Sheldon Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 Lately at work, I've been finding tracts in the men's bathroom, left behind on top of the toilet paper dispensers. Not just any tracts, oh no, they have to be Chick tracts. If you are not familiar with Chick Publications, they keep an archive of all their tracts on their site. One of them that I found recently was this tract, called "Tiny Shoes" http://www.chick.com...019/0019_01.asp These tracts keep showing up over and over at work, and I always get a good laugh out of reading them. Even as a young fundie I thought of them as quite extreme, and the writing as being rather over the top to say the least. Well, even outside of work, I'm still finding that people are using this style of propandga, but putting a personal twist. Right now, I'm in the library of a neighboring town, and I noticed a yellow card sitcking out from under the base of the computer monitor. Here's what it says: "If found, please put right back" "Hi: Name: (name redacted)" "find me on facebook and send me a request." "Visit (the offical Mormon church website name given), it will change your life!" (smiley) It didn't throw it away, I'll leave that to whoever they intended the person to find it to do, or maybe the library staff at the end of the day. Have you encountered this lately? Did you you used to do things like this as a fundie? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MerryG Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 Somehow, despite being a complete magnet for proselytizers, I've managed to get through life without seeing a single Chick tract, except online. I feel SO left out. It is common where I live for people to leave other sorts of tracts lying around the post office or on top of washing machines at the laundromat. Stuff like that. But I have a pretty strong suspicion that one family (people I know; nice folks but fanatics) is responsible. I wouldn't be surprised if you eventually find out this is a one-person (or one person and his friends) operation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 I used to know this crazy street preacher who was convinced that every church in town was false and who had subsequently been banned from most of them. Anyway, he printed his own tracts on a special type of paper that is nearly impossible to tear. This is due to the fact that he watched so many people tearing up the tracts right in front of him due to his in-your-face street evangelism. He would stand their smugly grinning as they attempted and failed to tear up his super tracts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheldon Posted September 12, 2012 Author Share Posted September 12, 2012 I used to know this crazy street preacher who was convinced that every church in town was false and who had subsequently been banned from most of them. Anyway, he printed his own tracts on a special type of paper that is nearly impossible to tear. This is due to the fact that he watch so many people tearing up the tracts right in front of him due to his in-your-face street evangelism. He would stand their smugly grinning as they attempted and failed to tear up his super tracts. That would be funny to see people trying to struggle to rip them up. Got to give the guy props for ingenuity Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheldon Posted September 12, 2012 Author Share Posted September 12, 2012 Somehow, despite being a complete magnet for proselytizers, I've managed to get through life without seeing a single Chick tract, except online. I feel SO left out. It is common where I live for people to leave other sorts of tracts lying around the post office or on top of washing machines at the laundromat. Stuff like that. But I have a pretty strong suspicion that one family (people I know; nice folks but fanatics) is responsible. I wouldn't be surprised if you eventually find out this is a one-person (or one person and his friends) operation. I highly doubt that they are the same person. The tracts are from a fundie Christian publishing house. and the card was trying to get a specific person to visit the Mormon church website, (besides the the fact that the two locations are about 15 miles apart). Now, the tracts are probably the same person, and I suspect it's someone on another shift whom people complaining about him wearing his religion on his sleeve (even though he stole a watch from a lost and found bin, and was wearing it in the building before management made him put it back, lol) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freeasabird Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 In science and atheist books from the library I often find either business cards for churches or post it notes conveniently left throughout the books trying to cast doubt on their book's credibility. I always throw them away rather than leave them for the next reader to find. I would do the same with anything you find at work since this is bordering on harrassing and illegal conduct. