Fred Phelps was born in
Meridian, Mississippi on November 29, 1929. His current occupation is
rabblerouser,
hatemonger, and
preacher for the
Westboro Baptist Church, a
Primitive Baptist church in
Topeka, Kansas. He has also worked as a
vacuum cleaner salesman and as a
lawyer. He has been
disbarred for de
frauding his clients,
lying in court, and
harrassment. He enjoys competing in
triathlons and exercises daily.
Phelps was, by all accounts, a
shy and unassuming, though frequently very
angry, boy. He was an
Eagle Scout, ran
hurdles, played in the
band, worked for the
school newspaper, and was a
Golden Gloves boxing contender. He graduated sixth in his class at the age of 16 and was recommended to
West Point. Because of his age, he had to wait a year before he could enter West Point, and at some point during that year, he attended a Methodist
revival, found
God, and turned away from his
military dreams to pursue a life as a
minister.
Phelps attended
Bob Jones University. In the summer of 1947, he and two other students were assigned to preach to and
convert non-believers and encourage them to join
fundamentalist churches. They chose to preach at
Vernal, Utah, mainly because it was a
hotbed of evil
Mormonism. They met with limited success, mainly because Phelps was
insulting and
belligerent to everyone he came across. But at the end of the
summer, they returned to the
university, and Phelps was ordained as a
minister at the ripe old age of 17.
Phelps had his first brush with
fame when he moved to
California and enrolled at
John Muir College in
Pasadena. He started a campaign to stamp out
necking,
petting, and
dirty jokes on campus that landed him in the June 11, 1951 issue of
Time Magazine. In 1955, he moved to
Topeka, Kansas, where he was given a new
church--Westboro Baptist--and quickly
offended most of his
congregation into leaving. Phelps believed that God
hated almost everyone--himself, his
immediate family, and his supporters excluded, of course--a
doctrine which, surprisingly, found little
support among the parishioners he railed against from his pulpit. Phelps has remained the sole
pastor of Westboro Baptist's approximately 50-member congregation (almost all of the church members are also members of Phelps'
family).
Phelps likes to present himself as an
amiable family man, but there is plentiful
evidence that he has been an
abuser of his wife and 13 children for decades. Two of the four children who have left the family have reported savage
beatings at the hands of their almost-constantly
enraged father. They were beaten hundreds of times with
mattock handles and
leather straps, while their mother calmly watched and wiped their faces off between sessions. He would
kick them in the stomach, twist their arms until they were almost
dislocated, hold them in the air and knee them in the groin. He would scream
invective for hours on end. For a time, he was addicted to
amphetamines, but when he kicked the habit, he became a
health nut and forced the children to
exercise and run
marathons. When he thought they were too
fat, he put them on
starvation diets which sometimes lasted for months.
Phelps was also
emotionally abusive. In addition to his extensive and
profane tirades about the kids, he also commanded that none of them could ever
marry or live outside the home without his
permission. He also insisted that they all get
law degrees, despite whatever
academic interests they had, because he wanted to have a whole family of
lawyers on hand to help him
sue his enemies.
Phelps hated his
father for marrying again after his
mother died, and he forbade his father from ever seeing him or his family. When his father sent their grandchildren
photographs, Phelps cut the pictures up into tiny pieces and mailed them back.
His
attacks have not been limited to his family either. Though he stridently defends his own
First Amendment rights, he works overtime to shut up anyone who speaks against him, especially in his hometown of
Topeka. He is an enthusiastic abuser of the
lawsuit, blocking up
court dockets in Topeka with
frivolous lawsuits designed to
harass and
intimidate his opponents. He and his family
picket public officials,
businesses, and
churches. They used to picket
private homes until the
city council banned it. He sends out hundreds of
faxes
libeling those he
disagrees with. Of course, no
evidence is ever provided to back up his charges. In many cases, the people who Phelps pickets, sues, slanders, or taunts are
guilty of only minor
crimes against Phelps--they preached
tolerance from the pulpit, they
employed a homosexual, they got in his way at the
track. But he has very effectively cowed much of Topeka into
silence. The
police avoid him, the
press avoids him, the churches avoid him. He has beaten them all.
Here's what two of his
estranged sons, Mark and Nate Phelps, said about their
childhood once in an interview:
"We weren't allowed to participate in any activities at school. Not through most of our childhoods. No sports, not even track, until my senior year. And no outside friends. No one was allowed to visit, and we weren't allowed to go anywhere. To birthday parties or anything. Then, shave our heads. My father wanted the world to reject us. It would drive us right back to him. To the Place. The world-within-a-world. The one that was Fredcentric."Fred Phelps is, in all likelihood, a
sadist.
