cpftop.gif (7900 bytes)





The Christian Crusade: Index



I. The Hoax
II. Backstory
III. Initial reaction
IV. Exposure
V. Retrospective
VI. The Documents
VII. The Interviews



Legacy of the Crusade:
The Saga of the Kronies



IV. EXPOSURE



In the spring and summer we distributed the “hoax” flyers, which inspired more angry mail. The “Hoax” flyer was admittedly pretty insulting; we claimed the original Christian Crusade flyer to be a “social experiment” and listed all the “data” we’d gathered about the apathy and self-righteousness of fandom. It was a superior, pretentious piece of agit-prop that should have made our actual objective crystal clear – provoking outrage from the easily-outrageable. Yeah, I know, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Again, we included the PO box address, inviting comment from the masses.

When I got a letter in September of 1991 – more than 18 months after the original flyer – from a fanzine in England wanting to know more about the Crusade, I wrote the one and only letter in response. I made it very clear that the Christian Crusade was a total hoax, a fake, not real at all. It had gone far enough and I didn’t want it going any further - certainly not across the Atlantic!

At the first Phenomicon in the fall of 1991, the Christian Crusade participants held a panel in which the truth behind the entire hoax was revealed in full. Foolishly we thought that a public airing of the events involved would put the matter to rest. No such luck. We continued to get mail addressed to the Christian Crusade up until 1995. FIVE YEARS LATER!!! The legend of Doctor P.R. LeNado lived on, to infuriate and intrigue. However, that ’95 letter was the last. A few years later I closed the PO box for good, leaving no forwarding address. The Christian Crusade To Stamp Out Science Fiction was finally over.