Framing Catholicism: Jack Chick's Anti-Catholic Cartoons and the Flexible Boundaries of the Culture Wars

In order to understand the practice of “culture wars work,” we examined the claims of a particularly vocal evangelist, Jack T. Chick. Chick is a writer and cartoonist known both positively and negatively for his “Chick tracts.” Chick tracts are small twenty-four-page black-andwhite comic books that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Religion and American culture
Authors: Borer, Michael Ian (Author) ; Murphree, Adam (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge University Press [2008]
In: Religion and American culture
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Summary:In order to understand the practice of “culture wars work,” we examined the claims of a particularly vocal evangelist, Jack T. Chick. Chick is a writer and cartoonist known both positively and negatively for his “Chick tracts.” Chick tracts are small twenty-four-page black-andwhite comic books that attempt to convert the reader to Chick's particular brand of “Bible-believing” Protestant Christianity. We focused on Chick's claim about Catholicism in order to show how theological and ideological boundaries can be constructed between presumably allied religious populations. Chick presents his anti-Catholicism using three main frames: (1) the associative frame—Catholicism is not only one of many social problems but is also cause of a number of them, (2) the subversive frame—the Catholic church is a political villain, and (3) the hidden agenda frame—Catholicism has not remained true to the authoritative teachings of Christianity and has embraced a secretly progressive worldview. Investigating a culture war claims maker like Chick, who purposely disrupts what presumably would be an orthodox or conservative alliance, reveals the process of symbolic boundary making within cultural/ moral/religious conflicts.
ISSN:1533-8568
Contains:Enthalten in: Religion and American culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1525/rac.2008.18.1.95