Tornadoes, Comics, and the U.S. Foreign Policy toward Israel – Philip M. Forness

This is a guest post by Philip M. Forness, a Masters of Divinity student at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is presently applying for doctoral programs in the history of Christianity.

While Robert Crumb (Zap Comics) and Harvery Kurtzmann (MAD Magazine) were calling conservative ideals into question through their underground comics in the middle of the twentieth-century, Jack Chick, a contemporary comic artist, was calling all people to repentance. The publishing house that Chick developed around his tracts has survived and thrived for nearly fifty years. While on first glance Chick tracts pass as nothing more than another set of politically conservative and theologically dispensationalist pamphlets, reflection on his promotion of one of his tracts leads to insight on how religious documents enter the public sphere with webs of interconnected ideas. My goal in this essay is first to describe how Chick has addressed the political issue of the independence of Israel through a tract released in 2008. I will then describe the history of his promotion of this tract, and finally offer some reflections on what we can learn about how religious publications enter public discourse.

First, I need to make two disclaimers about Chick’s political and religious views. As with many Christians academics and the media would label “conservative”, Chick is of course opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion, etc., and generally aligns himself with conservative values. However, Chick does not associate himself with any particular political party, nor any movement labeled the “Christian Right.” In fact, his interpretation of the bible prohibits it, as his comment on President Obama’s inauguration from Chick Publications’ bimonthly newsletter, Battle Cry, shows: “it is our duty as Bible-believers to always lift up our presidents, congress, judges and local authorities in prayer” (January/February 2009, 15). On the equation of Chick with the Christian Right, Cynthia Burack draws a similar conclusion: “The result of Chick’s failure to transform his rhetorical project in sync with the political sophistication of the Christian Right is that Chick can be ignored or disclaimed by opinion leaders of the Christian Right while he continues to represent the social, political, and theological positions of the movement” (164). Finally, while Chick’s religious views in what follows will seem stereotypically dispensationalist, his independence from any particular religious denomination leads me to believe that there are nuances that would distinguish his approach from that of others. It is, however, beyond my abilities to argue for this convincingly.

In the March/April 2008 Battle Cry, Chick suggests a direct correspondence between the record-breaking number of tornadoes seen in America in February and U.S. foreign policy toward Israel: “When I saw the news of those freakish tornadoes hitting in February that caused such havoc, the first thing that crossed my mind was, ‘What on earth are we doing to Israel?’” (16). Specifying this criticism further, Chick writes: “Is there anyone advising the president that giving God’s land to the Muslims is a no-no? The media has successfully changed the thinking of the people into believing Israel is the villain” (16). While Chick’s views on U.S. policy toward Israel reached only a select few through this newsletter, he made his views publically available by publishing a tract on this subject later in the same year.

Published in early November 2008, Somebody Angry? describes the story of Charlie, who after surviving a tornado learns from “Grandpa” that the cause of such natural disasters is the U.S. foreign policy toward Israel. When the family survives the tornado, Grandpa tells Charlie “We’re messing with God’s Holy Land and these storms are from God—WARNING US!” (6). After outlining God’s preference for the land and people of Israel through biblical citations, Grandpa blames “The Halloween Nor’easter of 1991” on President Bush’s (41) “land-for-peace plan” and Hurricane Katrina on President Bush’s (43) decision to give away part of the land of Israel (15–16). After enumerating other natural disasters attributed to the U.S. support of dividing Israel (17), the tract ends with Charlie’s conversion (20–21). While this tract is worthy of its own analysis, for the purposes of this essay, I will now turn to describing Chick’s continued promotion of it over the following two years.

