In Theory: On the legacy of Fred Phelps

March 27, 2014 4:13 PM PT

Fred Phelps, the founder the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan. who was known for his fire-and-brimstone anti-gay public protests — as many as 53,000 of them since 1991, according to church officials — died March 19 at the age of 84.

Q: What do you think will be his legacy, or impact on religion in 21st century America?

Fred Phelps was a man who had zero positive impact to the history of Christendom.

His unpalatable brand of Christianity was valid fodder for critics of any organized religion. His cultural presence eclipsed the size of his following. Because of his skill in media manipulation, he took a wild fringe group and placed them center stage as the counterpoint to the gay civil rights movement. He will reside in the conscious of our nation for decades to come as the definition of what it means to be both loveless and self-righteous.

Ultimately Fred Phelps’ legacy is hate. Yet, he did not succeed in getting the world to hate the same people he did. Instead, he gave us someone to hate and we are worse off for having fallen into his trap.

David Derus
Student
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena

Jesus Christ is the foundation upon which any lasting life-impact must be built. Any person’s life that is not built upon honoring and serving him will fade into obscurity. Paul the apostle wrote: “each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it, because it is to be revealed with fire; and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built upon it [that is, the foundation of Christ] remains, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:13-15). Romans 14:4 warns us to be careful in evaluating another’s life: “Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and stand he will, for the Lord is able to make him stand.”

So the question is, did Pastor Fred Phelps build on the foundation of Christ, and if so, how? His message of God’s anger against sin was valid, but I strongly disagree with his method of protesting military funerals and calling people derogatory names, saying that God hates them. It seems that the condemnation of sin was strong in his message, but the proclamation of God’s love for sinners was not. “Turn or burn” is true, I suppose, but Jesus put it a different way: “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:29).

Pastor Jon Barta
Valley Baptist Church
Burbank

Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, thought he represented God’s justifiable anger with homosexuals and anyone connected to them. But in the Christian community, he will be remembered as a poster boy for hate and for demonstrating behavior directly opposed to the commandments of the God he supposedly represented.

His legacy can best be assessed by looking at his own family. According to one of his sons, Nathan, four of Phelps’ 13 children have been alienated from him for years. The Westboro Baptist Church that is largely composed of extended family members shrank from 70 to 40 members over the last five years, and excommunicated Phelps himself in 2010 for unknown reasons.

This information was reported by Anne Lu of the International Business Times on March 26. She quoted Nathan’s response to his father’s death: “Fred Phelps is now the past… I mourn his passing, not for the man he was, but for the man he could have been. I deeply mourn the grief and pain by my family members denied their right to visit him in his final days. They deserve the right to finally have closure to decades of rejection, and that was stolen from them.”

Full of hatred to the end, Phelps inflicted the deepest pain on those he should have loved most, his own family. The most powerful force in human relations is love, not hatred. I believe this is why God commands us to love one another, even our enemies, for love has a profound ability to change the human heart.

I am reminded of the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Pastor Ché Ahn
HRock Church
Pasadena

On one hand Fred Phelps will not have much of a legacy in death, or an impact on religion at all. To be sure, Phelps was a scholar; he obtained a law degree at a very young age. But most of the world views Phelps as a deeply wounded human, trying to work outrage and entitlement issues that most likely challenged and overwhelmed him from a very young age. The fact that he was not able to heal himself was bad enough. The fact that he persuaded members of his family and also church members of the Westboro Baptist Church to accept his way of thinking, and to act out in such strong and bitter ways is a sad and tragic waste of a life.

At the opening of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) General Assembly some years ago, 5.000 or so delegates including myself came into close contact with Phelps and the Westboro church, as they, about 20 strong, demonstrated and screamed their hatred within 50 feet of us, as we entered our opening night session. We Disciples were not frightened. Rather, our hearts were broken for the little Westboro children, faces distorted in rote hatred, reciting insults and epithets they were not old enough to really understand, and we were sad for the Westboro adults who thought they were teaching their children the ways of an all-inclusive Christ. We may have begun our session praying for the Westboro church.

However, in looking into the face of intolerance and hatred, God holds a mirror up to each of us. Ignorance leading to fear, leading to abhorrence is that of which all humans are capable. Phelps is a small commentary that unless humans recalibrate their thinking to use their holy texts as the prelude to understanding and love, no matter what, peace, harmony and safety will forever wait in the wings.

The Rev Dr. William Thomas Jr.
Little White Chapel
Burbank

I think his long-term legacy will be minimal, and that to the extent he is remembered at all it will be as an outlier, an oddball in both the religious and political realms.

Give him credit for strutting and fretting with complete abandon across life’s stage. Rare is the public individual who displays their weird psyche so openly.

