After seeing the strip below, I wondered whether Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, was an atheist. It turns out that he was, or at least a “secular humanist.” This is a surprisingly strident cartoon for a family-oriented comic, but was it was actually published—on August 9, 1976.
From an interview with Schulz (link above):
Though his philosophical views evolved over the years–“The term that best describes me now is ‘secular humanist,'” he explained–his characters continued to quote biblical passages, occasionally musing about the darker inconsistencies of religion. These thoughtful reflections were never heavy-handed; rather, Schulz had become the reigning master of the lighter-than-air, spiritually resonant comic-strip koan.
“I despise those shallow religious comics,” he said. “Dennis the Menace, for instance, is the most shallow. When they show him praying–I just can’t stand that sort of thing, talking to God about some cutesy thing that he’d done during the day. I don’t think Hank Ketcham [Dennis‘ creator] has any deep knowledge of things like that.”
h/t: Grania
Wonderful!
The Nietzsche Family Circus
[a href = “http://www.bay-of-fundie.com/img/2008/fc/ofc-crock.jpg”]Dysfunctional Family Circus[/a]
One of the earliest Peanuts collections I ever read was The Parables Of Peanuts, which I was nine. A book of religious advocacy, supported by cartoons for children. It gave me the impression Peanuts had always had a religious undertone.
“It gave me the impression Peanuts had always had a religious undertone.”
I’ve felt the same way. Maybe Schulz’s views evolved over time, because I was under the impression he was a traditional believer for a long time.
I seem to remember hearing that Schulz went out of his way to claim that the Great Pumpkin was not a statement on religion, but I’m wondering whether he was just doing damage control and keeping his views private at that time and was worried about losing readership if he made his views more well-known.
Personally I don’t see how the Great Pumpkin couldn’t be a statement about blind faith and religious credulity. It’s blatant.
I also remember how outwardly emotional he was during one of his last interviews, when he knew he was terminally ill. I know all Seculars don’t react the same way to the looming prospect of death, but I remember thinking at the time,”sounds to me like a guy with no belief in the afterlife.”
Sounds to me like it could be someone that is unsure. It is also common for christians to be emotional about their death.
Blatant, perhaps. But Linus is always shown as a sympathetic character. He is justified by his faith in the face of the unbelief of the gentiles around him.
Same here, but R. L. Short’s other book ‘The Gospel according to Peanuts’.
I went right off Charlie Brown after that, though Snoopy was still cool.
I don’t ever remember seeing the strip pictured, but probably missed a few… thousand.
I feel the same way about The Tao of Pooh.
Interesting. Peanuts were also used to illustrate Abraham Twerski’s self-help books, which are based on the 12 steps and have a religious undertone IIRC: http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Just-Time-Therapist-Approach/dp/0312132077/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_5
I always knew Snoopy ruled, and now I have evidence.
Woodstock is Snoopy’s John the Baptist.
Watching Linus wait for The Great Pumpkin suggested to me that Schulz was agnostic/atheist.
Such stridency! I love it.
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I wonder how much input he had into the Christmas Peanuts movie? That definitely seemed overwhelmingly pro-Christianity to me, although I haven’t seen it since I was a young religious teenager. Am I remembering it incorrectly?
No, you’re right.
A bigger “keep the Christ in Christmas” message you’ll never find.
That’s why I always presumed he was a believer – at least back then.
Not even from Johnny (*retch*) Hart?
Oh wait… that was Easter.
Yep, Hart apparently went off the rails toward the end. He had some classics before then, tho. Unfortunately, my favorite one isn’t in any collection or available online.
I used to enjoy BC as a kid until I saw one of Hart’s anti-evolution strips and realized that for him, the whole cave-men-and-dinosaurs thing wasn’t a joke. It was a shock to learn there were grownups who actually believed such stuff.
The Peanuts Christmas special was about focusing on what the holiday was about, not the commercialism choking it. Whether you are atheist or not, that point is well taken.
Syndicated cartoonists usually have very little control over how their creations are used (Bill Waterston was the exception, and he turned down a lot of money to keep control over Calvin & Hobbes). It’s possible Schulz had little or no input into that special, or in the use of his characters in books.
That is true, I guess I just assumed that Schultz must have approved of it on some level. I would think the studio would at least let him have input on a script to keep him happy.
Speaking of Calvin and Hobbes, that is the best comic ever, and Watterson definitely seemed like a freethinker.
My understanding is that Schultz wrote the Xmas special himself, but that was in 1966. He was a practicing Christian at the time. He later wrote (if I recall correctly – I don’t have a link) that he regretted the scene with Linus reciting the gospel. A lot can change in 10 years.
But then we wouldn’t have this:
http://www.metatube.com/en/videos/6125/Peanuts-Christmas-SNL-Real-Audio/
True dat! ha ha!
