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Goodbye Jesus

Westboro Baptist Church


cobrakai

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We've obviously all probably heard about the nut jobs from Westboro Baptist Church. When I read articles about their latest quests I can't help but notice in the comments that many Christians reply and say how disgusted they are that the gangs from Westboro Baptist even call themselves "christians" and beg the media to stop using the term as well. I find it odd though because what is Westboro doing differently than any other church or preacher we have seen in our experiences? Besides the fact that they are disgracing these military funerals how is their core message any different than say, Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell? Preachers around the country constantly spew the idea that our country has horrible things happen to it because we harbor and enable abortionists, communists, feminists, and homosexuals. Are these christians that don't want to be associated with Westboro just fooling themselves again as to what their doctrine actually teaches? I would like some opinions on this. Does the bible not say that god "hates" homosexuality or that homosexuals should be killed? That doesn't seem to far off from some of the protest signs you see Westboro carry around. Let me know if I am totally off base here, it just seems confusing to me. The only difference seems to be that Westboro doesn't mind looking nuts and doesn't mind being in your face about it.

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I agree. Things other Christians tacitly agree with, the Westboro gang are willing to put themselves out there and risk everything for.

 

The ways they interpret Scripture and determine what it is that God wants them to do with their lives are as valid as any other sect's conclusions. They take their script right out of the Book the same as the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, snake handlers, Catholics, charismatics, Amish and Lutherans do. The general society is just more tolerant of some Christian views than they are of others.

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The new snake handlers?

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I agree with you. According the the buybull, god hates just about everybody and so does Westboro. They're just emulating their skydaddy role model. But "other" christians don't want to be seen as this hateful, so they just cherrypick the good parts of the bible and god and call that christianity.

 

BTW, Westboro visited my area a couple of weeks ago, protesting at three jewish organizations and a local high school that has a gay-straight alliance club. As a response to the wackos, someone created an online account for people to donate money to the protested groups and raised over $10,000 in a couple of days and sent a Thank You card to Westboro.

 

Last year, I attended a military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. The Westboro people were there. Sickening. But what's even more sickening is that at most of their protests, the number of their children there far outnumber the adults in attendance. Makes my blood boil to see another generation being brainwashed and abused.

 

Have you ever read Addicted to Hate: The Fred Phelps Story ? It's a sad, often disgusting read. But some of his abused kids (now adults) actually escaped from the family. They had a horrific childhood. I imagine the current generation of kids endures similar abuse.

 

http://englishatheist.org/indexz27.shtml

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As much as I dislike the WBC, they are right on the mark when it says "God hates fags." You can't breathe without having made God angry some way or another.

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But then I've read other arguments that the bible's condemnation of homosexuality is a mistranslation in English: http://truthsetsfree.net/studypaper.html

And that's exactly the point. Gay Christians don't want God to hate fags and the homophobe Christians do. There is always a way to get Scripture to support the position you want it to.

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But then anti-theist atheists are guilty of doing the same thing where they cherry pick the worst parts of the bible and the worst moments of Christianity to impose their negative view on all religion.

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But then anti-theist atheists are guilty of doing the same thing where they cherry pick the worst parts of the bible and the worst moments of Christianity to impose their negative view on all religion.

And that's why I'm anti-theist. Religion is meaningless without the interpretation of people with their own agendas. Who's to say which one is "correct?" Obviously, none since there is always another verse or revelation to counter every doctrine held by other Christians or believers in any god or religion. None of the doctrines stand alone on their own merit. All believers must choose which man's opinion to follow.

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But what's even more sickening is that at most of their protests, the number of their children there far outnumber the adults in attendance. Makes my blood boil to see another generation being brainwashed and abused.

 

I would speculate that this is strategic. They're less likely to get their asses kicked if they have a bunch of little kids with them.

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But then I've read other arguments that the bible's condemnation of homosexuality is a mistranslation in English: http://truthsetsfree.net/studypaper.html

Is the next verse also a mistranslation?

18:23 And you may not have sex relations with a beast, making yourself unclean with it; and a woman may not give herself to a beast: it is an unnatural act.

Does this also have something to do with some temple cult that is as unprovable as the assertion in this paper? The verse prior (v21) indicates the slim possibility of a sacrifice taking place but this practice is not really understood and would relate more to the Phoenicians (if my memory is working properly).

 

Or what about the redo in chapter 20?

12 And if a man has sex relations with his son's wife, the two of them are to be put to death: it is unnatural; their blood will be on them. 13 And if a man has sex relations with a man, the two of them have done a disgusting thing: let them be put to death; their blood will be on them. 14 And if a man takes as wife a woman and her mother, it is an act of shame; let them be burned with fire, all three of them, so that there may be no shame among you.

Does any of this context suggest this has to do with temple cults?

 

If it does I am unfamiliar with these practices.

 

What appears to be stated is that doing anything outside the cultural norm, or whatever it is that is trying to be established as "normal" via these laws, is condemned (to greater or lesser degrees). If it can be established that these other cultures *did* practice some form of what we call homosexuality, for whatever reason, then the context of these chapters seem to indicate that the practice was not acceptable and possibly condemned.

