Cartoonist Tries To Put Gospel In Strip

If you hadn’t noticed, the comic strip “B.C.” often has a religious tinge to it. That’s no mistake, says its creator, Johnny Hart, who also pens the strip “Wizard of Id.”

“I find myself trying to put the Gospel into practically every strip I create without being obvious about it,” he said in the March issue of Charisma magazine.

Hart, 63, who attends a Presbyterian church in Nineveh, N.Y., says most of the letters he gets about his often subtle messages are positive. However, there are times when folks are unhappy with him.

Hart recalled a 1990 strip in which a caveman asks the B.C. character what the word “gospel” means. B.C. explains that it means “good news,” to which the other responds, “What’s so good about it?” Says “Beats the hell out of me.”

A ton of mail showed Hart that he missed the mark. Religious folks thought he was being irreverent or blasphemous. Hart apologized, personally writing to each person who had written him while also explaining that he was trying to show how “Jesus came into the Earth to ‘destroy the works of the devil.”’

Then there was a reader who wrote to Hart’s newspaper syndicate, urging it to tone down Hart’s religious messages. But Hart said he refuses to back down.

“Too many Christians have bought into the lie that we shouldn’t mention our beliefs,” he said.