Cthulhu and Christ

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<p>This is, of course, a parody of a fundamentalist Christian evangelical tract.  More specifically, it is a remarkably accurate take on the style of <a href='http://members.aol.com/monsterwax/chick.html'>Jack T. Chick</a>, a pamphleteer who has occupied the scungy basement of Christian evangelism since the 1960s.  Both the talking heads are recognizable, stock Chick characters &mdash; the sinful, scornful unbeliever and the saintly white-haired minister.</p>
<p>Some cultural-studies type ought to do a book on the way that the Cthulhu mythos has oozed forth from its pulp origins to become Western pop culture&#8217;s generic Nightmare From Beyond.  This parody could have  been written thirty years ago &mdash; Chick goes back that far and has been remarkably, er, <em>consistent</em> in his output &mdash; but thirty years ago only a handful of SF and fantasy fans would have recognized Cthulhu.  Nowadays ol&#8217; squid-face is all over the place; there are, ironically, plush toys.</p>
<p>I put it down to fantasy-role-playing games, which have reached a far larger audience than print SF or fantasy.  Gamers have borrowed the Cthulhu mythos so frequently that it&#8217;s a clich&eacute; &mdash; but one which, thanks to the eerie power of Lovecraft&#8217;s imagery, never completely loses its power to send a chill down the spine.  Even the mere names &mdash; the Necronomicon, Yog-Sothoth, the corpse-eaters of Leng, the Hounds of Tindalos, and of course dread Cthulhu himself &mdash; is to feel a vast and threatening darkness.</p>
<p>Hallis&#8217;s parody draws on a much more specific tradition.  The idea of the <a href='http://www.locksley.com/cthulhu/index2.htm'>Campus Crusade for Cthulhu</a> as a parody of the <a href='http://www.ccci.org/'>Campus Crusade for Christ</a> was already live when I was in college in the 1970s.  But Hallis makes their point more compactly and effectively, and therein lies the real touch of genius in this piece.</p>
<p>Jack T. Chick&#8217;s pamphlets speak plainly the most fundamental message of Christian evangelism: <em>believe or be damned</em>.  It&#8217;s all about fear, the induced fear that if you don&#8217;t get straight with God you will burn in Hell.  Not for Chick the sugar-coating of talk about love or morality or becoming a better person. Writing for the lowest common denominator, he zeroes in on terror.</p>
<p>But so pervaded is our culture with Christian ideas and imagery that it is difficult to see how nasty and inhumane Chick and his ilk really are; even those of us who are not Christians tend to respond to the fear-mongering with a kind of numbness, reacting to Chick&#8217;s ugly, drab oeuvre mainly as an offense against good taste (or a form of unintentional found humor).  For the more intelligent sort of Christian, Chick is embarrassing &mdash; like a slovenly relative you can&#8217;t quite  kick out of your house because, after all, he <em>is</em> family.</p>
<p>What is really incisive about Hallis&#8217;s parody is his demonstration that very little about the Christian world-view or rhetoric has to change to make it indistinguishable from Lovecraft&#8217;s nightmare.  Ah, the rapture of being taken up by the Elder Gods!  Worship and sacrifice are good things.  Trust the preacher, he will make you fear and show you the way.</p>
<p>It used to be popular among a certain sort of leftist to claim that the collectivist and apocalyptic ideas in socialism made it a proper political analog of Christianity.  They were arguably correct in this; where they went wrong was in considering the connection flattering to socialism rather than damning of Christianity.  Hallis&#8217;s parody is a starker demonstration; the fact that both the fictional cult of Cthulhu and the all-too-real religion of Christianity both depend so fundamentally on the terror of the Gods is not grounds for exonerating the former, but rather for condemning the latter.</p>
