The Church from Hell

Their young children go on marches waving placards that read: “Thank God for 9/11”. Members openly admit that the thought of an outsider being hit by a car or dying of cancer makes them laugh. Their hatred is targeted at a massive range of people including gays, Jews, Swedes, the Irish, soldiers, and anyone who has sex outside marriage.

On a page of their website, it hurls invectives at Sweden saying that it is a "land of bestiality, and incest and sodomy," there's a cautionary note at the bottom: "If you have something relevant to say (and cuss words are not relevant, you tolerant, loving, Sodomite Swede), contact us (via email)." They hate Swedes because the pastor was once jailed in Sweden for preaching against homosexuality.

Another target of the WBC is a Topeka restaurant, which first earned Westboro's attention by employing a lesbian manager. When the owner sent his bouncers out to rough up Westboro protesters during a 1993 picket - putting eight Westboro members in the hospital - the eatery earned a permanent spot at the top of Phelps' list.
But the most frightening aspect of this religious cult is that, far from being an isolated community, its followers hold down normal jobs, mix with normal people and send their children to regular schools.

Welcome to the Westboro Baptist Church — the most evil religious sect in the world. The Westboro Baptist is a church headed by Fred Phelps and based in Topeka, Kansas, United States. Its first public service was held on the afternoon of Sunday, November 27, 1955. While its members identify themselves as Baptists, WBC is an independent church and is not affiliated with any known Baptist conventions or associations. Westboro Baptist is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala.-based civil rights organization that monitors extremist groups nationwide.

This Kansas-based fundamentalist sect is led by Fred Phelps. The Kansas Supreme Court disbarred him in 1979. A decade later, he was facing disciplinary action from federal courts in Kansas when he surrendered his law license. Phelps preaches to a full house of 100 people a week, most of them from his family of 13 children, 53 grandchildren, and assorted in-laws.

Members of the WBC waved signs in front of a group of American flag waving bikers who are acting as human shields to protect the privacy of a family holding a funeral for their son who was killed in Iraq during a demonstration March 11, 2006 in Flushing, Michigan. They have also picketed the funerals of little girls who have died in bus crashes. Westboro members have picketed church services, holiday parades and funerals for President Clinton's mom. The group also picketing outside the 1998 funeral of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old college student beaten and tied to a fence in Laramie, Wyoming because he was gay. Shepard, who was not found until the following day, died of his wounds six days later.

The actions of this wacky cult prompted the Washington Legislature to pass House Bill 1168 in 2007, making it a misdemeanor crime of disorderly conduct to disrupt a funeral or protest within 500 feet of a funeral or funeral procession.

This past October, a federal district court in Maryland found Pastor Fred W. Phelps Sr., Shirley L. Phelps-Roper, Rebekah A. Phelps-Davis and Westboro Baptist Church had invaded the privacy of and inflicted intentional emotional distress on the family of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by church members.

A jury awarded Albert Snyder, father of the Marine, compensatory damage of $2.9 million and punitive damage of $8 million. But on Feb. 4, U.S. District Court Judge Richard D. Bennett reduced the punitive damage to $2.1 million, for a total judgment of $5 million. A federal judge has ordered that the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) building and the Phelps-Chartered Law office be taken away from the owners in order to pay a $5 million fine.

Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka said that she and other members will picket Ledger’s United States memorial services, not those held in his native Australia. They are doing it in protest claiming that the actor died and is in Hell because he played a gay character in “Brokeback Mountain.”

Members of a fundamentalist American church group had planned to stage a protest at the funeral for a Winnipeg man brutally killed on a Greyhound bus. The group intended to picket the funeral of 22-year-old Tim McLean to tell Canadians his slaying on July 30, 2008 was God's response to Canadian policies enabling abortion, homosexuality and divorce and remarriage.

The WBC has asked Washington Governor Chris Gregoire's office to approve a "Santa Claus will take you to Hell" message to display among other religious statements in the state capitol's third-floor hallway. The first part of Westboro's proposed message:

"You'd better watch out, get ready to cry, You'd better go hide, I'm telling you why 'cuz Santa Claus will take you to hell. He is your favorite idol, you worship at his feet, but when you stand before your God He won't help you take the heat. So get this fact straight: you're feeling God's hate, Santa's to blame for the economy's fate, Santa Claus will take you to hell."

