But rock music must be evil! He proved it! With a flowchart!

As you may well have heard, Jerry Falwell died the other day. This isn't going to be a post about him, though, because I knew very little about him. The only things that I am going to say are addressed towards those who:

1. Seem to be idolising him; the man said some extremely stupid things and gave the impression of being rather unpleasant in certain ways.
   
2. Appear to be crowing over his death. Guys, he just died, that's more or less the definition of bad taste. Cory Doctorow, one of the posters to Boing Boing, has managed to fall several places in my Personal Estimation Scale (all the way from "pretty cool guy overall" to "bit of a jerk") with a single, staggeringly insensitive post like this, and he's not alone in his views by any means. Whatever else Falwell was, he was also a person, and should get respect for that reason if nothing else.
   

What I did do after hearing this news, though, was have a browse around various topics associated with the slightly nuttier end of Christianity. I always regret doing this, really, as it takes up a lot of time (you'd think I had exams coming up or somethi...oh) and tends to leave something of a bad taste in the mouth. It is a valuable practice, though, as it lets you work out where you stand on controversial topics, forces you to take a position one way or another, and provokes you to look up the Biblical support for each side so you can see whether their interestingly kooky views are actually valid.

And, of course, it can be pretty entertaining. It was as part of these wanderings that I came across possibly the epitome of slightly nutty Christian literature - Chick tracts. Named after (and produced by) Jack Chick, who Wikipedia tells me is a reclusive 83-year-old Independent Baptist, these little tracts are apparently fairly well-embedded into American popular culture. There's certainly a lot of them. Each one generally consists of a few pages telling the story of someone either a) struggling against the forces of this world, and especially against one particular person or organisation, in an attempt to convert others, or b) doing precisely the opposite. The tracts unfortunately share some of the same failings as the (previously-mentioned) Josh and Jimbo, in that the story is usually very simplistic, and is resolved by the end, either one way or another; as such, although they're interesting as a cultural phenomenon, they're not going to win any literary awards.

Aside from aesthetics, the problems with Chick tracts come in two main forms: their theology and their fact checking. As far as the theology goes, I don't think there's too much being said that's actually wrong - it's much more that Chick is dealing with topics that are so big, there's very little chance of fitting everything into a short tract, so you end up with an extremely restricted and simplistic view of some very important topics. Look at Scream, a tract specifically talking about Hell, for an idea of what I mean - Chick selectively uses the parable of Dives and Lazarus, and extrapolates it entirely literally, using only a couple of passages from Revelation (yes, Revelation, the book that is packed solid with metaphorical and semi-metaphorical symbols, and which requires a whole lot of context to make any sense of it) as supporting text. What you end up with is a tract that presents an intensely complicated issue as one that is very simple, and gets rid of careful Biblical study in favour of getting a big emotional response. (And let's not forget some of the distasteful themes going on here - the rather unsubtly Hispanic stereotype arsonist dies very early on and gets no mention, because we're concentrating on the square-jawed Caucasian fireman. Oh, and Bob Williams's moustache is simply not right.)

The fact-checking is the more worrying aspect of these tracts, as it doesn't seem to actually exist. You won't have to look too hard to find some...err...interesting assertions made, but let's flag up a few particularly flagrant ones. The tract Are Roman Catholics Christians? (take a wild guess what Chick thinks), for example, claims that the Catholic Church teaches that anyone denying transubstantiation should be burned as a heretic. The word actually used in the relevant decree, though, (and the one quoted in the tract) is "anathema", which simply meant an extreme form of excommunication, still leaving open the possibility of returning to the church. More entertainingly, the same tract claims that the "IHS" letters seen in several places in Catholic churches are a direct reference to pagan religions, claiming that "In Egypt, the IHS stood for their gods...Isis, Horus and Seb". Even if Chick doesn't know that IHS is actually an abbreviation for Jesus' name, you'd have thought he'd have noticed that the Ancient Egyptians didn't write in English. But apparently not. Chick's historical knowledge is also shown to be slightly suspect in The Attack, in which he claims that (a rather poorly drawn) Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in a highly principled stand against the ungodly power of the Pope, as opposed to because they wouldn't let him divorce Catherine of Aragon (which seems rather more likely). He also manages to conveniently forget that the Protestant Elizabeth I burnt considerably more "heretics" than "Bloody" Mary I ever managed.

If the small details are cringe-worthy in their inaccuracy, the wider topics covered are absolutely hilarious. Dark Dungeons shows, in true fundamentalist style, that Chick doesn't actually know the first thing about Dungeons & Dragons (nor do I, I hasten to add, but at least I can do research into people who do). Even better, though, is Angels?, in which we learn of all the evils of rock music, which are orchestrated by a Vulcan in a sharp suit. Sorry, I mean Satan. Anyway, he's apparently "turned millions into rock-a-holics" via "the church of Rome" (I would love to see Pope Benedict rockin' out at Glastonbury, but somehow I don't think it's going to happen), and the only way to get out of this self-destructive cycle is to burn everything associated with it and dress in a suit. (Not a sharp Satanic suit though.) I don't think I should have to point out how weird this whole concept is - yes, there have been many musicians that went in for sex, drugs and rock n' roll in a big way, just like in most branches of popular entertainment down the years. That's what having everyone idolising you will do. It doesn't mean that the music itself is evil; Chick has jumped so far to his conclusion that he'll probably be competing in the next Olympics.

As with Josh and Jimbo, there's clearly good intentions behind these efforts (even if they come across as rather unpleasant). Indeed, Chick's tracts aimed at those who are already Christians have some good stuff in them, even if it is mixed in with some of the fruitcakitude mentioned above. What's more, I don't doubt that some people have come to faith in Christ through them. But, until Christians can communicate better, and until this communication can enter the public consciousness in the same way, the only image of Christianity that people are going to see is the fire and brimstone, the offensive Falwellisms, and the people engaging in endless moral panic without ever actually living for Christ.