2008/01/01 by Michael Ian Borer, Adam Murphree · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Rhetoric and Communication Studies #Media, Religion, Digital Communication #Music History and Culture #Framing (construction) #Christianity #Cartoonist #Ideology #Politics #Protestantism #Sociology #Alliance #Comics #Religious studies #Law #Literature #History #Philosophy #Art #Political science
paper · doi:10.1525/rac.2008.18.1.95
openalex publication_date 2008/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Abstract 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.