Hellfire!

I can't help but be fascinated about the story of Fred Phelps, one of the strangest conservative ministers in Protestant Christianity today, and the impact he's having well beyond his base in Topeka, Kansas.

In Sunday's Oscars ceremony, Sean Penn, in his acceptance speech for Best Actor, made reference to some picketers outside the Kodak Theatre, who were demonstrating against gay rights. Penn had won the statue for playing the title character of Milk, as in the assassinated San Francisco supervisor and gay activist. It turned out that the picketers were from Phelps' church, Westboro Baptist.

It made me recall a Web site I saw over 10 years ago with the blunt URL GodHatesFags.com. I don't remember exactly how I found out about the site, except that I was on some conservative or right wing site and saw a link (I research all political points of view, from extreme right to extreme left, in order to try and understand people. I myself am a conservative leaning moderate.) In those early days of the Web I didn't Google, but "Alta Vista-ed," or "Yahoo-ed." I wondered if the organizers of the site, who certainly weren't shy about telling about the evils of being gay, still were on the Web.

The answer is, yes, they're still there, and they are that same Fred Phelps and his church. Godhatesfags.com has been updated to a somewhat Web 2.0 slickness, and how has related sites, such as GodHatesAmerica, GodHatesCanada and PriestsRapeBoys. The writing for the most part is well edited for grammar and punctuation, and is full of scripture and startling, hateful fury at the evil, sin-filled world. A related site, signmovies.net, offers not only video explanations of the signs that Westboro members hold up at their protests, but also some very strange, very strident hymn music videos and the bizarre, clumsy use of hip hop slang to introduce them.

Westboro Baptist says on its main site that since 1991 it has made more than 20,000 demonstrations against gay rights, funerals for soldiers killed in action and anyone who is blatantly disrespecting God. Members hold up signs saying things like GOD HATES FAGS, GOD HATES AMERICA, AMERICA IS DOOMED AND OBAMA ANTI-CHRIST, with a photo of the president growing two huge ram's horns out his head.

From all those Web sites, Westboro appears to be a big church, but it barely has 70 members. And most of them are the adult children, grandchildren and in-laws of Pastor Fred Waldron Phelps, as well as a couple loyal families. The church is basically a house where Phelps raised his family, as well as neighboring homes that his kids bought up, along with a common backyard area.

Besides all-out war on gays, Westboro Baptist says God hates America for accepting homosexuals, and that's why 9/11 happened, and why young men and women keep getting killed in the war effort in the Middle East. The church also hates Canada for laws permitting gay marriage, Sweden for jailing a minister who spoke out against gays and the Catholic church, because it allows priests to molest kids and teaches a warped version of Christianity that sends millions to hell. It hates Asia and says the 2004 tsunami was punishment for not accepting God and allowing children to be used as sex slaves in some of the bigger cities.

Phelps' story is intriguing, to me, because his personality type is much like the the people who get into conspiracy theory. He offers, however, no federal government plots to destroy the World Trade Center or that aliens have infiltrated the government. Instead, everything is due to Satan and sin, and the world is heading for the last days. That is his conspiracy theory.

Phelps rose from a small town in Mississippi to a mouse that roars regularly and viciously. In this rather long expose from 1994 by journalism intern Jon Michael Bell, Phelps' estranged sons paint quite a scary picture of this guy. On one hand Phelps preached a severe, totally Bible based version of Christianity, yet on the other was greedy for money, power and the opportunity to be lord and master of his own little flock or cult group. He bullied, brainwashed, terrorized and injured people into loyalty. At Westboro you not only drank the Kool-Aid but ate the glass and the pitcher, too.

Phelps is heartily avoided by most mainstream Christians, especially Baptists who cringe at the fact he uses that term as part of the church name. He has been called cult leader, manipulator and many other unprintable names and countered with numerous "God Hates Fred Phelps" type Web sites.

