaving a prayer there on this sad static website, they say they hope you pray and then ask for you to contact them about how to live a godly life. This author was struck with the profound sadness of someone having their experience of coming to God being this pathetic website prayer, perhaps after arriving here from a Chick tract left in a bag taped up in town. No fellowship was a recommendation, perhaps this is in accordance with their beliefs of self isolation, they will not even engage with nonbelievers in order to save them. They put out this content and expect you to call them once you’ve accepted their views and fulfilled their rituals.

Conclusion

The extreme religious views expressed on the website of this local church largely parallel the views expressed in these Chick tracts. This is a fundamentalist sect of evangelicalism whose dangerous tentacles have been reaching further into our political structure over last few generations. Yet, the messages on the church’s website often go beyond what Jack Chick was even willing to print, explicitly stating things that the Chick tracts just dance around or poke fun at. Whereas these tracts often end up being funny and cartoonish representations of Bible stories and scaremongering over fantastical situations no one is going to ever face, the website from the church makes it clear that there are real people who actually believe this brand of Christian fundamentalism that preaches that not even other sects of Christianity are good enough teachers of the word of God to be adhered to and only their specific views are the one way.
 
The Faithful Baptist Church of Aberdeen lays out their belief structure and views on praying to God this special prayer of salvation that it seems like this is the actual evangelism they are engaged in. This website seems to serve the function of getting the word out to the unbelievers so that this congregation doesn’t have to co-mingle with sinners in order to save us. This is also evidenced by the fact that these Chick tracts were found by members of this collective taped up to a public board and not handed to us by someone willing to do the work of talking about their beliefs with a person. Either this is isolationism in action or these people are truly terrified that the “contagious” sin might rub off on them if they were to spend to much time in the presence of a non-believer. This sort of extremism is almost common place across this country, with these ultra-conservative Christians having made their way into all levels of social and political life over the life of this nation, and specifically with the rise of the conservative Christian movement on the right wing since about the 1980s. Even though Evangelicalism has been a powerful political block since the turn of the Nineteenth Century, in recent history we have seen a majority of white evangelicals move to the Republican Party. This is for many factors, one of which is the modern Civil Rights struggle and the Black Power Movement of the 1960s.
 
After the desegregation of public schools many white evangelical communities began opening up private (white) Christian schools to oppose integration while framing this as a religious debate, not a racist one. In all, school desegregation and busing, the outlawing of legalized racial discrimination and the threat it posed for white evangelical schools, the increased federal dollars for social welfare problems, and the sharp increase in black voters (largely for the Democratic party) changed America’s legalized racial structure. White evangelical leaders such as Reverend Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich argued the federal government was not only invading local autonomy, it was turning its back against whites and favoring African Americans and Latinos. The world, it seemed, was turning upside down.
 
President Richard Nixon capitalized on this resentment with his plan to galvanize white Southern Christians to vote Republican as they had never done before. In 1960 the Democrats had nominated a Catholic in JFK, and with the 1964 GOP nomination of Barry Goldwater and his anti-civil rights campaign had primed this audience for the move. This “Southern Strategy”, as it was called, employed bringing together the largest number of white ethnic prejudices into one party without fragmenting the existing coalition. They employed a language of morality and decency, law and order, normalcy, family values, and self-reliance: discourse white evangelicals understood as explicitly evangelical religious values. As the Democratic party came to be identified as the party of “big government” and racial minorities, white evangelicals began the process of almost exclusively identifying with the modern Republican party. This mobilization was decades in the making; issues pertaining to gender roles and the sexual behavior of women began to stir this base from its slumber since the Scopes Trial of 1925, when they largely went dormant until the awakening of the first wave of feminism in the middle part of the century. By the late seventies abortion was the main issue at hand with homosexuality following close behind. These issues were used by politicians on the right to sway more and more white evangelicals to the Republican Party. Using coded language to appeal to their underlying bigotries and fears. From the Organization for American Historians:
One element that is often under-represented in recent scholarship on the Religious Right is the lively and often fractious debate in many Christian denominations on issues including biblical inerrancy, the role of women in the church, and ecumenism through the 1960s and 1970s. These conflicts were part of a larger collection of debates about the role of the church in society (Engel v. Vitale, for example) and concern about adolescent rebellion, the emergence of second-wave feminism, and other developments. In some cases, these conflicts generated schisms that produced more ideologically homogeneous and polarized denominations. Denominational conservatives found common cause with like-minded evangelicals from outside more rigorous denominational traditions.
Obviously a large part of what motivated this push to the right was race politics, and the 1960s surge of Black Power formations and Civil Rights wins. As evangelicals pulled more into their isolationism it became easier to convince them that all that was going on in the world today was against them and their beliefs, evil. This subculture generated its own stable of media, organizational affiliations, and lobbying efforts to both disseminate political views and influence public policy. Historians argue that the significance cannot be understated of Jerry Falwell’s come-to-politics moment in 1979 when he declared he had been wrong to abstain from politics and instead jumped in with the both-feet maneuver of creating the Moral Majority. A trusted leader—a man of God—stamped political activism with his reputational imprimatur. While evangelical politics did not start in 1979, Falwell’s move and the Moral Majority’s unapologetic activism were vital in establishing evangelicals as an enduring political force. The removal of prayer in school also started a wave of fear in the evangelical community who were already apprehensive after the growing diversity of the nation pointed to a lessening of their power.
 