His obituaries are revealing, with many surprising tidbits. This man who would later picket soldier’s funerals was an Eagle Scout and received an appointment to West Point, which due to his thundering religious conversion during the summer after high school, he didn’t attend.

Between 1964 when he received his law degree and 1979 when he was disbarred from practicing in the state of Kansas for professional misconduct, he had a very successful civil rights practice, was popular with his many African-American clients, and won an award from the NAACP.

However, associates describe him as a “first-class nut,” who at times exhibited rage toward his opponents in court. To me, his strangeness is as puzzling as it will be fleeting in history, but we do know that mental illness often manifests itself in young adulthood.

I also wonder whether just totally ignoring the whole Westboro circus, since they claim to be carrying on in his tradition, wouldn’t be the best way to counter them. Nevertheless when they hit Glendale early this year, wild horses couldn’t have kept me away. I was proud that so many Glendalians came out to peacefully oppose hate.

But now I hope that he is forgotten and I think that he will be.

Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose

As a minister who recently directed a staged reading excerpted from the play, “The Laramie Project,” about the brutal murder of a young, gay man named Matthew Shepard for a Sunday worship service in the congregation I serve, I can think of nothing remotely positive to say about the religious legacy of Pastor Fred Phelps. And I hope that his ministry will have virtually no lasting impact on the religious beliefs of people in the world in the 21st century and beyond.

In a part of the play we did not present, Phelps is shown leading members of his congregation in a demonstration at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, with judgmental and vitriolic slogans and signs against homosexuality in general and Matthew Shepard in particular. Such a display is incredibly heartbreaking and insensitive at best and offensive and horrific at worst. There is no way I can imagine a person of faith even thinking about doing such a thing. And Matthew Shepard’s funeral was only one of thousands of such acts by Phelps and his church members over the last 23 years.

Although my beliefs and those of my denomination are in complete opposition to those of Phelps on the subject of homosexuality and my congregation welcomes those of all sexual orientations and gender expressions, my primary reason for my condemning his actions goes much deeper than that. While I believe in the right of people to have their own beliefs, when those beliefs are used to spread hatred and damage the lives of others, I cannot condone them.

I am convinced that we must find ways to live together that promote love and compassion, not hate and toxic behavior. That is my religious conviction, and I will continue to encourage that way of being in the world through my life and my ministry.

The Rev. Dr. Betty Stapleford
Unitarian Universalist Church of the Verdugo Hills
La Crescenta

First of all, may God have mercy on Mr. Phelps. He may have thought that he did what was right, but he made the mistake that so many religious folks do, and that mistake is being more concerned for what (he thought) was right than for being compassionate. Strange how this topic of righteousness or self-righteousness comes up now, because this very Sunday, March 30, one of the lectionary choices is the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to John.

In that scripture we are told that Jesus restores the sight of a man blind from birth. So Jesus is compassionate in healing the man, but all his disciples can do is wonder who sinned, the man or his parents, to account for the man’s being born blind. And the Pharisees are the real “blind” ones, because they can’t fathom how an itinerant preacher from Galilee who hangs out with all the wrong people can possibly have restored sight to somebody. So blindness is everywhere, except in the man who is healed by Jesus.

Again, may God have mercy on Mr. Phelps, but his “blindness” to the sorrow of others who were burying a loved one killed in military conflict kept him from seeing his own hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality. Regardless of what you think of the gay community and whether you think being gay is right or wrong, how can you possibly condone demonstrating at a funeral where people’s hearts are breaking?

Jesus’ life showed how compassion trumps justice and judgment every time. Somehow the Rev. Mr. Phelps missed that, and I feel bad for him, his family, and his church. And Jesus wasn’t first with the idea of compassion; one of the Old Testament prophets says that God desires mercy and not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6), and even more famously Micah says that the Lord requires that we “do justice and love kindness” (Micah 6:6) as we walk humbly with our God. The point of religion, friends, is to be compassionate, first and foremost, and Mr. Phelps was not.

The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada Flintridge

The Rev. Fred Phelps was well known for his hateful and virulent opposition to the LGBT community and our fine servicemen in the U.S. military by protesting military funerals. He was an easy target as a fringe group for the ratings-driven media that thrive on sensational news stories rather than meaningful hard news. His legacy will be characterized by a misguided brand of religious teachings that is centered on hate rather than compassion and love, as taught by well-established religions. As a Muslim, I cannot hate the Rev. Fred Phelps. Islam teaches me to pray for his soul and his current followers. As a community, we need to condemn the expression of hate while having compassion for the evildoer. Combating the darkness of hatred with the light of love is the next step after outright condemnation.

