An independent Baptist church famous for its hate-filled protests is back in the news, and one Southern Baptist leader wants to make clear to the public that the church has no affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Westboro Baptist Church, a Topeka, Kan.-based independent church comprised largely of the family members of pastor Fred Phelps, won a court victory late last month when a federal appeals panel ordered the father of a dead Marine to pay the church more than $16,000 in court costs from a civil suit he filed. The father had sued the church after it protested his son’s military funeral, with church members carrying signs reading, “You’re going to hell,” “God hates you” and “Thank God for dead soldiers,” CNN reported. His son was killed in Iraq in 2006.
The Supreme Court this fall will decide whether Westboro has a constitutional right to protest at funerals.
Westboro conducts hundreds of protests each year and made a name for itself years ago with its “God hates fags” signs. In fact, nearly all of its protests are related to the issue of homosexuality. It has even protested the Southern Baptist Convention at least twice. The Southern Baptist Convention is on record as stating that homosexuality is a forgivable sin and that homosexuals can be saved.
“We repudiate the tactics used by Fred Phelps and his followers at Westboro, and find them offensive,” Roger S. Oldham, vice president for convention relations for the Southern Baptist Executive Committee, told Baptist Press. “We grieve when any individual or group that identifies itself as Christian draws attention to itself and away from the cross of Christ, whether it is us or others.
“This church has no relationship with the Southern Baptist Convention. I do not know any Southern Baptist who does not share my sorrow and grief that this group distorts the message of the cross and reflects poorly on Christians in general and Baptists in particular.”
Other Southern Baptist leaders have gone on record opposing Westboro’s actions. In 2007 Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land – referencing the protesting of military funerals – wrote a column calling the church “fanatical” and accusing it of practicing “verbal terrorism.”
“One cannot begin to imagine the increased pain and suffering it has settled in the hearts of these grieving mothers and fathers, spouses, children and siblings when in crazed speech this lunatic assaults them,” Land wrote. “In my opinion, Fred Phelps and his followers’ grotesque assault on these bereft family members is nothing less than verbal pornography and obscenity. It is not, and should not, be protected under the First Amendment. For this group of misguided zealots to do their despicable deeds in the name of God is blasphemous.”
Land has also been highly critical of Westboro’s claim – as referenced on its protest signs – that “God hates fags.” Land called Phelps’ views “a blasphemous contradiction of Christ’s message of redeeming love as supremely revealed in the person and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.”
“These twisted, sub-biblical perversions of the Christian faith are particularly dangerous in an increasingly biblically illiterate society that has only a cursory and decreasing knowledge of the Bible’s content and teachings,” Land said. “God does not hate anybody, and God would never countenance the use of a demeaning and derogatory word like ‘fag’ to describe a human being for whom his son died. God loathes and detests homosexuality, but God loves the homosexual.”
In 1999, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that didn’t mention Phelps by name but did say: “[W]e publicly denounce and deplore all violent attacks upon homosexuals, and – we express our abhorrence of the teaching that God hates any person on account of an immoral lifestyle.” – BP