The leaders of this movement believed the best way to reclaim their country was to take over all three branches of government and basically institute a theocratic government. After Democratic president Jimmy Carter, a “born again” Christian, didn’t fight hard enough for these values in the minds of the religious community, they turned instead to the Republican Ronald Regan. This man was able to say the right things enough to where Christians believed at least that he was fighting for them and their values. At the very least he knew their power, and was cowed by it. Since this period evangelical voters have suffered from historians call institutional “capture”—in other words, as an increasingly reliable GOP voting bloc, their desires and policy preferences are routinely articulated during campaigns, but these policies often fail to gain much traction once candidates are in office. For example Ronald Regan talked a lot about the “pro-life” movement when he was a candidate but failed to pass any significant policy revisions once elected. But cunning politicians know that it is more important to appear that you are supporting the bast with what you say in public, than it is to actually defend their positions legislatively. As any failure can be blamed on the evil Democratic party opposing such moves. After all what are white evangelicals going to do, leave the party? They have no where to go, the Democratic party’s social positions are incompatible with their fundamentalist Christian values and at this point any change of political party would be seen as traitorous to the cause.
 
Donald Trump has received the support of this wing of the party more so than many contingents, a stunning achievement considering his bullying, name calling, and infidelity. His rhetorical dedication to the policy preferences of evangelical voters has proved effective at convincing many in this base that he is their man. It doesn’t seem to matter how you behave as long as you toe the rhetorical line. Trumps actions also line up with these voter’s wishes to a level at least as significant as the Bush administration adds more fuel to their fiery support. This is why behavior that would get most kids kicked out of Sunday school are acceptable in your leader so long as he is doing what you want. What remains to be seen is if evangelical support for Trump will cause them to “gain the whole world and lose [their] own soul” (Mark 8:36). Will following Trump be their downfall? Does the support for their dear leader compromise their witnessing for Christ? The credibility of white evangelicals is being called into question with this new administration, we will see if they will continue to support Trump with his building legal troubles and the schism presenting themselves within the hollowed out husk of the party they destroyed.
 
 
 

Prime targets of Jack Chick (& The Faithful Baptist Church Of Aberdeen)

Via RationWiki.org

  • Atheists and secular worldviews.
  • Jews.
  • Catholics.
  • Muslims, although in post 2010 tracts like Is Allah Like You? and Your Best Life, he or his team gave up his pet jibe of “Allah is pagan”.
  • Hindus
  • Jehovah’s Witnesses
  • Homosexuals.
  • Prophets.
  • Witches.
  • COMMIES!!
  • Santeria.
  • Teenagers.
  • Rock music.
  • Halloween.
  • Dungeons and Dragons.
  • Harry Potter. (You Know What? Fair enough)
  • Abortion.
  • Science and evolution.
  • Gluons and gravity. Yes, gluons and gravity.
  • Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny.
  • Bible translations other than the King James Version.
  • Pretty much anyone that doesn’t accept Jesus Christ as their lord and personal savior.
  • Political correctness
  • Obelisks, like the Washington Monument. Why, you ask? Because an obelisk is a phallic statue — “and God hates it!”
  • Freemasons As evidence of how evil they are, they cite a quote by Albert Pike that was an admitted hoax.Wikipedia
  • One World Government (So, basically, the UN, EU, and all other atheist propaganda.)
  • Native Americans, and their gods.
  • Mormons
  • Family Guy — We kid you not, Family Guy!
  • Global warming (or rather, climate scientists)

