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Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church takes in-your-face to a whole new level. The church is nothing if not an equal opportunity offender, from its burning of both a Quran and an American flag on 9/11 to its signs proclaiming God’s hatred for ... well, pretty much everyone. While Westboro, established by a lawyer named Fred Phelps in 1955, claims to be a Primitive Baptist Church, that denomination denounces the actions of the church as “deplorable.” The church boasts of conducting 47,770 demonstrations since 1991 proclaiming its gospel of hate—while taunting on its website that the number zero represents the “nanoseconds of sleep that WBC members lose over your opinions and feeeeellllliiiiiings.”

From Rebecca Barrett-Fox’s first visit to the church in 2004 until defending her dissertation “Pray Not for This People for Their Good” in 2010, the scholar became intimately acquainted with the people of Westboro in a way that few outsiders have. Barrett-Fox, now a professor at two Mennonite colleges in Kansas (Hesston and Bethel) and a former editor for The Journal of Hate Studies, conducted intensive ethnographic research on the church, joining members at Sunday services, pickets at memorials for gay and lesbian people, and outside the Supreme Court when it ruled in favor of the church’s right to demonstrate at military funerals. Freelance editor and writer Joanie Eppinga (eagleeyeediting.com) met Barrett-Fox through Gonzaga University’s Institute for Hate Studies and interviewed her last April.

Interview at Sojourners (registration required)

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Westboro members say their purpose is not to convert souls. So why do they picket?

They say it’s obedience to God. They feel like God told them to do this, so they’re going to do it, regardless of public response. They use the same biblical passages used to justify any kind of preaching by any church: “Make it known to the world,” that kind of scripture.

They would say they know their preaching won’t save anybody. They are absolute predestinarians who believe that God chooses not just salvation and damnation, but everything. Not a sparrow will fall without it being God’s will. These beliefs, when taken together, make up the core of hyper-Calvinism. You are not saved because you heard them preaching; you are only saved because God wants you.

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Did the actual church service resemble mainstream Christian worship?

I had seen them preaching hate-filled messages on the streets. What amazed me was that they were saying the same thing in the church service—how do people come back Sunday after Sunday to hear this? Nothing new is being presented. I saw a lot of circling the wagons, with sermons about things like Noah and the flood and how only eight people got on the ark. This church is the ark, so if you’re a part of this church you’re getting on. The sermons are actually very typical of themes addressed in Calvinist teaching: questions of how you know that you are in or how you know that they are out.

So the attraction is the appeal of being part of the “in group.”

Exactly. And I could see the attractiveness of that in a world that is fragmented and scary, especially if you are not okay with doubt or gray areas.

Fred Phelps’ preaching is really a rhetorical act. You want to laugh at the jokes he’s making, and you want to be part of that group. He would say, “As it says in ...” and then he would drop the scripture and one or two people would call it out, or sometimes he would say, “Jon, what’s that Bible verse again?” And Jon better know it. It almost reminded me of law school, the level of pressure in a service.

Did children participate in this public biblical examination?

No, no. Neither did the women.

How were women expected to behave?

They can’t cut their hair at all, and they wear head coverings during religious services. But they don’t have to wear what I would consider modest clothing. I would sometimes see women wearing clothes I wouldn’t let my daughter wear to church, like shorts from Victoria’s Secret Pink collection, but also head coverings.

I was struck by how the congregation operated. It’s almost eerie if you are used to other kinds of church services. Nobody makes a peep; there’s no disruptive behavior, even from the kids.

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Did you ever feel drawn into the church’s perspective?

There was never a moment where I thought, gosh, let me join this church, but the appeal of the community—I could see that. I also think that church members create a culture that makes it uncomfortable to leave, and that becomes a high hurdle.

Because if you leave you are basically excommunicated?

They wouldn’t say “excommunicated.” They’ll take you off the church rolls, so you are excommunicated, but it amounts to more than simply excommunication from church services; it is de facto shunning because, as [Fred Phelps’ daughter] Shirley has said, “We don’t have time to talk to people who aren’t part of the church.” Shirley has one son who has left, Josh, who has publicly said, “I would like to have my mom be part of my life,” though he doesn’t agree with her theology.

So Shirley’s response to her son’s departure has been silence?

Oh no! She told everybody publicly that she’d just as soon line up all of her kids and punch them in their noses as let Josh back into her house, because she would be such a bad parent to give the message that it’s okay to leave this church.

Do you have the sense that she has any grief around his absence?

I can’t imagine how there couldn’t be. But if you go into Shirley’s house, on the refrigerator there are pictures of all of Shirley’s kids in foam picture frames, all in birth order, only Josh’s is gone—and no one has pushed the pictures of his two surrounding siblings closer together. Instead, there’s just a hole.

Shirley would say that he’s clearly not one of the elect since he left the church, so she’s not going to be in heaven with him anyway. For her to want Josh there would be like telling God, “You are wrong about this.” They probably don’t have an expectation that all of them will be chosen for salvation. That’s, again, that cold calculus of Calvinism, that maybe makes it easier when family members walk away.