In the midst of the repugnant evil perpetuated by the Rev. Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, what shines through is the beauty of our country’s protection of civil liberties. If the first amendment can protect the hate speech of the followers of the Rev. Phelps, then it will protect us all. Historically, we as a nation have safeguarded freedom shrouded in the controversies of people who incite our collective outrage.

As we move forward in the 21st century, what I hope we learn from Rev. Phelps’ legacy is the urgent need to combat religious stereotyping of all forms. As a mostly Christian nation, the general public can easily discern the difference between a malicious fringe that claims to be Christian and the mainstream Christian communities that uplift society. This is unfortunately not true for some minority religions. American Muslims, for example, have repeatedly suffered from broad-brushed religious stereotyping which intensified after 9/11. Islamophobia happens in the U.S. as a result of guilt by association with the extremist fringe that exists within the Muslim community.

What we must highlight from these common experiences of extremism is not the hatred spewed but our collective disagreement with hate. When people of faith live under the guiding principles of peace, love and compassion, we come together in the renunciation of the blight of stereotyping as well as to further advance interfaith understanding and pluralism that is a hallmark of our great country.

Levent Akbarut
Islamic Congregation of La Cañada Flintridge

Fred Phelps is more the half-empty-cup sort, me thinks, not because he was especially lacking soul, but because his preaching was entirely judgment-and-damnation. He saw evil proliferating in America and he pointed his finger at our two biggest sore-spots; promiscuous sexual mores and civil atheism (despite our national motto). When people hear “In God We Trust” they don’t think of God as much as their money. And America strives to eliminate God from every aspect of civil life, yet everyone sings “God Bless America” on the Fourth.

I got in trouble once while answering a question on government findings regarding atheists in the military; I was assailed with tons of hate mail by a large minority of service-people who hate God and only say the Pledge of Allegiance when they have to because they reject “one nation under God.” So Phelps arrives, and instead of being sensitive to the parents who lose their homosexual offspring to AIDS or their soldiers to IEDs, Phelps is there saying, “See, it’s because we deserve it!”

Many are comforted believing Phelps is currently roasting in hell, but they might be surprised to find he is not there when they themselves arrive. The Gospel is a two-edged sword. The “Good News” says “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). That’s very magnanimous of God, but verse 18 concludes “whoever does not believe stands condemned already!” Condemnation is a given unless we repent!

People say, “look at those Westboro placards: ‘God Hates…’” How can they know? Psalms 5:5 says God hates “all who do wrong.” So if Phelps leans negative, it may be more personality than spirituality. While I can’t agree with his approach, I understand his angle. He is probably sitting at Jesus’ feet currently being tutored in grace.

The Rev. Bryan Griem
Montrose Community Church
Montrose

I believe that that Fred Phelps’ legacy will be empty and his impact on religion in America will be nil. Phelps was a much-reviled figure who was rightfully and thoroughly denounced by practically every religious organization in the country. I suppose that most Americans perceived Mr. Phelps, his church and his hateful antics as nothing more than a very bad joke.

However, there were some people who were terribly hurt by his madness and appalling protests. Certainly nothing positive came from his venomous anti-gay rhetoric. His church’s demonstrations at military funerals were simply inexcusable; I cannot imagine the pain and suffering these displays must have caused the grieving families of our fallen heroes. I hope that his passing will bring some sort of closure to the pain he caused.

The Westboro Baptist Church represented the most extreme example of Christian fundamentalism gone awry in America. The only thing I can say to their credit is that at least they disseminated their vile message only through words and other forms of expression rather than resorting to violent actions. Perhaps the one constructive legacy that Fred Phelps could leave behind would be if Muslim extremists and other hate groups would take that page from his playbook and renounce all forms of violence once and for all.

Rabbi Simcha Backman
Chabad Center
Glendale

The Rev. Phelps chose to follow a path of contention that hurt many, including some who were not even the targets of his crusades. The collateral damage included the distress he inflicted on the families of slain military personnel whose funerals he disrupted.

What I know of Phelps is based only on news reports. If they are correct, I find it difficult to see a positive outcome or legacy from his approach. I don’t believe it is compatible with the example set by Christ nor does it fit with what is taught by the LDS church.

Jesus didn’t hesitate to call out behavior that he found worthy of correction. In all but a few cases, his criticism was delivered in a spirit of love. His is the approach we are urged to follow in scripture and by our church leaders.

The church’s First Presidency has pointed out that reliance on love and compassion is more powerful, and more Christ-like, than anger or vitriol in dealing with those whose behavior runs contrary to our beliefs.

“We are called upon to be true disciples of Christ, to love one another with genuine compassion, for that is the way Christ loved us,” they said in a 1995 statement.

Phelps’ legacy would be far brighter had this thought governed his ministry.

Michael White
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
La Crescenta