Tag Archives: Fred Phelps

Banished, A Book Review

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This entry is part 10 of 12 in the seriesBook Reviews

banishedI recently finished reading, Banished, A Memoir, Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church.  The book is written by Lauren Drain (along with  Lisa Pulitzer) a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. The book is 295 paged long and  is published by Grand Central Publishing.

Laura Drain spent her teenage years as a member of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. The Drain family moved to Topeka to join the church in 2001 and they remain members to this day.  In 2007, Lauren was kicked out of the church. For a time she continued to live in Topeka. She is a nurse and now lives in Connecticut with her fiancé.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. Anyone who can escape the clutches of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church is to be commended. Throughout the book, it is evident that Lauren was mistreated and abused, and it is a wonder that she escaped with any sense of self-worth.  The church and her family did their best to destroy her mentally and emotionally, yet she came through it, and she deserves a lot of praise for what she has done with her life post-Westboro.

Banished reads like a teenage girl’s diary. Page after page details Drain’s angst over boys, make-up, dating, marriage, and the fear of going to hell. Drain spends significant time repeatedly detailing how she craved the approval of the Phelps’s and how she went about trying to gain their approval. Sadly, the book became quite redundant and I found myself speed reading.

Banished does offer a first-person account of how the Phelps clan lives. However, Drain says very little negatively about the Phelps’s or the church. As one reviewer on Amazon noted, it seemed like Drain, if she could, would go back to Westboro. I doubt this is actually the case, but Drain spends little time critiquing the vile behavior and beliefs of the Westboro church family.  I don’t want to be harsh in my judgment because I have not walked in her shoes, and since her family is still members of Westboro, I can easily understand her hesitancy over being severely critical of  the Westboro church family.

lauren_drain

Drain was not kicked out of Westboro because of her beliefs. She still believes in the Christian God, albeit a different version of the Christian God, a kinder, gentler, loving God. She still reads and studies the Bible and has come to see that there are many different ways to interpret the Bible.

In telling her story, whether intentionally or not, Drain shows that the Phelps family and the Westboro Baptist Church is made up of vile, nasty, vindictive people, who, due to their doctrinal beliefs, have lost the capacity to love anyone other than their own. (and even then, their love is conditioned on obedience to what the church beliefs and the edicts of the pastor)

Drain reveals that the Phelps family has a few secrets of their own, like the fact that two of Fred Phelps’s daughters became pregnant outside of wedlock. I am sure this was especially galling to Drain since the reason she was banished is because she desired to have a relationship with a boy that was not a member of the church. That’s right, her big sin was being a normal, heterosexual teenage girl.

And this is the crux of the story. It is the story of an American teenage girl who wanted to be like other teenage girls. She wanted to have a boyfriend. She wanted to feel loved. She had wistful thoughts about getting married some day. (the only available boys in the church to marry were grandsons of Fred Phelps) Her parents, the Phelps’s, and the Westboro Baptist Church, robbed her of her youth. They used  and abused her and then threw her away like a piece of trash.  (to this day she has no contact with her parents)

I wish Lauren Drain well. She deserves a good life, a life with those who will love her for who she is.  I hope that someday her family will be delivered from Phelps cult and that her relationship with them can be restored. I can only imagine the pain she must suffer from being completely cut-off from her parents and siblings.

Drain gives the impression that the Westboro Baptist Church in an aberration and that most Christian churches and people are not like the Phelps’s and Westboro. Unfortunately, my extensive involvement in Evangelicalism tells me this is not the case.

Westboro uses the threat of church discipline to control its members. I know of many Calvinistic Baptist churches that do the same. When I was co-pastor of Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas, I saw church discipline routinely used to keep people in line. People who refused to obey were excommunicated. When I decided to leave the church and return to Ohio, I was excommunicated because I did not ask the church’s permission to leave. To this day, the church considers me a publican and heathen.

Drain reveals that Fred Phelps is the domineering, controlling man everyone thinks he is. (as is his daughter Shirley who rules the church with her father) As the pastor of the church, he rules the church with a rod of iron. His word is the law. Is such behavior by a a pastor an aberration? Maybe in some sects, but in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church and in many Evangelical sects, extreme pastoral authority and control is the norm.

Westboro Baptist Church is a cult. Drain refuses to say this in the book, but any cursory reading of Banished will clearly show that the Westboro Baptist Church is a cult and Fred Phelps is a cult leader. The same cult markers found in the Westboro Baptist Church can be found in countless Evangelical churches.  If anything, Banished should be read by every church member in the IFB church movement. They will have no trouble seeing themselves in the book. As I have said many times. there is little difference between many Evangelical churches and pastors and Westboro Baptist Church and Fred Phelps. The difference is one of appearance rather than substance. There is nothing in the beliefs of Fred Phelps and Westboro that can’t be found in Calvinistic churches in the IFB church movement, in the Reformed Baptist movement, the Founder’s Group in the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Sovereign Grace Baptist movement. Theologically, there is little difference between Fred Phelps and Al Martin and Al Mohler.