 

18:24 Do not make yourself unclean in any of these ways; for so have those nations whom I am driving out from before you made themselves unclean: 25 And the land itself has become unclean; so that I have sent on it the reward of its wrongdoing, and the land itself puts out those who are living in it.

Don't do these the things that caused these others to get evicted. It almost seems like this may only need to be a partial list and *knowing* what those others did should be enough to keep a person from doing those things. Maybe this is just a list of "examples" as it were? But even if it's complete I would say, combined with chapter 20, it does a good enough job to eliminate the temple cult context (even if it evolved over time this makes no difference to us now since the text is like a "unified" mandate from our point of view).

 

mwc

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But what's even more sickening is that at most of their protests, the number of their children there far outnumber the adults in attendance. Makes my blood boil to see another generation being brainwashed and abused.

 

Same here. They visited the church I still work at and the children involved was the most disturbing part.

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Does this also have something to do with some temple cult that is as unprovable as the assertion in this paper? The verse prior (v21) indicates the slim possibility of a sacrifice taking place but this practice is not really understood and would relate more to the Phoenicians (if my memory is working properly).

 

 

From the link:
Even if we accept the NIV or KJV translations, (KJV: “Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.”) we still must understand the historical context of how a man laid with a women, for this is the qualifier of the phrase. Some affirm that this law is quite straightforward. Clearly from the previous sixteen verses, we know that these laws are written to men. Thus, some may say, this law forbids men to “lie with”, or have sex with, other men. This interpretation is flawed as it entirely ignores the phrase “as with a woman.” These four words cannot simply be understood to refer to lying sexually, since that is already indicated in the Hebrew word

translated “to lie with.” If the above interpretation were what the author means he could have just written, “Thou shalt not lie with a man; it is an abomination.”

 

 

 

“As with a woman” must have been added for some reason, and we must understand the context of this law to understand it fully. The status of women in that time was much lower than that of men, and women were even considered property of the men. This belief regarding gender relations is rejected by most of the Christian church

today, but in order to make sense of this specific Jewish law we must keep in mind this context in which it was written.

 

Rabbi Arthur Waskow explains, “The whole structure of sexuality in the Torah assumes a dominant male and a subordinate female.”4 In other words, women were obedient to men, and men in that time would have been dominating and controlling in sexual encounters. The woman did what the man wanted and how the man wanted it. For a man in a sexual encounter to be treated in that way, within the Jewish culture of the time, the man would have be taking a lower status, as well as being sexually dominated and controlled. To do so would have been reducing him to property and in effect defiling the image of God, which man was considered in that culture. This, however, is exactly how men would have treated the male temple prostitutes—in a controlling and abusive manner, and also is how individuals would have been treated in the sacred sexual orgies with which Baal was worshiped. They would have lied with other men “as with a women.”

 

The sin in Leviticus doesn't seem to be about our modern understanding of sexuality which Leviticus seems to be unaware of but it's a commandment in a culture where having anal sex was consider degrading to men
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Hi, I'm Rob. I created an account to reply to this, and I hope that's okay. Here's my lengthy discourse.

 

First, I take issue with someone telling me "this is what your doctrine believes." Nobody else knows for certain what I believe about anything, and I don't like being pigeonholed to the point that someone who doesn't know me presumes to inform me what I do and don't believe. I make up my own mind, try to keep an open mind, and reserve the right to change my mind.

 

Second, as a Christian, I don't see my renouncing of Westboro's hate speech as an attempt to make some sort of "less-extreme homophobia" more palatable. What WBC does is deplorable to me simply by virtue of the fact that I see no reason to go around picking out sins, or insisting that something is or isn't a sin, or presuming to take that to such an extremist level that I tell someone that God hates them.

 

The point of my faith, to me, is that no human is perfect. I don't know a single person, gay or straight, who claims to be perfect. The point of a perfect savior is to redeem an imperfect race. If we really are "all only human, after all" then it doesn't matter to me whether being gay is a choice or if you're born that way, or if it's a sin or it's not a sin. The point is that I'm no better than anyone, and none of us is capable in our imperfect state of saving ourselves from our own sins, whatever sins they might be, and regardless of what we think does or doesn't constitute a sin.

 

Hate just has no place in that.

 

Furthermore, Westboro loves to latch on to a tiny handful of Bible verses that they turn into an entire platform of hate against specific groups of people who have already suffered far too much persecution in the name of religion. I don't see any biblical basis for claims like "God hates fags," or "God hates America," or "Thank God for dead soldiers."

 

I do, however, see plenty of Scripture that speaks very clearly to me about the types of people and actions that I see embodied by Westboro Baptist Church.

 

For example, the people of WBC constantly refer to themselves as "prophets of God" as they proclaim their gospel of hate. I can't help but think of the words of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but they are ferocious wolves. Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"

 

There are plenty of verses refuting the false notion that God hates everyone, too. A passage in 1 John reads, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love."

