Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas is probably the most infamous church in America. The typical reader might know them as the “God Hates Fags” church. WB has gained notoriety in the US by holding up outrageous signs outside funerals. Fall from Grace is a documentary on the group made up of interviews both from members and adversaries.
A Movement from One Man’s Loins
The background of Westboro Baptist is more interesting than anybody would’ve expected. Church founder Fred Phelps graduated from his Kansas high school at the top of his class at the age of 16. He went on to become an influential civil rights lawyer but was disbarred for reasons that the film never makes clear. (According to a Mother Jones article on Phelps, it was for “allegedly being too abusive to witnesses.”) Westboro Baptist was founded in 1955, but it wasn’t until the early 90s that Phelps started to see acceptance of homosexuality as the thing destroying America.
According to critics, the only members of Westboro Baptist are Phelps, his descendants, and their spouses. The man had thirteen children. According to Mother Jones, eleven of them have law degrees themselves, and as of 1999 there were 45 grandchildren. Of the original thirteen offspring, all but four are still affiliated with the church. Two agreed to be interviewed for Fall From Grace and accuse their father of child abuse. The pastor’s children who are still loyal to him deny the allegations.
The church’s first political battle took place in 1991. They felt that Gage Park in Topeka had been taken over by “fags” and pestered the city about it. Westboro Baptist started protesting locally anything related to homosexuality, like the funerals of people of suspected of dying of AIDS. Picketing Matthew Shepard’s funeral and harassing his parents in 1998 brought the group national attention. The movie shows a page from WB’s website that says “Matthew Shepard has been in hell for 2631 days” with “Eternity – 2631 days = Eternity” under it. Since then, anything that could focus the media on the group has been seen as a good excuse for a protest. Part of the thinking goes that America is a damned country, so anything that causes her people to die is something to celebrate.
The shrewdest PR move, if notoriety is the goal, has been protesting the funerals of US soldiers. Among the signs held up are “THANK GOD FOR 9/11″ and “THANK GOD FOR IEDS.” In the 1990s, Phelps’s church was attacked with an IED. Since the device is now the number one killer of Americans in Iraq, Westboro members are convinced that the wars in the Middle East are God’s revenge on America.
A Wrathful God
The term “hate group” gets thrown around a lot, but in the case of Westboro Baptist Church the term is accurate, as indicated by signs like “IT’S THE FAGS STUPID,” “FAGS DIE GOD LAUGHS,” and the honest “GOD HATES YOU.” Their theology is a form of Calvinism that holds that man is naturally depraved and only a select few are saved. The church’s FAQ answers the question “Doesn’t the Bible say that God loves everyone?” with a “No,” followed by an explanation. Westboro Baptist’s members feel that they are commanded to tell people they’re wrong, even if doing so is useless, since who is saved and who is damned has already been decided from the beginning of time.
Although I lost my faith long ago, I found myself taking a liking to Pastor Phelps and his church. There is something incredibly inspiring and, well, manly about a God filled with such hatred and wrath. Phelps came across as a real man, especially when contrasted with advocates of the hippie Jesus who were interviewed in opposition to him.
It’s pretty remarkable that nine out of thirteen of the founder’s children stayed with the most hated church in America. You usually can’t count on your kids sharing your political and theological beliefs in this day and age. For example, two of Ronald Regan’s four children became liberal activists. Phelps, whether through beating his kids or merely through the sheer force of his personality (aided, perhaps, by genes predisposed to accept authority), made sure his offspring followed in his footsteps. One daughter had ten kids. (Reagan, for comparison once again, had zero grandchildren.)
Phelps is an alpha at an almost supernatural level, akin to Brigham Young or Mohammed. He didn’t even need to find followers; he made them!
At one point Phelps is asked why he protested at the University of Kansas. He replies “Picketing KU at any time is good. I mean, that’s a hotbed of fag (suppressing a laugh) activity.” You get the impression that the Phelps clan is pissing people off because it’s fun and would do the same if they didn’t believe in God. One interviewee sticks out: a young woman named Sara, a granddaughter of Pastor Phelps. A well-spoken, attractive girl, she has a barely concealed smile when talking about the “fags” taking over.