How Inerrancy Turns Christians into Haters

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always_right

This is a picture of a retired IFB pastor in the nursing home.

Evangelical Christians believe the Bible is the inspired (God breathed), inerrant Word of God.  They believe that the text of the Christian Bible is without error and they are certain that every word in the Bible is the very words of God. (either spoken by him or inspired by him)

While many Evangelical pastors and professors don’t really believe the Bible is inerrant, they continue to preach the inerrancy myth from the pulpit and in their college classrooms. These Evangelicals, late at night, get out a flashlight, pull the covers over their head, and secretly read one of Bart Ehrman’s books. They will never tell anyone about this lest they lose their job.

When it comes to the people in the pew, I have never met an Evangelical Christian who didn’t believe every word in the Bible is true.  They are certain that the leather-bound Bible they carry to church every Sunday is the very words of God.

Evangelical Christians are told from their youth up that the Bible can be understood by anyone, even a child. Why then are there so many theology books if the Bible is so simple it can be understood by a child?

The fact is, the Bible is anything BUT a simple book. It is a book that must be interpreted and this is where Evangelicals get themselves into trouble. They think, The Bible is God’s Word, it is so simple a child can understand it, I have read it, and I understand it, thus my interpretation of the Bible is exactly what God said.

This kind of thinking leads to arrogance. When a person is absolutely convinced they are absolutely right, they no longer have to consider competing ideas or interpretations.

This kind of thinking is at its worst in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. All Evangelicals are theological Fundamentalists. The doctrine of inerrancy requires the Evangelical to have a Fundamentalist view of the Bible. In the case of the IFB church movement, not only are they theological Fundamentalists but they are also social Fundamentalists.

Social Fundamentalists take their inspired, inerrant Bible, often the King James Version, and strictly apply it to every aspect of their lives. They believe that everything in their lives is governed by what the Bible says. This is why IFB churches have strict codes of conduct, often called church standards. Everything, from what clothes they should wear, to what they should listen to on the radio, is determined by their peculiar interpretation of the Bible.

IFB pastors are known for being hellfire and brimstone preachers. They scream and holler, step on toes, beat church members with the sin stick, all because they think they are divinely called by God to tell people exactly what God says in the Bible.

As a God-called man, no women need apply, the IFB pastor thinks he has a special relationship with God. God speaks to the IFB preacher and the IFB preacher then speaks to the people in the pew. Just like the Pope, the IFB pastor, stands between God and church member.

Though the IFB pastor will deny what I have written above, saying, WE BELIEVE IN THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE BELIEVER, the truth is they only believe in the priesthood of the believer when the believer’s interpretation of the Bible agrees with theirs.

In the IFB church, as it is in most Evangelical churches, diversity of belief is discouraged. In many churches it is forbidden. After all, if the Bible is inerrant then there can only be ONE correct interpretation of the Bible.

Eleven years ago, we saw Fundamentalism at work in the George Bush administration when they decided to wage war against Iraq. George Bush and his administration were certain their beliefs about Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and weapons of mass destruction, were infallibly right.  And here we are a decade later, and hundreds of thousands of deaths later, trying to extricate ourselves from another failed war. Yet, to this day, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, refuse to admit they made any mistakes. They are certain that their beliefs were/are correct, and, in the case of George Bush, the Christian God was/is on our side.

Most IFB church members are not only theological and social Fundamentalists, they are also political Fundamentalists. They are certain their Bible is God’s words and that their interpretation is infallibly true. Since they apply the Bible to the minutest details of their lives, it should come as no surprise that they have exacting beliefs about politics.

I have never met an IFB pastor or church member who was not a Republican or a Libertarian. I am sure there are a few IFB church members who are Democrats, but they, like gay or bisexual IFB church members, are way in the back of  the closet. IFB church members are told to vote their “conscience” but everyone knows that voting your conscience means voting exactly the way God the pastor tells you to vote. To vote differently means going against the man of God, the Word of God, and God himself, and no one want to do that. right?

Disobedience and rebellion are not permitted in IFB churches. Those who think for themselves or believe differently than the pastor, are told they are not right with God or that they are backslidden. They are told their “discerner” is broke and that they need to listen to their pastor.

Those who refuse to conform end up marginalized, disciplined, or asked to leave the church. IFB churches are notorious for turning over their memberships, and generic Evangelical churches are not much different. There is a constant stream of people going out the back door as new people come in the front. (with most new people coming from other churches)

Is it any wonder that this kind of thinking turns people into haters?  Is it any wonder that people raised in this kind of environment lack the necessary skills to make sound, reasoned judgments about the world they live in?

Everything is, THUS  SAITH THE LORD. Everything is black and white. Nuance or gray areas are called compromise and God HATES compromise.

It is this kind of thinking that breeds the nasty, hateful comments you read on this blog. It is what causes people to send me nasty, hateful emails. Rarely does a day or two go by that I don’t receive a nasty, hateful email from an Evangelical Christian.