Pastor Phelps’s daughter Shirley, who has 11 children, says: “The world hates us. So what? It’s very sad at these funerals, it’s true. It’s very sad that these people won’t get the message. She said, “You are not going to make me feel bad about it. If they’re offended, that is a clear indication they hate God’s word and are headed for hell.” She also boasts of sending letters to grieving families. “They say, ‘You angered God’.”

Who are ‘they’ she is speaking of? It is obviously she and her crazy family who are for the most part, members of their evil church.

This is what Pastor Phelps says of the war in Iraq: “God duped you into starting a war so he could punish you. And you fell for it. They’re eating their babies! You will eat your babies!” The cult’s children sing songs with lyrics such as: “I’m ashamed to be an American where fags are free to roam.” To them, fags include couples living together who are not married to each other.

Steve Drain — who joined the cult after making a film about them, despite having held liberal views was asked if he is glad when “sinners” get cancer or are in car accidents, he replied: “I love it — it means God is doing his job.” ,

Topeka, Kansas residents say they've been held hostage in their own city, fearful that crossing Phelps or disputing his apocalyptic vision - a world of sodomites facing eternal judgment from a wrathful God - would result in pickets, verbal abuse or a massive smear campaign broadcast around the world via fax and the Internet.

Despite the constant turmoil, Phelps says everything is going the way he wants. He is not here to make people happy. He's here to deliver the word of God and that word, Phelps says, isn't good news for modern man. He says, "It is my job to make these people mad as hell," he says. "It is my job to harden their hearts. It is my job to blind their eyes and it is my job to stop up their ears."

Phelps despises other clergy even more than everyone else on his hate list. He calls them false prophets for espousing the concept that God hates the sin, but loves the sinner.

There is no shortage of religious psychopaths in our world. Phelps is a "psychopath and a religious extremist who seeks to promote himself instead of God.

Our world today is full of men and women who claim that God is on
their side, and who, secure in the righteousness of their positions,
perpetrate acts that cause sorrow and misery to others. Such individuals are driven by the certainty that they alone are privy to sacred truths issued by God and are therefore morally obligated to do everything in their power, by any means—no matter how many people may suffer—to act upon these truths. Coupled with their inflated sense of personal rectitude, moral certainty, and ideological purity is a tendency to dehumanize and even demonize those who oppose them.

While many psychopaths seem to be misfits, spending much of their lives incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals and penal institutions, most of them were clever enough to remain outside of the said institutions and wreak their havoc on anyone that happens to be near them. They are indifferent to the suffering they cause to others and have no empathy at all for anyone.

Being fairly bright, the psychopaths learn how to manipulate others to their wills and preach nonsense to anyone who will accept their teachings but this kind of behavior hardly fools any normal people because their teachings ring hollow as there is no truth in them. Their fraudulent behaviors distinguish them from normal people so they are easy to spot. The psychopath can use lofty words when needed ---- an easy thing for a fairly intelligent psychopath ----- but there is no emotional content to them. They surround themselves with equally mad people, devoted followers who are equally clueless about what it means to be a feeling human being.

The psychopath demonstrates an inability to comprehend the meaning and significance of his behaviour for other people and to judge their probable reactions to his behaviour. The psychopath is often astounded to find that people are upset by his exploits.

According to most psychiatrists, the religious zealots are individuals whose narcissism is so extreme and grandiose that they exist in a kind of self-created splendid isolation in which the creation of the grandiose self takes precedence over legal, moral or interpersonal commitments to others.

A religious zealot is not alone in the arena; his followers and supporters are the most reliable help to him. A religious zealot would not win without his followers’ help; his regime would achieve nothing, eventually collapsing in chaos. A zealot’s subordinate has to be a devoted follower and be blindly obedient. Cult leaders have an outstanding ability to charm and win over followers. They beguile and seduce their followers into believing that what they say is gospel.

We have all heard of them so there is no need to list them in this piece but I did feel compelled to write about Phelps and his motley crew of religious misfits.