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roadrunner Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 when i was younger i had probably 50 of those. I can still remember one in particular where a man on death row gets let free because they killed him mom instead of him. the shock on the face of the character in the drawing is burned in my head forever. edit: they are more like short stories to me than tracts. they are small books with titles and everything but each of them pitched jesus in some way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 My mother does this. Every time she goes to a restaurant she's got to slip the wait staff one of these crummy tracts along with the tip. Her fav is "God's Simple Plan of Salvation." Yeah it's simple, all right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akheia Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 Oh my Evil Ex would buy Chick Tracks by the bulk package and go off to the library at our uni to leave them in the pages of books. He also would deliberately mis-shelve books that were critical of fundamentalism's claims, or shove them into the back of shelves behind other books so people couldn't find them. I'm a librarian by both occasional vocation and general temperament* so you can imagine what happened when I found out that not only had he done this, but thought it was the AWESOMEST THING EVER. But I never did talk him out of wasting money on those stupid tracts and leaving them in books. Spreading misinformation, breaking rules, and needling people? Bad, unless of course souls were at stake. * As in: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chikirin Posted September 12, 2012 Share Posted September 12, 2012 I got Tony Alamo Ministries literature left under my windshield wiper the other day. He's in jail serving a life sentence for molestation or something like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kateastrophy Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 I hate tracts, and I hate watchtower magazine. When we first moved here, we got a lot of literature pushing us to attend one of the satellite churches of Creflo Dollar, the televangelist. He was arrested this year for beating and choking his daughter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roadrunner Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 My mother does this. Every time she goes to a restaurant she's got to slip the wait staff one of these crummy tracts along with the tip. Her fav is "God's Simple Plan of Salvation." Yeah it's simple, all right. LOL! This has to be the most popular tract ever. If I wasnt saved I never thought it to be particularly compelling but people claimed to be saved right and left as a result of the very tract. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeCoastie Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 I found a Chick track in a park bathroom a few months ago. It felt so satisfying ripping it up. Chick fucked with my mind enough with his crazy Catholic bashing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 My mother does this. Every time she goes to a restaurant she's got to slip the wait staff one of these crummy tracts along with the tip. Her fav is "God's Simple Plan of Salvation." Yeah it's simple, all right. LOL! This has to be the most popular tract ever. If I wasnt saved I never thought it to be particularly compelling but people claimed to be saved right and left as a result of the very tract. Is that right?! I have seen this tract practically since I was born and could never imagine anyone being persuaded by it. That sort of freaks me out. I always thought it was rather cowardly to just leave tracts at different places. They are told they have to witness for Christ but they know how this drivel sounds to most of the general public. Furthermore, in the southern US (and most of Virginia is very fundy) if you have never heard of Christ you must either have some level of mental retardation or be living in a cave in a mountain somewhere from early childhood. I was always looking for an opportunity to take the tract out of the tip tray before the waitress came back but I never got the chance to do it without being seen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninj Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 Hmm, I've seen my share of Chick tracts when I was growing up. I usually see them on top of the toliet paper dispensers in bathroom stalls or in books that Christian fundies would consider ungodly. I never took much stock in them myself, I've always considered Chick tract stories to be so over the top as to not be believable, even when I was a Christian fundie myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thought2Much Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 My mother does this. Every time she goes to a restaurant she's got to slip the wait staff one of these crummy tracts along with the tip. Her fav is "God's Simple Plan of Salvation." Yeah it's simple, all right. LOL! This has to be the most popular tract ever. If I wasnt saved I never thought it to be particularly compelling but people claimed to be saved right and left as a result of the very tract. My apologies in advance if anyone here actually got saved just because of what they read in a tract, but... What the fuck kind of fucking fucktard gets "saved" through a fucking tract, anyway? Especially if it's a Chick tract? How fucking low on the IQ scale do you have to be to get saved because of one of those pieces of shit? I don't personally know anyone, nor have I ever even heard a credible story* about someone being saved just from a tract. Maybe people saved because of Chick tracts are just afraid to admit it, because it would reveal them to be complete morons? Roadrunner, you actually know people that got saved this way? *I'm sure my pastor father in-law has a few bullshit urban legends that he's heard about people getting saved through tracts alone. The stories probably also involve those people getting filled with the holy spirit and speaking in tongues as soon as they read the tracts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 I read somewhere that Nigerian scams are purposely designed to be so over the top outrageous so as to weed out anyone who is not a total moron. If you are a moron and you answer the spam, the work of the scammer is 90% done and they don't have to waste time convincing the less than gullible. I suppose Chick Tracts are similar in that they are designed to snag the low-hanging fruit. My sister in law became an xian after she read a comic book, and yes, she is a moron. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator buffettphan Posted September 13, 2012 Super Moderator Share Posted September 13, 2012 Yeah, I run across the Chick tracts and other idiot-tracts and flyers frequently out in public...restaurants, rest rooms, on a shelf in the grocery store, and every now and then on my car windshield. Not at all uncommon here in Virginia. There was even a stack of them at the local Comcast office last time I was there. I always take them and throw them in the trash so that some gullible person won't be influenced by the stupidity. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator TrueFreedom Posted September 13, 2012 Moderator Share Posted September 13, 2012 I seem to recall that I might have found some tracts compelling when I was a small child... I had a co-worker several years ago who would leave them everywhere. You could always find one in a bathroom stall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 We used to find them on the grocery shelves when I was stocking. In turn, during Halloween season, I used to take rubber rats from the novelty aisle and hide them behind packages of flour. Once I also put a life size cut out of Bartles and James in the women's bathroom stall. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator buffettphan Posted September 13, 2012 Super Moderator Share Posted September 13, 2012 We used to find them on the grocery shelves when I was stocking. In turn, during Halloween season, I used to take rubber rats from the novelty aisle and hide them behind packages of flour. HA! And I always blamed it on some poor kid whose mother dragged him shopping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roadrunner Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 My mother does this. Every time she goes to a restaurant she's got to slip the wait staff one of these crummy tracts along with the tip. Her fav is "God's Simple Plan of Salvation." Yeah it's simple, all right. LOL! This has to be the most popular tract ever. If I wasnt saved I never thought it to be particularly compelling but people claimed to be saved right and left as a result of the very tract. My apologies in advance if anyone here actually got saved just because of what they read in a tract, but... What the fuck kind of fucking fucktard gets "saved" through a fucking tract, anyway? Especially if it's a Chick tract? How fucking low on the IQ scale do you have to be to get saved because of one of those pieces of shit? I don't personally know anyone, nor have I ever even heard a credible story* about someone being saved just from a tract. Maybe people saved because of Chick tracts are just afraid to admit it, because it would reveal them to be complete morons? Roadrunner, you actually know people that got saved this way? *I'm sure my pastor father in-law has a few bullshit urban legends that he's heard about people getting saved through tracts alone. The stories probably also involve those people getting filled with the holy spirit and speaking in tongues as soon as they read the tracts. When we had a business meeting to choose which tracts to have printed and put our name on, the pastor had a list of testimonials from the company that sold us the tracts. All the stories were eerily similar. People would pick up the tract and set it on the shelf for years and then once the "spirit" convicts them they pick up the tract again and absorb the magnitude of the gift of salvation. I never heard of one person who read a tract or a bible and got saved. To me the only thing that led people to salvation was guilt coupled with a inspiring story, sad invitation music, and then the cold reading type of invitation "Someone here is thinking is that me who needs christ? Yes, God is asking you to come up and put your life in his hands. Don't put it off any longer. You could die tonight. Be sure" something along those line. Again, I never thought that tract was compelling. I would personally have been persuaded much more by hearing "You're gonna burn forever. You can't prove that you won't. God loves you accept him". I always thought cheesy tracts were a waste of paper. Cut to the chase since its truly an ultimatum. Scare people into doing it dont sugar coat it. You'd have to be pretty naive and vulnerable to pick up a piece of paper an then decide to get saved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jose Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 White Wolf games announced the impending release of Demon: the Fallen with fake Chick-style tracts that they passed out at gaming conventions months in advance where the preacher was evil and the demon was the most reasonable of all the characters. Great stuff. I wish I had kept the one I had. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jose Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 Found it! http://images.wikia.com/whitewolf/images/1/10/Demonicdeviltry.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thought2Much Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 When we had a business meeting to choose which tracts to have printed and put our name on, the pastor had a list of testimonials from the company that sold us the tracts. Ah, I see. I thought from your earlier post that you had personally heard testimonials about people getting saved because of that tract, but I see now that you were only getting those testimonials secondhand or thirdhand. That makes a lot more sense now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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