Phelps was born in 1929, the same year as my dad, way down in Dixie. He was originally being prepared by his dad, also named Fred, to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Phelps' dad had even gotten him appointed to West Point, but at 16 he "got religion" with a friend after attending a revival, and he has been preaching ever since. He cut off his dad when the old man married a divorcee, and later his sister and former preaching buddy, who had married. The estranged kids remember that Fred sent every Christmas present and birthday card for them back to his dad and stepmom, and happily ripped up photos of the grandparents while the kids had to watch. The estranged kids never even knew their aunt's or grandparents' names till they grew up and the Topeka Capital-Journal told them.

To Fred Phelps I, Delia Jean Streefkerk, would be a harlot, because I've been divorced for four years. I would be a slut, even though I'm been celibate since 2004, when I separated from my husband, Bill, and even though I've never sold my body for sex, which is what a harlot does. I would be from the gutter, because to Pastor Phelps, there is to be no divorce, no remarriage and no sex but that between a married man and woman. I'm also damned to hell because I'm a Lutheran.

Fred was married in the early 1950s and eventually had 13 kids. He studied sporadically at a couple bible colleges, including Bob Jones University, and earned a law degree. He dictated to his kids that they must never make friends with anyone in their schools or neighborhoods; their duty was to the home and church. The only career they could pursue was the law. Strange that his girls were forced into law, a career that requires much research and oratory, something he doesn't want wives to do. You'd think that only the sons would be required to join the practice.

Two of his sons quit the church and moved to southern California, where they run a small chain of copy shops. They maintain their father severely beat most of the kids and his wife, Margie, because of his belief that children must get regular discipline, and women must submit to their husband's will without complaint or talking back. Two daughters left for much of the same reasons, one going so far as to change her last name to Bird to distance herself from the Phelps family reputation.

Phelps was disbarred in the 1980s for what amounted to extortion of defendants in various lawsuits he filed all over Topeka and the surrounding area.

Despite the accusations against this religious despot, nine of the 13 Phelps kids remain loyal to their dad, working in his law firm and handling the picket duty. There are also several dozen grandchildren now, and they're all involved in the operation, too. Eleven of the kids earned law degrees, as dad commanded. The kids are the associates of Phelps Chartered Law, a firm connected to Westboro Baptist. In 1995 Westboro Baptist jumped to the Web after a grandson suggested the possibility of reaching a global audience. He's the kid who put up that first GodHatesFags site.

Phelps started Westboro in the mid-1950s and is not connected to any denomination. He says it it a "Primitive Baptist" or "Calvinist" church that believes in predestination, or that before people were born it was determined whether they will go to heaven, and "total depravity," that people are born into sin and are slaves of it. Both of these concepts are part of the "five points" of Calvinism.

Though Phelps and Westboro Baptist rage through the Web sites and picket year-round and across the country, they sure aren't in the business of saving souls. They make no effort to get people to believe or recruit anyone to join Westboro. In their FAQs on the main Westboro Web site, someone likes what they're doing and wants to donate and buy a church T-shirt. The gruff answer: we don't accept donations, and if you want a shirt, go to a shop and make your own. Basically, Go away, we don't want you. We're happy to be our own little saved enclave.

Westboro just wants to tell everyone they're going to hell, and that God hates just about everyone for sinful behavior and especially because of the tolerance of gays. They want to scream at the world about the evil, yet because of Calvinist views refuse to do anything to change people or expand the Kingdom of God. Church members believe they are already saved, and very few, if any of the people they reach with their demonstrations will truly repent and believe in God the Westboro way.

From a Christian standpoint, this church's mission is useless and wasteful. They are Christian versions of Muslim extremists, only they don't blow people up, just royally make 'em mad and incite them to possible violence. Jesus commanded his followers to go through out the world, spread the gospel and baptize in the name of the Trinity. But all Westboro does is scream that everyone's got a date with Satan, and there's no escape from that. Total waste.

But time has a way of shutting things down. One of these days Fred Waldron Phelps will meet his maker, as he's pushing 80, and finally he'll get his accounting with God over whether he was really doing the Lord's work. More than likely, that judgment won't be very pretty.