Just today, the husband of Jeannie Williams, (see here and here)  David Williams,  an IFB pastor,  took it upon himself  to email me and tell me about some blog posts he had written about morality.  I wrote him back and told him, in no uncertain terms, that I was not interested in reading anything he had written, he replied:

I did not attack you so if you don’t want to read truth, they that is your choice.  The moral law is a law of choices.  It is the law of love.  The only way to truly love is to know God.  If you don’t know Him you are immoral.  No one that is immoral can point their finger at anyone else.  That is all!

In a follow-up  email  he wrote:

Here are some points to consider.  You may not like me, you may hate Jack Hyles but you have a duty to be moral as well as any other being in the universe.  It is a law that applies to all.  Moral law is not the command of God or a product of the will of God.  It is a priori, something that every living person knows is just and right.  It is the law of love.

To sum up what David Williams is saying…anyone who disagrees with his view of morality is immoral.  Like Matt Nye, James Spiegel, and countless other Evangelicals who have written me, atheists are immoral.

Most decent, thinking people believe that  Fred Phelps, the Phelps clan, and the Westboro Baptist Church, are arrogant, bigoted, nasty, hateful people.  However, there is little difference between the beliefs of Fred Phelps and Matt Nye, James Spiegel, and David and Jeanie Williams.

While Matt Nye, James Spiegel, and David and Jeanie Williams put a better “face” on their beliefs and don’t go to the extremes that the Phelps’s do, their beliefs are pretty much the same. It is their belief that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God that leads them to the conclusions they come to.

The only only way to reach people like this is to attack their foundational belief that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. If they can be brought to see that the Bible is not what they claim it is, there is hope for them.

Don’t count on it. Most people who believe in inerrancy keep this belief until they die.  When you take a high road position like inerrancy it is hard to back up. To admit that the Bible is not inerrant is to admit you are wrong and Evangelicals rarely admit they were wrong. Those who do, do so on their way OUT the doors of the Evangelical church.

While I am not an evangelist for atheism, I do encourage people to leave Evangelicalism. Any religion that demands conformity and fidelity to a certain interpretation of a religious text  is certain to harm people intellectually and emotionally. Any church or pastor who demands everyone think the same way and who considers doubts and questions to be a challenge to their authority or a work of Satan are not places where a personal can intellectually and emotionally thrive.

Christian Clichés: God Hates the Sin but Loves the Sinner

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A common cliché used by Christians is:

I hate the sin but love the sinner.

The reason Christians use this cliché is that they want to be on God’s side and the sinner’s side at the same time. Most Christians, except for the Fred Phelps, Ken Silva, Peter Ruckman kind of Christians, want to be liked and respected. They know the Bible says some pretty harsh things about non-Christians and the sins they commit.

Here’s the problem with this cliché. God doesn’t think this way. Note what the Bible says about God and how he views sin and the sinner:

God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. (Psalm 7:11)

The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth (Psalm 11:5)

Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows (Psalm 45:6,7)

Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy. These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,(Proverbs 6:15-17)

I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. (Amos 5:2)

And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the LORD. (Zechariah 8:17)

I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. (Malachi 1:2,3)

As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. (Romans 9:13)

For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: (divorce) for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously. (Malachi 2:16)

Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. (Revelation 2:5,6)

The Bible is clear. God not only hates sin but he also hates those who do it. According to good, old fashioned, substitutionary atonement, Evangelicalism, God would even hate the Christian if it weren’t for Jesus standing between God and the Christian.

Look at what God did to Jesus on the cross. It is hard not to conclude that God really has a problem with anger. He beat his son to death, not for his own sin, but for the sins of others. Talk about taking the whole sin and sinner thing seriously.

As a pastor I never used the hate the sin but love the sinner cliché. The Bible is quite clear on the sin/sinner issue. God turned the devil loose on the human race after Adam and Eve sinned and he has been punishing the human race ever since. Christians, because of Jesus’ atonement, are protected from God’s anger over sin, but non-Christians bear the full-brunt of God’s wrath.

Ponder the message of the book of Revelation. What’s the central theme of the book? The rapture? The second coming?  What does the writer of Revelation spend most of his time writing about? Wrath. Judgment. God does some pretty sick stuff to the humans who are alive when Jesus comes back again, and when he is all done, what does he do? He sends all the non-Christians to the Lake of Fire to be tormented day and night for all eternity. This sure makes me want to break out in song and sing, What a Mighty God we Serve.

I used to explain God’s view of sin and sinner this way:

Imagine you are taking a walk in the woods and come upon a skunk. Before you can run, the skunk raises its tail and sprays you. Do you at that moment say I love the skunk but hate his smell? Of course not. The skunk is directly connected to the smell. No skunk, no smell.

So it is with sinners and their sin. Sin is what sinners do. You can no more disconnect a sinner from his sin that you can a skunk from his smell.

I should note in passing that most of the God hates talk is found in the Old Testament. The person who talks the most about God hating? None other than, the man after God’s own heart, David.

Christianity would be better served if it jettisoned the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation. As long as these books remain in the Bible, Christians will continue to have a hard time explaining to the non-Christians that God really loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life.

God may be love but he sure has a mean streak.