 

So what about hate? Are there things that God hates? Proverbs 6 names a few. "An arrogant look." Have you heard Fred Phelps preach? Have you seen Shirley Phelps Roper in interviews? The only people whose arrogance rivals theirs are perhaps the Rush Limbaughs and the Glenn Becks. How about, "Hands that shed innocent blood?" If God does, indeed, hate this, what must he think about a group who continually celebrates the murder of Matthew Shepard? Another one is "Feet that are swift in running to mischief." They just can't seem to get to the next picket fast enough, can they? And what of "He that sows discord among brethren?" Um, does this not encapsulate nearly everything they do?

 

So no... I can't agree with the idea that mainstream Christianity is just a watered-down version of Westboro. Westboro is, from my perspective as a Christian, an absolutely false church preaching an absolutely false Gospel. I can't think of any group that more blatantly perverts the message of hope that Christ embodied. It is deplorable, gut-wrenching and shameful.

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Come on, Rob. We all know your church believes that faggots are gonna burn in hell. :shrug:

 

Unless you come from one of those cherry-picking liberal congregations?

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Guest Marty

 

So no... I can't agree with the idea that mainstream Christianity is just a watered-down version of Westboro. Westboro is, from my perspective as a Christian, an absolutely false church preaching an absolutely false Gospel. I can't think of any group that more blatantly perverts the message of hope that Christ embodied. It is deplorable, gut-wrenching and shameful.

 

Everything WBC preaches is biblically sound though, so I don't think you can claim they are preaching a false gospel. The only thing you can really say is you don't agree with those particular verses/commandments from your holy book.

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Their beliefs are as well founded as any other Christian beliefs. Kind of embarrassing what can be found in that holy book, eh?

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Didn't Shirley Phelps have a child out of wedlock? So if the Phelps are true Christians following the bible literally, why don't they call for Shirley to be stoned to death for committing the sin of premarital sex?

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I agree with you Cobrakia,

I was a Christian for 40 years, and well versed in theology, and doctrine. The attitues, and opinions, expressed by WBC ARE the only logical conclusions that can be reached when you take the Bible literally. Most Christians deny this, and focus on "Christian Love" etc, but I think deep down they know that that is exactly what the Bible teaches, unless you do some fancy interpretational footwork.

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As to god hates fags, god also considers women wearing slacks an abomination, lies are an abomination, eating shell fish is an abomination and birds with four legs are an abomination (that last one may be true).

 

Does god really hate fags? There is a commandment not to commit adultery and so many do. There is a commandment not to covet your neighbour's stuff which is really minor stuff. But there is no commandment against homosexuality.

 

Jesus never said a word against homosexuality. Paul did but Paul was a lying racist bigot. Christians were not persecuted till 200 years later so there was no Saul. Acts 28: 30-31 proves the Saul story was a lie.

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Guest Babylonian Dream

They're true baptists of the sort I was once, you'd be suprised what they would put themselves through just to obey the lord no matter what. They're in a sense true christians over most other kinds, simply because they are ones that try so hard to follow the Bible, and obviously as a result, they don't look very good in a modern world.

 

I think it's funny how many christians want to disassociate themselves with them, when they're also without knowing it, disassociating themselves with their god.

 

Are they wrong? Well by the bible's standards no, but my standards yeah.

But my standards have nothing to do with the bible, but everything to do with the way I am, so what would westboro care what we think of them? Seriously, these people are oblivious as you can get to the real world. Fundamentalist Baptists in general are as oblivious and delusional as you can possibly get without having some sort of mental disorder.

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They're true baptists of the sort I was once, you'd be suprised what they would put themselves through just to obey the lord no matter what. They're in a sense true christians over most other kinds, simply because they are ones that try so hard to follow the Bible, and obviously as a result, they don't look very good in a modern world.

 

I think it's funny how many christians want to disassociate themselves with them, when they're also without knowing it, disassociating themselves with their god.

 

Are they wrong? Well by the bible's standards no, but my standards yeah.

But my standards have nothing to do with the bible, but everything to do with the way I am, so what would westboro care what we think of them? Seriously, these people are oblivious as you can get to the real world. Fundamentalist Baptists in general are as oblivious and delusional as you can possibly get without having some sort of mental disorder.

I think it will be interesting to see the Christian bigots confronted with their own Westboro Baptist Church mirror image.

 

Legislators and Pastors speaking out against equality for homosexuals should be asked, "Does God Hate Fags?"

 

I know they would wiggle out of it and deny it, but it would make them squirm, and it should open the eyes (and ears) of the listeners.

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Guest Babylonian Dream

Unfortunately I don't think it will open their eyes and ears. They'll just dislike Westboro because they're unpopular, at the same time they vocally disagree with them (well say they do), they'll be just as vocally agreeing with them in other ways.

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In reality, mainstream fundies despise Westboro for their methodology rather than their theology. It's just bad fucking PR.

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Guest Babylonian Dream

In reality, mainstream fundies despise Westboro for their methodology rather than their theology. It's just bad fucking PR.

How do you get up and preach from your rooftops that good book and not get bad PR?

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