Turanil said:
[RANT MODE]
Can anyone see that the guy may be Christian, may be American, may be a scrawny nerd, may be anything you want, his attacks against D&D are strictly related to his mental illness. The fact that he uses the Christian faith as a justification to his sayings is irrelevant IMO.
Well, first, to be picky, let me clarify that its not a matter of whether others "see" it but whether they agree... I myself cannot agree that Chick's christianity is irrelevant to his rantings, or that what he does and says are "strictly" (that is, exclusivley) the product of mental illness.
Just to clarify in advance and hopefully keep myself out of the mod-house dog-house, nothing I say here should be taken to mean that I think christianity does or should endorse, teach, lead to or spring from the things that Jack Chick says are christian. Religion is a wonderfully diverse thing even within one denomination and you can find christians on both sides (if not three or four) of any major issue of social or political contention now or in history.
That said, from a long and mildly obsessed following of the works of Mr. Chick, I can say with confidence that his rants on this subject and most others have everything to do with his christianity.
Don't get me wrong, you'll get no argument here that the guy has some serious issues. He sees himself as being under direct attack from a very real and anthropomorphic Satan and his little minions (does the "little minions" pantamime from Black Adder) who he thinks personally gave him a stroke. He believes in a conspiracy theory so vast and interconnected it beggars the imagination of people who love to play Illuminate. And he has some serious issues with women. HOWEVER, he works from within a self consistant and predictable worldveiw that is linked directly to his christian faith. He will not tommorrow start putting out tracks about flouridation of water sterilizing us, or radio transmitters in our fillings. He will not change his mind and say that its really all about the aliens and not the antichrist. And he was not equally likely to go dwn one of those other tracks to begin with.
Jack Chick is a hardcore hardline protestant with a fair amount of obsession and paranioa. While he takes things to extremes and goes a bit more literal with the evil spirits than many others, the roots of his rantings, ravings, insults and delusions almost all can be found in one form or another in old fashioned american protestantism, the writings of Martin Luther or the bible itself.
Is he a nut? He's not screaming this stuff on a street corner, here, he has an incredibly productive publishing business which he built from the ground up. Does he have issues? Sure. Does he speak for True Christianity? Of course not. But he speaks as a christian, whom many other christians will no doubt disagree with, not as an irrational madman who happens to link his insane ramblings to Jesus.
Kahuna Burger (owner of a disturbingly large Chick Tract collection as well as the issue of The Imp dedicated to a history and anaylsis of his work)
. Auld Grump, I edited Lamoni's post out of your original response to him; hope you don't mind.
