Inc., which features photographs of the World Trade Center before and
under attack, appears to be designed by a skilled Photoshop artist, as does
The Time Is Nowby the American Bible Society and Is Jesus the Messiah?by
Chosen People Ministries (also known as Jews for Jesus). Each is replete
with contemporary typefaces and Photoshop effects.
Given that the computer makes it so easy to produce proficient
layouts, why are the majority of these grassroots missives so primitive?
“Simple,” says “John,” a clean-shaven, twenty-three-year-old
proselytizer who recently handed me There Is No Water in Hellin the Times
Square subway station. Published by Old Paths Tract Society, the handout
was a blurrily printed four-page, two-color (red and blue) testimony that
seemed like it had been set with hellboxed (no pun intended) discarded hot
type. “My friends and I don’t have computers, and if we did, I wouldn’t
know how to make a pamphlet look any better than this,” he said. In fact,
John buys his tracts in bulk from the publisher at $4per thousand and
distributes them on his own. Similarly, Agnes, a fortyish-year-old African-
American woman, handed me a pamphlet titled Now Is the Time to Act, Not
Later On!,an even coarser folded-over, four-page tract with a vintage line
illustration that looked as if it werre photocopied from the early twentieth-
century Bible. When I asked her, “Why does this look so faded?,” her reply
was: “This is what my pastor gives me and it’s the best we can do.” This
tract was also published by Old Paths Tract Society, one of a handful of
resources that supply congregations around the nation.
As these societies go, the one that produces what one might call
the typical or “standard” design is the Fellowship Tract League (motto:
“All tracts free as the Lord provides”). These are the pamphlets that my
former workmate used to hand out and leave in the bathroom, of which
my favorite was The Burning Hell: Tortured Lost Souls Burning Forever.It
featured a rather expressive line drawing on the cover, printed in red and
black, of Satan looming large, overseeing lost souls trapped in hell and
engulfed by flames. Of all the four-pagers I received—including the
intimidatingly titled No Escape and It Is Finished by Hope Tract Ministry,
which basically said there is no hope for any of us—The Burning Hellis the
most memorable. While definitely crude, it is decidedly honest. Satan is
not some hokey horror-film apparition, but a convincing human form who
embodies the banality of evil. The lost souls are not merely comic
caricatures, but rather you and me (or maybe just me). And curiously, the
abundance of red flame does not come off as kitsch, but rather as a startling
graphic device with iconic impact.
While the Fellowship Tract League flyer touched a chord with
this infidel, another tract supplier, Bible Helps, is the purveyor of most
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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