The Gospel According To Peanuts
This is an excerpt from Denny Carleton's memoir Welcome To My World
When I was about ten years old, my parents moved from Euclid to Willoughby, Ohio, which was pretty rural back then. I found out that it was tough to move in the 6th grade. I had to start all over again in a new neighborhood and it seemed like a very big deal to me. There are those of you out there who can relate to this. I did adjust however and made a lot of great new friends. Our gang in the neighborhood reminded me of the Peanuts gang.
Speaking of Peanuts, years later as an adult, I worked at a Christian bookstore and had the opportunity to take home and read many books. My favorite book, by far, was The Gospel According to Peanuts.
It explains in this book that Charles Shultz was a Christian and his entire comic strip was a parable. The format of the book was to show a comic strip from Peanuts such as a castle made of sand being washed away and then Linus looking at his foundation ruined exclaiming, “There must be a message in here somewhere.”
Another example would be one of the different characters proclaiming to anyone who will hear; “Believe in me, believe in me, believe in me.” Then he would say “I just can’t get anyone to believe in me.” The dissertation would then explain the comic strip or parable to say that this is, at times, how the churches approached evangelism. No attempts to actually explain, just chant “Believe.”
St. Anselm became a Catholic saint; the reason given was that he had the profound ability to communicate the gospel in the language of his times. Father Chaminade, the founder of the Marianist tradition, also believed in discerning the signs of the times and communicating them accordingly. This dogma is also one of the tenets of Vatican II.
In each discussion of the Peanuts parables, they would cite scriptures, theologians, artists, philosophers and entertainers. Ah! a great book; helping me to shape my thinking using humor in a comic strip to proclaim the gospel in an entertaining way.