Lesser targets

  • Buddhists.
  • C.S. Lewis.
  • Cat haters

Conspicuously missing from that list

  • Scientology. One would think he would have done an anti-Scientology tract, but surprise!, he didn’t. Of course, this is probably a good thing, since he would most likely have claimed Scientology like everything else is an invention of the Roman Catholic Church. Still, it’s quite odd he didn’t touch that subject at all. Maybe he feared a lawsuit from the CO$…that they could win.
  • Eastern Orthodox Church. Although Russians and Greeks are mentioned now and then, their denomination is never brought into consideration, although many of their customs and traditions are very similar to those of the “pagan” Catholic Church: gradual salvation, rituals, priests, monks, mass, sacraments, “idolatry” icons, “worship” of Mary and saints, Inspired Holy Church fathers etc. One would think that Orthodoxy belongs to the Roman Catholic system (no mention of the Great Schism is ever made), but on the other hand, they are also an enemy of the Catholic Church, so maybe it was better to leave them out. Although it’s more likely that Chick’s worldview was so narrow that he didn’t even notice the difference.
  • Oriental Orthodox ChurchWikipedia. Did Chick even know the difference between that and the Eastern Orthodox Church? In his defense, many if not most Americans don’t. He erroneously described Ethiopia, a plurality Oriental Orthodox nation, as a Muslim country, though. He also blamed the “Alexandrian Cult” (the predecessor of today’s Coptic Church) for corrupting the Bible during the first few centuries.
  • Japanese animation and manga. Considering his contempt for non-western cultures, you would think that Chick would have written a comic decrying the dangers of Japanese animation, or at the least taken a potshot at perennial favorite target Pokémon.
  • Lighthouses. Just as phallic as obelisks. Where was Chick on the phallic lighthouse menace?
  • Shrimp. Surely Chick could have found the time to alert the world to the fact that God hates shrimp.
  • Despite the use of computers, Jack Chick never created a tract attacking video games, particularly the ones similar to Dungeons & Dragons’ genre such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars (that’s probably a good thing as well, since he would have done some sort of Satanic conspiracy theory on video games).
  • Linux and open source. Are the Jesuits behind this nefarious Communist plot to undermine Microsoft and America? Is it all a Vatican plot? Chick never weighed in on this important question.
  • Nazis. Not entirely true, he had a lot of material seemingly anti-Nazi, but he always blamed the Vatican for them. Sort of made worse in that one of his tracts that “uncovers” a Vatican conspiracy that blames Catholics for the Holocaust, he used the enormously poor phrase “those poor Nazis”, when talking about how the Vatican left them holding the bag on that one. His book Smokescreens has a chapter on Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco as the Vatican’s trinity of dictators with Father Coughlin the Vatican’s pro-fascist voice in the U.S. He never published anything critical of Nazism in its own right without using it as a cover for his anti-Catholicism. It should go with mention that even here, he was at least closer to the truth than Pope Benedict XVI was in blaming Nazism on atheists.
  • Star Trek. A series that has a guy with pointed ears and arched eyebrows being portrayed as a good person just has to be the work of Satan! Also the show encourages respecting the beliefs of other cultures and even endorses a policy forbidding pushing the Christian religion onto non-Christian cultures. And the show has made some comments critical of religion (“We all create God in our own image” in Star Trek I, for instance). Why was there no hate for this?
  • Star Wars. Oh, come on! The Force has to be satanic as it’s about people having a supernatural power on their own that does not come from God. Plus those lightsabers are awfully phallic…
  • Furries. Conventions of grown adults walking around in animal costumes and with a solid minority of conservative Christians? If Jack Chick had touched upon it, it probably would be one of the most insane written pieces of media ever.
  • Steampunk. The awfully Chick-esque Disciples of the New Dawn did attack steampunk-ers, though. However, it’s possible the Disciples of the New Dawn are actually a parody of Chick-style fundamentalism rather than a serious organization.
  • Seventh-Day Adventist Church. You would think a religious movement having a prophet whose “visions” are treated as coming from God and which have influenced the theology would be viewed as suspicious and even heretical… maybe excepted if the anti-Catholic sector of this church is also buying tracts.

 

Addendum:

The same day this article was posted we received this comment but had missed it as it auto filtered into our spam folder, It would seem the local Baptist Church could not help but respond to our article about their Christo Fascist church and the propaganda they distribute. Couldn’t help but slip some form of bigotry in there as well in the form of Anti-Catholocism.

“What can i say but Yikes!

With everything that we have read about this church and their Tracts up until this point there is only one response to be had.