Since Chick has released no new tracts on Israel after Somebody Angry?, he has suggested reading this tract to interpret several events over the last two years. In several cases, Chick uses the tract to interpret natural disasters that result from U.S. policy toward Israel: (<en”>Battle Cry [November/December 2008]: 1, 11; Battle Cry [March/April 2010]: 8; Hot Topics, 41). However, he also recommends reading this tract in the July/August 2009 Battle Cry in relation to his criticism of the Pope for proposing to “internationalize” Jerusalem; in Chick’s opinion, this marks the Roman Catholic church as an opponent of God’s people (14). This tract “show[s] people why their government should not make the same mistake and end up a 3rd rate power” (14). While not mentioning Somebody Angry?, the September/October 2009 Battle Cry criticizes the Pope for the same proposal for peace in Jerusalem, but this time links it to signs of the end times (7). Chick also recommended this tract for interpreting the tornado that landed in Minneapolis on “[t]he same day that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America voted to approve homosexuals in leadership” (Battle Cry [November/December 2009]: 8).

This brief survey of Chick’s promotion of Somebody Angry? shows the various ways in which a tract that was written in response to a particular event has its own afterlife. While the tract only briefly mentions the Catholic Church in relation to the holocaust (13), Chick’s comments in the July/August 2009 Battle Cry transform the tract into a criticism not of U.S. foreign policy alone, but all who oppose Israel. Likewise, although Chick only briefly hints at the eschatological meaning to which these tornadoes point (18, 21), faithful readers of Battle Cry might notice the linking of the Pope’s decision to the end times, and thus perhaps see natural disasters as a sign of their imminence. Finally, Chick’s use of this tract to interpret what he sees as God’s punishment of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, points to a generalization that all natural disasters might be explained by “sinful” actions. Chick’s use of his newsletters to repurpose this tract entwines the original association between natural disasters and governmental policy toward Israel with criticisms of the Catholic Church, the end times, and homosexuality.

The various meanings Chick assigns this tract suggest the web of meanings this tract might possess for its distributors. For faithful readers of Chick’s newsletter, Somebody Angry? is a tract relevant for a variety of different circumstances and situations. What might this mean for how the public receives these tracts? As a recent study of Chick tracts suggests, “The tracts are widely distributed by individuals and religious organization with no central organization or supervision from Chick himself. Essentially, any person or organization with fifteen cents (the cost of a single tract) can become a distributor by buying a tract from Chick” (Borer and Murphree 97). Each distributor, in turn, shapes the meaning of the text by his or her presentation of it to another. While the integrity of the tract, and its own interpretation of events, never completely fades, Chick’s varied framing of the tract suggests the variety of meanings such documents may take on. Distributors of this tract, once limited by its narrow focus on natural disasters, have a variety of ways they might envision this tract transforming others.

As a student of religion and an interpreter of religion in the public sphere, the connections made between chance events and divine will have always perplexed me. A couple emblematic ones come to mind: Fred Phelps and his church claiming that 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the economic crisis are due to the prevalence of homosexuality in America; the linking of the European Union to the “rise of the beast” in the end times. What I hope this brief survey of Chick’s promotion of Somebody Angry? has demonstrated is one step of the process by which these chance events are inundated with religious interpretations. I have not explored how these connections entered Chick’s mind, but rather how they emanated from a single source, to a host of distributors, and from there into the public sphere. What is instructive about this survey is the gradual nature by which a single document became a nexus around which Chick’s distributors and potential recipients of this tract could interpret world events. The tract itself does not force or suggest all of these connections, but over time inherited them through the Chick’s promotional strategies. Perhaps what we can learn from this tract is to be aware that while religious ideas enter the public through documents, these documents take on a life of their through the context in which they are received.

Bibliography:

Borer, Michael Ian, and Adam Murphree. “Framing Catholicism: Jack Chick’s Anti-Catholic Cartoons and the Flexible Boundaries of the Culture Wars.” Religion and American Culture 18.1 (2008): 95–112.

Burack, Cynthia. “From Doom Town to Sin City: Chick Tracts and Anti-gay Political Rhetoric.” New Political Science 28.2 (2006): 163–179.

Chick Publications. Battle Cry. Ontario, CA: Chick Publications, 2008–2010. (accessed 29 August 2010).

Chick, Jack. Somebody Angry? Ontario, CA: Chick Publications, 2008.

Chick, Jack, and David Daniels. Hot Topics. Ontario, CA: Chick Publications, 2008.