One thing that’s for sure is that Fred Phelps is evolutionarily successful. White culture expects parents to raise their own children, and those who can’t afford kids are less likely than non-Asian minorities to have them. With a religion that boosts the fertility rate of the upper class, there may be eugenic breeding going on in Middle America. And while the theology of Westboro Baptist may alienate many people, I can’t help but consider revulsion towards American culture, no matter how impolitely expressed, as healthy.
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While I admire his power and authority he has over people, wishing I myself could command such authority, I can’t help but think he is, in all possible meanings of the term, a self-righteous religious fanatic that’s the exact reason America is being hated and disrespected in so many countries around the world. The only other religious group that feels this strongly are the Christians’ “arch rivals,” the fanatic Muslims. What never ceases to amaze me is that these fanatically religious people think they are doing the right thing for saying such lewd and crass terms as publicly announcing that “god hates fags” and showing up and picketing a dead homosexual boy’s funeral but yet they will have the nerve (and hypocrisy) to say that Muslims and Neo-Nazis, etc. are bad people when they are one in the same. It amazes me how hypocritical religion can be. The only way we can even hope to advance as a nation and society is by renouncing these ridiculous “cave man” style scare tactics in order just to control the religious or political communities. It is in every way what happened to my own country, Germany, at the outbreak of Nazism and WWII and everyone knows where that went. I myself don’t believe in the whole “2012 is the end of the world” prophecy, either, however, I do believe that if anything drastic is to happen in the next several years, it will be the collapse of America as we know it due to this insolence that is expressed in articles and speeches repressing the rights of Human beings no matter what race, belief, or sexual orientation.
Why didn’t Hoste include some references to Phelpses Churches well known racist and anti-semitic comments??
Here is a link to some of his Churches anti-black comments, which is worthy only for entertainment value: http://www.plattsburghforpeace.com/black.htm
“With a religion that boosts the fertility rate of the upper class, there may be eugenic breeding going on in Middle America.”
One finds this hard to believe given the behavior of Christians.
1.) Christians work overtime to import brown and yellow immigrants (the primary reason I left Lutheranism is due to their bringing in Somalis!), having an overall dysgenic effect.
2.) Christians are theologically against all forms of Eugenics, so hence-forth are pro-Dysgenics.
Americans who knowingly or otherwise serve the Jews deserve no special consideration. Today they slaughter Iraqis who threaten Israel, tomorrow they’ll slaughter WN who threaten the diaspora.
Whether I as TOQ editor approve or disapprove of Phelps is not the point. Sometimes I run stories just because they are interesting. Phelps is a car crash, and I can’t help looking, and I want you to look too. Beyond that, however, Phelps is thought-provoking.
Richard Hoste, the review’s author, is clearly ambivalent about Phelps.
On the one hand, Hoste shows Phelps as a malevolent and mischievous hate-monger who seems to choose his targets quite arbitrarily (his “reasoning” that leads him to celebrate the deaths of American soldiers is laughable), and whose protests — especially at funerals — are entirely counter-productive, both given his theology of predestination and the facts about human psychology. Phelps is repulsive not just to orthodox liberals and “hippies,” but to anyone with healthy moral sentiments.
Yet the reviewer cannot help but admire Phelps from a Darwinian point of view — which is certainly NOT Phelps’s own point of view — for Phelps is a genuine patriarch. Hoste the atheist and Darwinist wonders if hateful tribal religions, which offend both reason and decent moral sensibilities, may still be effective vehicles for creating, preserving, and expanding high-IQ endogamous communities.
The answer is yes. Just look at the Jews, whose Old Testament seems to be the main source of Phelps’ theology.
Like I said, Hoste’s review is thought-provoking. And that is why I published it.
Phelps has a lot to be commended for on the one hand, but on the other hand, protesting the funerals of American Soldiers was crude and disgusting. I also have a problem with his “civil rights” background. He seems to be more of an attention whore than a true believer in anything.
I’m really confused. So, the author’s conclusion is that this is a good group? That really disgusts me and makes TOQ lose any credibility with me. When my brother-in-law was killed in Iraq we heard that these people would show up at his funeral. No one dealing with the death of a loved one should have to worry about this on the day they mourn their death. As for the comparisons to Ronald Reagan and how the majority of Phelps children still stick with him, brainwashing is a lot more powerful than regular child-rearing, so it’s not really surprising that this is the case.