I used to get Chick tracts handed to me all the time in Pittsburgh. The fundies would hang out somewhere between the Cathedral of Learning and Atwood St. down in Oakland and ‘witness’ to all us heathen college students.
I guess it depends on what part of the city you’re hanging out in, since the fundies majorly targetted the university for their ‘witnessing’. We also had a major fundy writing editorials for the Pitt News (student run newspaper at U of Pittsburgh), and he’d regularly get blasted with letters to the editor about his columns on sex and abortion. Our favorite fundy friend from Pitt Ramesh C. Reddy seems to have taken up posting fundy reviews of animated films on Amazon.
Huh. That’s weird. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them. Of course, I went to college in the North Hills (La Roche), and as we were a fairly liberal Catholic college, affiliated with the Sisters of Divine Providence, it’s unlikely any fundy students attended, and I don’t think anyone would be able to get on campus just to witness to a rather small liberal arts college.
The fundy-ratio is probably much, much lower at a private Catholic college than it is at a state-affiliated secular university like Pitt where religious belief is not a part of the institution, just as I would figure there would be more Muslims and Jews and Pagans and Hindus at a secular university than there would at a Catholic one.
I’ve also never actually been to La Roche, so I don’t know what the campus is like, but it may be more like Chatham than Pitt, with the campus being much more separated from its surroundings. Pitt doesn’t exactly have an area of the city that is just the campus; all the university buildings are interspersed with many other buildings which include various businesses and churches and things. Since the campus doesn’t really have defined boundaries, there’s little difference between ‘on campus’ and ‘off campus’ other than which building/sidewalk you happen to be in/on at the moment. There was definitely a fundy population, and they definitely had their very own representative in the student-run Pitt News as well as their Chick Tract handing-out proselytizers.
I love the fact that the Chick Tracts site encourages people to leave copies everywhere, and is willing to send you as many as you want, at $0.15 each. The top of the ordering page shows a woman hauling around a SUITCASE.
Some of the folks that pass out those tracts are dangerous nutcases. As a high school student in 1984, I took a class trip to Germany. While visiting East Berlin, a fundie member of our group pulls out a wad of Chick tracts and starts handing them out to passers-by. In front of a government building. In plain sight of police and soldiers carrying AK-47s. And after we had just spent 2 hours locked in a room at the border crossing due to visa irregularities. Our teacher nearly kicked the kid’s ass (and I was ready to help). The kid defended his actions in that arrogant, anything-for-the-good-of-God attitude that so many of those people possess. How about the good of American high school students that don’t want to spend the rest of their lives in a gulag, ya dumbass! Luckily, the authorities didn’t see what happened, and the pamphlets were discreetly disposed of. (And what was especially stupid was the fact that the tracts were in English, not German, so a substantial number of people receiving them probably had no clue what these cartoons with all the anguished looking characters were about.)
I never heard of Chick Tracts until I started reading the Dope. When husband he said he had seen them in truckstops before, I asked him to get me some.
A few weeks ago he brought me three and I squealed in delight and yelled a Little Suzy and a Bob. He just slowly backed out of the room.
Oh, I’m aware of that (I spend a lot of time at the Carnegie library down in Oakland and Medea’s Child went to Pitt).
But dammit, no one handed me a Chick tract when I was in Oakland. Shit.
I DID once see a guy standing on Liberty Avenue wearing a gigantic sandwhich board with anti-abortion slogans, passing out pamphlets. I quickly turned and went the other way.
I saw Chick Tracts for the first time in late 1970, when I lived in Hermosa Beach, CA. I’d seen some on the ground on Prospect Avenue, across Artesia Blvd. from a local church. I picked up and read some of them, but I’d heard the hellfire doctrine years before; in high school (English literature, junior year) we read a sermon by an eighteenth-century preacher named Jonathan Edwards–“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” (Edwards was in fact dismissed from his post for the severity of his doctrines.) I acquired religious convictions of my own not long after that, but not in Chick’s direction, as many of the Teeming Millions may know.
These tracts have appeared on counters, in laundromats, etc., and in old-fashioned bulletin boards in supermarkets, among other places; it’s disappointing to see them scattered on the ground. (Render Unto Caesar, after all.)
The firebrand theme of the tracts does not jibe well with the doctrines of the Bible. And Mr. Chick seems to insulate himself from criticism by claiming that those who disagree with him are dupes of the Illuminati (and we’ve all heard THAT shtick before).
Back when I was at Pitt (It’s going on 5 years since I graduated.) the best place to get Chick Tracts was in the space bounded by Forbes, Fifth, Bouquet and Bigelow. Basically in between the O and the Cathedral. That was the freshman dorm area, and the Student Union, so, always lots of heathens to try to save.
Back in the early 1980s, my very favorite piece of Chick-lit was “Wounded Children,” which purported to show how finding Dad’s porno around the house while Dad was out in the yard grilling beef inexplicably turned little Tommy into a rampaging homo (sample quote from Tommy to would-be girlfriend “If you only knew! I’m your sister!”). Later, we see Tommy (or was it Billy?) in a bar full of muscular leathermen, there is some dialogue between a demon and a very hot male angel, and use of the phrase “gay cancer” to refer to AIDS. If there is anyone out there in the whole wide world who has a copy of this BRILLIANT (but no longer in print) work in the bottom of their dresser drawer somewhere, I would give you my first born (or my eternal gratitude, at least) to lay hands on it. (“Lay hands” meaning “obtain,” not heal, by the way.) I used to buy copies and give them out to amuse friends, but that was back in the happy days when I assumed that they would be in print forever, but they are no longer available. (Actually, Chick has or had an offer to reprint certain OOP titles in bulk by special order, but, alas, “Wounded Children” was not among the titles offered.)
was “Wounded Children,” which purported to show how finding Dad’s porno around the house while Dad was out in the yard grilling beef inexplicably turned little Tommy into a rampaging homo (sample quote from Tommy to would-be girlfriend “If you only knew! I’m your sister!”). Later, we see Tommy (or was it Billy?) in a bar full of muscular leathermen, there is some dialogue between a demon and a very hot male angel, and use of the phrase “gay cancer” to refer to AIDS. If there is anyone out there in the whole wide world who has a copy of this BRILLIANT (but no longer in print) work in the bottom of their dresser drawer somewhere, I would give you my first born (or my eternal gratitude, at least) to lay hands on it. (“Lay hands” meaning “obtain,” not heal, by the way.) I used to buy copies and give them out to amuse friends, but that was back in the happy days when I assumed that they would be in print forever, but they are no longer available. (Actually, Chick has or had an offer to reprint certain OOP titles in bulk by special order, but, alas, “Wounded Children” was not among the titles offered.)