Eventually, his children grew up. Some of them gathered up their
courage (Phelps had promised them that if they ever left home, he would
excommunicate them and they would instantly go straight to
hell) and left the family. In at least one case, one of his kids threatened him with a
butcher knife if he wouldn't stop beating their mother. Clearly, the time was coming when he wouldn't be able to inflict
physical and
emotional pain on his family, and he needed a new
target for his
cruelty. The growing panic over
AIDS in the 1980s inspired him to launch his
infamous campaign against
homosexuals. He and his family conduct daily
demonstrations outside their church, waving signs that say, "GOD HATES FAGS", "FAGS HATE GOD", "AIDS CURES FAGS", "THANK GOD FOR AIDS", "GOD GAVE FAGS UP", and other similar slogans. They also like to conduct these demonstrations at the
funerals of homosexuals who died of
AIDS or were killed by
gay-bashers--Phelps takes special
pleasure in the
Matthew Shepard case--the church's
website includes a counter proclaiming how many days Shepard has been burning in hell.
After
9/11, Phelps added a new gimmick to his repertoire -- America-bashing. His reasoning seems to be that 9/11 was God's
punishment on
America for failing to kill gays enough. Unsurprisingly, this made more people hate him than ever before. Judging this new spin on his ministry to be a great success, Phelps has taken to denouncing anything that makes it onto the nightly news. Dead miners in West Virginia? God hated them. Major city destroyed by hurricane? God hated them. Beloved celebrity dies? God hated them. Phelps and his congregation have even started picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in the Iraq war. Anything to get more attention and to spread more pain.
Here are some choice tidbits from Westboro Baptist's FAQ:
(Question: Why do you preach hate?) "Because the Bible preaches hate. For every one verse about God's mercy, love, compassion, etc., there are two verses about His vengeance, hatred, wrath, etc. The maudlin, kissy-pooh, feel-good, touchy-feely preachers of today's society are damning this nation and this world to hell."
(Question: Didn't Jesus die for everyone?) "No. Jesus died only for His sheep (John 10). His church (Ephesians 5:25). His elect (I Peter 1:2). If He died for everyone, everyone would go to heaven. All sins of all people would be forgiven. But obviously, all sins aren't forgiven, because people are burning in hell."
"The only true Jews are Christians. The rest of the people who claim to be Jews aren't, and they are nothing more than typical, impenitent sinners, who have no Lamb. As evidence of their apostacy, the vast majority of Jews support fags. Of course, there are Jews who still believe God's law, but most of them have even departed from that."As any halfway decent
theologian can tell you, Phelps' grasp of
Biblical principles is
ludicrously
weak. He seems to know this, because he always refuses to debate
Biblical scholars about his
beliefs. But if Phelps is a poor
evangelist for God, he is an excellent evangelist for
hate. If I were a more Christian person, I would point out that his
detractors hate him and are led to
damnation, while his family and supporters hate
for him and are led to
damnation. A
win-win equation for
Old Scratch...
Some
final thoughts, first from Mark Phelps:
"If my father's going to become a spokesman for the Christian Reform Movement, it's important Christians realize who he really is. What worries me most is my brothers and sisters may see him as a Christ-like figure. He has nothing to do with Christ. He is a sad, sick man who likes to hurt people. For as long as I've known him, he has been addicted to hate."And from me: It's
tempting to
dismiss Phelps as a small,
insignificant nobody grabbing a place in the
national spotlight by shouting "FAG!" a few times. One wants to avoid calling him evil or a monster or anything like that, because you can sense that's what he really wants. But, strictly based on his
sadistic treatment of his family, I think words like "
evil" and "
monster" are perfectly acceptable.
I'm an
atheist. I believe that, when Fred Phelps dies, he will cease to
exist, just like you, me, and everyone else. I don't expect him to go to
hell, and I certainly don't expect him to earn any
angel's wings. But Fred Phelps is one of the reasons I sit up late at night and
hope that I've been
wrong...
Information derived from the godhatesfags.com website and from an unpublished (and essentially suppressed) story by Jon Bell for the Topeka Capital-Journal (it used to be available online, but the Capital-Journal got it safely hidden away. Some background on that is available at http://www.cjr.org/year/94/5/topeka.asp .) ((UPDATE: Bell's article is back online at http://www.godhatesfundies.com/misc/ath))
(The suffering I go through for this site. /me goes for a walk in the park to expunge some of Fred's website from my brain.)
Thanks to wertperch for tracking down Fred's birthdate...