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What does the Westboro Baptist Church activity, and our response to it, say about our culture?

It has illuminated for me the homophobia of some forms of conservative Christianity, and I find that far more dangerous than Westboro Baptist. Westboro makes those other guys look reasonable; conservative Christians make efforts to distinguish their own anti-gay message from Westboro Baptist’s. But Westboro is clearly a historic part of Christianity. There is a long strain of hyper-Calvinism in this country. Broader conservative Christianity does believe that God acts divinely in negative ways. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes are said to be God’s punishment for Pokemon or voodoo or whatever evil thing Japan or Haiti or New Orleans has done.

What struck you about the way people responded to Westboro?

Some of the most progressive people fell for their homophobic and misogynistic taunts and responded with hostility. I was discouraged by how normative that kind of behavior was. Yet I don’t feel discouraged in my faith at all. It’s not as if I’m looking at this situation and saying, “Oh no, what’s wrong with the world?” I looked at this and said, “Passionate, devoted, intelligent people get led in the wrong direction.”

How do you think people should respond?

I don’t think if you ignore them they will go away, because they are not motivated primarily by a response. I think what’s more important is showing solidarity for your community: Make sure that those being targeted are loved and supported.

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this is almost worse than I could have imagined....

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

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this is almost worse than I could have imagined....

The image of the kids' photos on Shirley's fridge really got to me.

I've never been a parent, and I've never been blessed/cursed with faith that fervent, but I can't imagine disowning a child.

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The church boasts of conducting 47,770 demonstrations since 1991 proclaiming its gospel of hate—

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ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam

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The church boasts of conducting 47,770 demonstrations since 1991 proclaiming its gospel of hate—

Do they realize that.s 6.23 demonstrations/day?


What ever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Lie"?

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess

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ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam

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The church boasts of conducting 47,770 demonstrations since 1991 proclaiming its gospel of hate—

Do they realize that.s 6.23 demonstrations/day?


What ever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Lie"?

Can someone explain to me how these groups get the money to travel to and do all these demonstrations (obviously they must not have jobs). Who is behind their funding?

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Can someone explain to me how these groups get the money to travel to and do all these demonstrations (obviously they must not have jobs). Who is behind their funding?

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

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Can someone explain to me how these groups get the money to travel to and do all these demonstrations (obviously they must not have jobs). Who is behind their funding?

That came up in the interview, actually:

How does the group finance traveling to all those protests?

Everybody pays their own way. They are Calvinists in the very traditional way: They work really hard. They don’t pass a collection basket during services, and if you try to donate money to them, they won’t accept it. But the church’s travel budget is a quarter million dollars a year. A lot of them have careers in law, health care, and nursing, as sonogram technicians, and in computer science and robotics. Almost everybody has an advanced degree.

Fred Senior is a lawyer, and 11 of his 13 children are lawyers; they have a family law practice. If you looked at it, you would think it was a progressive firm. They do tribal law in the area, some family law. They won’t represent you in a divorce if you are in your first marriage because they don’t believe in divorce. But if you are in your second marriage, that doesn’t count anyway, so they will represent you. And they do a lot with immigration. Fred Sr. actually made his career as a civil rights litigator; he won settlements on behalf of African Americans. He reopened Brown vs. Board of Education in Topeka, and won.

I once heard somebody say that being in court against him was like being in a knife fight. He was disbarred for unethical behavior, once at the state level and once at the federal level. At the state level he badgered a witness—attacking her personal life, especially her sexual behavior. At the federal level, he made disparaging remarks about justices.

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

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Can someone explain to me how these groups get the money to travel to and do all these demonstrations (obviously they must not have jobs). Who is behind their funding?

That came up in the interview, actually:

How does the group finance traveling to all those protests?

Everybody pays their own way. They are Calvinists in the very traditional way: They work really hard. They don’t pass a collection basket during services, and if you try to donate money to them, they won’t accept it. But the church’s travel budget is a quarter million dollars a year. A lot of them have careers in law, health care, and nursing, as sonogram technicians, and in computer science and robotics. Almost everybody has an advanced degree.

Fred Senior is a lawyer, and 11 of his 13 children are lawyers; they have a family law practice. If you looked at it, you would think it was a progressive firm. They do tribal law in the area, some family law. They won’t represent you in a divorce if you are in your first marriage because they don’t believe in divorce. But if you are in your second marriage, that doesn’t count anyway, so they will represent you. And they do a lot with immigration. Fred Sr. actually made his career as a civil rights litigator; he won settlements on behalf of African Americans. He reopened Brown vs. Board of Education in Topeka, and won.

I once heard somebody say that being in court against him was like being in a knife fight. He was disbarred for unethical behavior, once at the state level and once at the federal level. At the state level he badgered a witness—attacking her personal life, especially her sexual behavior. At the federal level, he made disparaging remarks about justices.

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

There are a few threads on here that the liberals and their conservative friends seem to agree with. This so called church is one of them. Something needs to be done to rid us all from this hate group..Maybe Hells Angels could get involved ?