"The Death Cookie" Offends Catholics and Divides Baptists in Tennessee

I know some people love chick tracts, and I’m not trying to offend you but personally I have no use for them. I don’t understand the need to use scare tacts to bring people to Christ. This type of tract is ineffective in my opinion. We need to give people the Gospel with love. I know Chick tracts make some tracts that give the gospel simply, but it seems like their speciality are these types of tracts.

Keri www.thegracepost.com(link is external)

…when I was a child (loved comics mostly)

Keri is right
[Keri] I don’t understand the need to use scare tacts to bring people to Christ.
Preach the Gospel and let the Holy Spirit do His job of drawing sinners.

CanJAmerican(link is external) - my blog
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I also liked the comics - used to read them all the time when mom took me to the Bible Book store in town. Most of them I read and rolled my eyes - they couldn’t compete with the Batman / Superman comics I read. After I got saved, I looked at them again and thought that they hadn’t been very effective in leading me to Christ.

Just my .02

"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells

Chick … not my style but it grabs one’s attention
… one of its members passed out anti-Catholic literature at school
This is called “Freedom of Speech”.
On the back of the tracts, a stamp reads ‘Compliments of Conner Heights Baptist Church.’
I call this honesty!
First Baptist Church Pigeon Forge Student Pastor David Huskey says the literature is divisive and hopes the theological conflict can be worked out, especially since the two churches are neighbors.

“One way we can honor God is to spend less time focusing on our differences and pointing people to how great God is,” Huskey said.
I call this compromise!

Final:
  • The way to battle error is with truth
  • If the RC priest considers this error … let him explain the basis for the mass and the blessed wafer! Let him take the young student back to the authority of Scripture … oh that won’t happen!
  • As for Orisis.
    • Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris(link is external)
    • Quote (in section “Wheat and clay rituals”): “On the first day of the Festival of Ploughing, where the goddess Isis appears in her shrine where she is stripped naked, paste made from the grain were placed in her bed and moistened with water, representing the fecund earth. All of these sacred rituals were climaxed by the eating of sacramental god, the eucharist by which the celebrants were transformed, in their persuasion, into replicas of their god-man “

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Jim's Doctrinal Statement(link is external)

in theory a comic book tract could be effective. in practice, i don’t see how a chick tract could be. there are too many conspiracy theories, too much insistence on kjv, too much disrespectful rhetoric (anti-catholic and also just anti-everything), the easy-believism prayer and check box at the end, and too many parodies on the internet.

Are folks upset about the use of the term “Death Cookie”, or a gospel tract being in the form of a comic book, or the material being passed out at school…. or all of the above?

Part of me wants to say “Too bad” if people are offended by the ‘death cookie’ line, because when a Christian is offended by the latest taxpayer sponsored government approved ‘artistic expression’ that involves a picture of Jesus being slathered with feces or some such perversion, Christians are laughed at. But then tit-for-tat isn’t very mature. But what terms does the Bible use to refer to false teachers and religions? Those terms aren’t very pleasant either. Hmmmm….

I don’t have a problem with the illustrated format- most of the literature we use for the Deaf is heavily illustrated. Chick has a variety of tracts to fit whatever audience one has. Some I like, some I don’t. A few have been VERY useful. My husband got saved reading “Holy Joe”.

As for religious materials being passed out at school- is this freedom of expression and/or religion for kids to distribute literature at school? I understand objecting to teachers passing out material in class, but IMO staff and students should be free to practice their religion as long as it does not involve illegal, unethical, or disruptive activities. If the teacher wants to have a Bible on their desk and read it during lunch, or a student wants to invite their friends to something going on at their church/synagogue/mosque…- that shouldn’t be a problem. If girls can pass around Judy Blume and Meg Cabot novels, why can’t they pass out Chick tracts?

Scenescape Media(link is external)



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,588172,00.html(link is external)
A Baptist pastor in Tennessee says he now regrets that his church distributed an anti-Catholic leaflet that a local Catholic priest decried as “hate material.”

Pastor Jonathan Hatcher, who leads Conner Heights Baptist Church in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., has removed the inflammatory leaflet, “The Death Cookie,” from his congregation. He says he will no longer distribute it.

“Looking back, I don’t think it was the right tract to give out,” Hatcher told FoxNews.com. “I have some others that wouldn’t have been as offensive. But I will continue to spread the gospel — that’s what I’m called by Christ to do. I’m still going to hand out tracts, but not ‘The Death Cookie.’”

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Jim's Doctrinal Statement(link is external)

God can use anything. I am glad that Susan’s husband was saved with a Chick Tract. But I find the organization as a whole to be dishonoring to God. I personally have had to repair the damage that some of these have done. I was wittnessing to a Catholic, had them visiting church, and almost lost contact with them when someone gave them the book by Chick that has the pope on a thrown on a pile of gold. I think it is better to just focus on the Gospel.

Roger Carlson, Pastor Berean Baptist Church

Jay C
I have listened to countless sermons but none of those were effective in leading me to Christ but I would be foolish to say preaching didn’t have a place.

Richard Pajak

Chris C
You seem to forget the important player here, namely the Holy Spirit and if He chooses to use a chick tract who can argue with God. He can use our offerings however flawed they may be

Richard Pajak

Most of the antiCatholic tracts that Chick produces are so “in your face” that an adult catholic person probably won’t really read them. Adults don’t normally take “comics” as real “quality reading” —kids will read just about anything. So, the style is aimed for kids but the content in many of them is at a much older level than children. I also read them as a teenager, or younger while waiting for parents at the Christian bookstore.

I was startled by the various cartoon characters the girls, for instance—how very much like the secular cartoons in their body forms…much more like adult and provocative like Archie or Spiderman than the females in Family Circus or Calvin and Hobbes, for instance. His writing style is very inflammatory in some of them.

Now that I’m actually living and working in a Catholic country, I really don’t want to hand these out to people with whom I want to have continued contact. IOW, it seems like they are relationship/contact breakers instead of “contact makers”. However, if the person were already anti-Catholic they would not cause this reaction. But since 95%of Poland is Catholic….

It seems like we are better off just teaching/preaching the gospel. The differences come out soon enough.

Richard,
God certainly can use anything. Bit that is not the point. The point is whether or not it honors God first and foremost. Several years ago, something came across my desk about a woman who used stripping as her ministry (I was shocked too). Certainly God could use that, but does that honor him? Absolutely not. We have to ask ourselves is God honored and glorified in how we are presenting the gospel. God has ordained the means, proclaiming the Word.
Becky is right in her assesment of them being contact breakers and not contact makers. Not just with his Catholic ones. Chick’s conspiracy theories rival Olver Stone! :)

Roger Carlson, Pastor Berean Baptist Church