"Peanuts" comic strips

Over the years I've helped Nate Butler of COMIX35 with bios for his Christian Comics Pioneers website:

http://www.christiancomicsinternational.org/pioneers_index.html#anc...

I once asked him, "Why don't you have Charles Schulz on the list? Surely the "Peanuts" strip is loaded with Bible quotes, and there's that famous moment in the animated Charlie Brown Christmas special where Linus explains the true meaning of Christmas. Nate said, "If you can find a direct quote where Schulz says that he believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then I'll be happy to include his bio." That'll be easy, I thought.

So I thought.

I combed through several biographies of him. Yes, Schulz taught Sunday school in the Congregational church for ten years straight, then he said that he stopped since they had read the entire Bible through, and anything more would be redundant. He later became a secular humanist and said in a 1998 interview with The Comics Journal, "I don't believe in school prayer. I believe it's total nonsense." As most of you know, prayer was taken out of public schools in the U.S. in 1962. Schulz created the 1963 comic strip included here which touched off a lot of controversy at the time. Truth be told, Schulz could say anything through these child characters without necessarily agreeing with them. He knew his audience, and much of the heartland of the U.S. in those days were God-fearing, reverent folk.

Christian Comics Pioneers

Information on Christian Comics PIONEERS around the world

Replies

Calvary Comics May 28, 2014 at 4:42am

Correction: I said Congregational in an earlier post, but Wikipedia shares the following: " Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church."

In Good Grief: the Story of Charles M. Schulz by Rheta G. Johnson (1989) Schulz is quoted as saying, "I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in."
Calvary Comics May 27, 2014 at 1:44pm

Here are a few more strips with Scriptural themes. The comments at the bottom aren't mine; I found them that way online.
Calvary Comics May 27, 2014 at 1:28pm

Over the years I've helped Nate Butler of COMIX35 with bios for his Christian Comics Pioneers website:

http://www.christiancomicsinternational.org/pioneers_index.html#anc...

I once asked him, "Why don't you have Charles Schulz on the list? Surely the "Peanuts" strip is loaded with Bible quotes, and there's that famous moment in the animated Charlie Brown Christmas special where Linus explains the true meaning of Christmas. Nate said, "If you can find a direct quote where Schulz says that he believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then I'll be happy to include his bio." That'll be easy, I thought.

So I thought.

I combed through several biographies of him. Yes, Schulz taught Sunday school in the Congregational church for ten years straight, then he said that he stopped since they had read the entire Bible through, and anything more would be redundant. He later became a secular humanist and said in a 1998 interview with The Comics Journal, "I don't believe in school prayer. I believe it's total nonsense." As most of you know, prayer was taken out of public schools in the U.S. in 1962. Schulz created the 1963 comic strip included here which touched off a lot of controversy at the time. Truth be told, Schulz could say anything through these child characters without necessarily agreeing with them. He knew his audience, and much of the heartland of the U.S. in those days were God-fearing, reverent folk.

Christian Comics Pioneers

Information on Christian Comics PIONEERS around the world

This reply was deleted.