True dat, ha ha!
+∞ for Calvin and Hobbes.
Check out this and especially this.
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A friend posted this C&H with the comment, “A tutorial on the Tea Party’s philosophical roots.”
Bravo! I Love Bill Watterson.
I was going to say the same thing. The Christmas special is almost oozing with Christianity. Also, I thought that, at best, The Great Pumpkin thing was “accommodationist” – i.e., very sympathetic to Linus’ “faith” even though there was no Great Pumpkin.
Reblogged this on emmageraln.
???What ???
Dennis the Menace, as in red-black hooped jersey, Gnasher and beating up Softy Walter? Praying? As in, on the knees hoping for catapult supplies? Or did Dennis go trans-Atlantic at some point?
Ah… it seems that since the days of my youth there has been a TV series, a movie … and thorough-going emasculation.
Sacrilege!
http://www.beanocomics.com/Denis_the_Menace/index.htm
Completely different character. In North America, Dennis looked more like this:
http://www.dennisthemenace.com/
A curiosity: the 2 Dennis the Menaces were first published on the same day.
[SFX : Theme from Twilight Zone]
Someone, somewhere must have done a cartoon with the two Dennises (eh? that doesn’t look right!) experiencing either a full-body swap (as in Kafka and the cockroach ; BTW, what did the cockroach think?), or just a mind swap.
I suspect that one swapped Dennis would have ended up in a locked ward of a hospital, while the other one would have just been hospitalized due to broken bones etc. Softy Walter would have got his revenge.
I never saw anything about Peanuts that made me think Schulz was religious, and the Great Pumpkin was so obviously a satire on religious beliefs that only atheism or a very weak deism made any sense. I’ve always liked Peanuts.
Always makes me smile. Great Pumpkin was one of my favorites.
Schultz used to be religious. I’ve seen a book of some non-Peanut’s single frame stuff, it’s about the foibles of a church community.
At some point, his daughter was very badly injured by her horse, I think this caused him to rethink his religious beliefs.
Sorry, but I can’t find this on google, I just remember reading it in the book of church-themed drawings.
Oliver Cromwell put it this way in 1650:
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
Entirely different context, of course.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell
But he failed to fondle those bowels.
Emailed that one straight to Ma & Pa. Thanks, Professor Coyne!
I always liked Peanuts. When I became older and started getting more PO’d by religion I did get turned off of the Christmas special.
The thing about Charles Schultz is one can see his mind does question things via the years of the comic strip. He didn’t take everything at face value. I think he started out more religious than he was later in life. There was a university prof. where I went to school in Calgary who had this saying that the only correct theologian is the one that admits he may be wrong. I think even if Schultz still considered himself a religious person later on, he was of this type, someone that still questioned and didn’t take everything ‘on faith’.
If more religious people were of this type, I think a lot of the problems that spring up in America would distill down to a few fringe nutcases and believers and non-believers would be able to agree on a lot more. It would certainly help get rid of idiocy like schoolbooks from Texas and having to fight to keep evolution in school curricula.
There’s a career-spanning collection of Schulz interviews in print which includes this quote from some time in the last couple decades of his life (I have the book on my shelf, but can’t immediately cite chapter/verse):
“I think the best religion is no religion at all.”
Four years after his first use of that “…might be wrong” line, Schulz (note: no “t”) employed it again, this time spoken by Linus, in a multi-week arc where the kids are disturbed to find that their summer camp is run by fundies. For anybody interested in the topic of religion in “Peanuts”, it’s worth reading in its entirety (Peppermint Patty gets in a great dig in the final frame of the arc). Starts here:
http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1980/06/03
re: Great Pumpkin: although the idea yielded a lot of cogent comment on religion, Schulz stated its origin was simpler: what if a kid got his holidays mixed up? Got a season ahead of himself? But as the GP device featured in 40 years of Peanuts’ 50-year history, there was ample opportunity to explore its implications, e.g., “We are obviously separated by denominational differences.” One of my favorite bits was this sad result of Marcy’s exposure to Linus’s Halloween evangelism (which some years saw him going door-to-door and handing out tracts):
http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1977/11/01
Charles Schultz was obviously a gentleman, since he phrased that title as a question.
Schulz’s biography portrays him as initially Christian & religious and eventually a non-believer. As a child I was an atheist and saw no dissonance between celebrating Christmas (family, presents, tree) & not believing in any god.
I still like the Peanuts xmas special and consider it a resonant piece of art. The Great Pumpkin is certainly about the struggle between faith and reality and , no matter what Schulz says, it is clear who won.
Many people grow up believing in the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny but it is clearly a more limited group who are willing to give up the penultimate fantasy.