American Tract Society / ATS

Analyst Comments [ Back to top ]

MinistryWatch.com’s Take
October 2004
By Dan Wray

Proclaiming Jesus Christ
With the chief purpose of proclaiming Jesus Christ, the American Tract Society exists as “a nonprofit, nonsectarian, evangelical organization providing the best possible in Christian tracts and related materials,” supplying “individuals, churches, and organizations with quality materials at reasonable prices.” Used in this context, the dictionary defines tract as “a brief treatise, pamphlet or leaflet for general distribution, usually on a religious or political topic.” (Random House, unabridged; 1970) Religious treatises, then, distributed expressly with the intent of “reach(ing) the world with the life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ” represents the principal objective and vision of the American Tract Society (ATS).

Arresting attention
ATS does more than produce and distribute Gospel tracts; it promotes their intelligent appeal to widely varying interests and strategic use among diverse groups. Quickly capturing the imagination, ATS skillfully uses what it terms “attention arresting” content to introduce the Gospel and convey it cogently. These arresting messages may take advantage of a popular movie theme or contemporary trend as a starting point for witness of the Gospel in a personal or otherwise meaningful context. Ultimately effective communication of the gospel may be said to be arresting in another sense as well, inasmuch as it arrests the progress of the individual toward a Christless eternity.

Modern ministry
From its early days of publishing and distribution, ATS has thoroughly adjusted to the information age in which its success must necessarily involve keeping pace with electronic distribution media such as audio, video, and the Internet. Today ATS maintains a sophisticated website featuring a history of the ministry, extensive information and training resources, testimonials both of personal conversion and of success in witnessing, and ATS’s substantial tract inventory as well as the richly inspiring stories behind individual tracts. Also featured are aids for integrating tract-evangelism with ministry, and numerous suggestions for utilizing the Internet to communicate the Gospel and devotional material. For example, the ATS e-Tract enables transmission of personalized e-mail tracts, as well as prayer and encouragement.

Multiple messengers and media, one message
In addition to its own e-services, ATS has partnered with other evangelistic distribution media efforts, among them Digitract, nonprofit producers of a full range of free online interactive tracts, evangelistic theme presentations and resources that can be e-mailed, downloaded for use offline, or embedded for use in another website. ATS’s website features several links to Digitracts’ Gospel presentations. ATS also links to other websites, promoting cooperating evangelistic partners such as media ministries, weblogs, Christian and family services, and even some retailers.

ATS cooperates domestically and internationally with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Luis Palau, Greg Laurie’s Harvest Ministries, Operation Mobilization and others, and annually welcomes incoming cadets at the West Point Military Academy with individual Bibles. ATS’s Garland, Texas facilities house nationally historical ATS memorabilia, as well as the Ministry Resource Center and press facilities. ATS produces 65,000 pieces of literature daily, and annually processes 54,000 orders in the distribution of 34,000,000 Gospel tracts to all 50 states and 33 nations.

Funding the effort
ATS is nonprofit, originally formed to foster the wholesome influence of biblically-based religious thinking in society. Today, ATS continues to be nonprofit, accepting donations to fund tract and evangelistic services distribution including start-up funding for foreign tract societies in countries including Korea, India, Canada, Australia and Sweden. Donor support is encouraged on ATS’s website through the use of secure servers. Web visitors will also find numerous links to ATS’s comprehensive history and ministry involvements. Supply of special event tracts and donor-funded grants for bulk production and distribution, as well as varied involvement with evangelistic local church efforts continue to make Christians mindful that this is an organization that has been publishing and distributing Gospel tracts for more than 200 years.

ATS is board-governed and also benefits from the visibility of its Council of Reference, an advisory board of evangelical notables from business, ministry and other walks of life. This group includes personal fitness guru Dr. Kenneth Cooper, U. S. Representative Sam Johnson, university chancellor Dr. Jay Kessler, Interstate Batteries founder Norm Miller, athlete and motivational speaker Kyle Rote, attorney Jay Sekulow, retired U.S. Army General John A. Wickham, as well as nearly two dozen nationally and internationally known pastors, evangelists and Christian educators. By associating with notables in Christian ministry and education, ATS gives donors confidence of biblical accuracy in its tracts while the inspiring stories behind the tracts come from every quarter, public and private. Wisely and strategically partnering with cooperating ministries and businesses also helps to keep the ATS name and ministry visible in otherwise diverse venues. ATS is theologically conservative, with Mission and Vision Statements, as well as its Statement of Faith posted on the ministry website.

Origins
ATS was organized in 1825. Its progenitors were the Religious Tract Society of London (1799), the New York Tract Society (1812) and finally the New England Tract Society (1814). Three prevailing social trends coalesced to produce ATS:

• The Second Great Awakening had made Americans more fervent in forthright expression of their Christianity.
• Territorial expansion had produced its own challenges to evangelism in the new continent.
• Attractive land prices and explosive immigration had caused population numbers to soar.

ATS became a popular medium for distributing the sermons, writings and other testimonials of many of the preachers and Christian leaders of the day such as Isaac Watts, Jonathan Edwards and John Bunyan. Some material was reprinted and recirculated from previous tract societies. Other original writings reflected emerging Biblically based sentiments that helped to shape and define the growing young nations’ moral ethos. Many endure, available in reprint, as historical witness to the evangelical fervor of the day, among them, Declaration of Independence co-signer Dr. Benjamin Rush’s letter, “A Defense of the Bible in Schools.”

Peddling the Gospel
ATS was instrumental in the colportage movement in America, a system of traveling Christian literature salesmen whose trade it was to distribute a mushrooming inventory of Gospel literature – tracts, pamphlets, books and magazines – in the streets, into the homes and churches, and across America. Such traveling salesmen quickly became ambassadors for Christ, witnessing, leading worship and giving Christian counsel to those they encountered. By 1855, ATS had 659 such traveling representatives in its employ. Colportage distribution was further popularized by Evangelist Dwight L. Moody’s Colportage Library, forerunner of Moody Publishers, publishing arm of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Ill. It is likely that Moody’s use of colporteurs owed largely to the success of ATS. Having become something of an American institution, itinerant sales of Christian books and Bibles continue to be a source of summer employment for college students throughout the southern region of the U.S.

Pattern of Truth
Dedication to the truth of the Gospel story has distinguished ATS throughout its history, amply witnessed by its continued association with some of the foremost Christian writers, teachers and thinkers. One such individual was Dr. Frank Gaebelein, writer, educator, editor and distinguished lecturer. Gaebelein was the son of Dr. Arno Gaebelein, himself a distinguished pastor, author and teacher, also a contemporary of D. L. Moody, C. I. Scofield, and Lewis Sperry Chafer. Frank Gaebelein was a champion of academic excellence, and the integration of faith with the learning process. His 1954 publication by the Oxford University Press, “The Pattern of God’s Truth,” is a classic, setting forth the straightforward notion that “all truth is God’s truth.” In preface to the paperback edition – published in 1968 by Moody Press – Gaebelein cited Augustine, Melanchthon, Pascal, Newman, Kuyper and others, stating,

“...the natural creation and the creative endeavors of man in all fields are in all their aspects related to God’s truth. For a dichotomy between sacred and secular truth has no place in a consistently Christian philosophy of education.”

Gaebelein boldly asserted that to deliberately “secularize” all education curricula not having expressly to do with the Biblical narrative was perilously flawed, that followers of Christ were full-time Christians and that their Christianity ought to inform everything they thought, learned and did – “...bringing every thought into the captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5b)...

Gaebelein’s association with ATS lasted from 1938 until his death in 1983. His influence upon ATS is memorialized in the library bearing his name on the ATS Campus in Texas. Other officially involved supporters of ATS’s worthy ministry have included presidents Polk, Harrison, T. Roosevelt, Wilson and Hoover, U.S. Representatives Charles Evans Hughes and William Jennings Bryan; businessmen William Dodge, Simon Greenleaf, and Arthur Tappan; and, theologians and ministers A.A. Alexander, Charles Hodge, Lyman Beecher, Albert Barnes and William McGuffey.

God of our fathers
The heartrending and recurring testimony of the nation of Israel in Scripture is that “there arose another generation after them, who knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which He had done...” ATS stands today as witness of those who have gone before. Whether in bold reference to God as the righteous One Who “sift(s) the hearts of men before the judgment seat,” or in lyrical millennial visions of a place where “righteousness will settle down and be at home,” there is enduring evidence that previous generations determined to leave a legacy for those who would follow. It is written in the story of the American Tract Society.