Fred Phelps, founder of the WBC will forever be remembered as one of the most hateful people ever to walk this planet.
Fred Phelps has died. According to CNN the founder of the Westboro Baptist church passed away today Thursday the 20th of March 2014 from natural causes.
While many are calling for a picket at Phelps funeral Stephanie Mott, executive director of the Kansas Transgender Project doesn’t agree telling CNN “hate doesn’t drive out hate. Thats what Martin Luther King said. It takes love to drive out hate.”
Indeed it does.
[su_kellibusey]
It’s sad for someone to have lived a life so full of hate. When all you focus on is making others unhappy, you yourself will never be happy. I hope he finds some kind of peace in death, a release from that hate. And with his passing the world continues to turn as we move forward.
What Phelps did best was to show the world how not to be a Christian. All of us are less than worthy, and to spread pain and misery can only be described as para-violent by pronouncing eternal guilt and shame on otherwise loving persons. He went far beyond spreading a message and by doing what he did amounted to placing himself on the seat of judgement, something no human is ever deserving of.
For as much as the establishment (Westboro) he created hurt millions, and helped enforce the idea that religion is a hateful thing, I have to agree when it is said “you cannot fight hate with hate”
For those who chose to picket his funeral, good luck to them. It’s a hard slog fight to meet such obstacles with force.
While I can say, without a doubt that Fred Phelps was an awful, hateful man filled with hatred and vitriol that someone must have instilled in him, I cannot say that I hope he burns in hell, even as a person he would have believed would be going to hell (a panromantic asexual transman). Phelps had accepted the Lord as his savior, and as such, the Bible says that he will go to heaven. I don’t doubt that he will spend time in purgatory for the hateful message he has preached, but hell’s fire will not reach him. I will pray for Phelps and the rest of his family, as one of their fellow Christians, they are still my brothers and sisters.
i hope he,s burning in hell right now
I hope hell is as nonexistent as Phelps’ ethics.
I feel neither joy nor sorrow at his passing, just the belief that the world is now a better place.
The Christian message is about just that: a message. It is to be delivered while cloaked in love and tempered by personal sacrifice. It is never to be about targeting God’s children, no matter the perception of our “sin”, such that the message leaves behind in its wake, littered bodies, casualties of an animus void of love.
It is not about condemnation or exclusion. It is about proclaiming Good News and hope for humanity that some like I, choose to believe, and others choose to the contrary. Still, Fred was someone’s baby, child, young man and can never be accused of never having convictions, despite completely flawed delivery. I pray that his soul find rest and that by now he has been made aware of the error of his ways.
He is but a poster child of other “Christians-in-name-only” who likewise deliver what is supposed to be a bright shining light but delivered in darkness that attracts no one to the Good News. The fatal flaw that too many of my Christian brethren commit is by having laser-like focus on homosexuality, they reveal a pet peeve that fails to take “all sin” into account, which is ultimately not constructive to self, cause or nation. Although homosexuality is discussed, I haven’t been convinced that it rises to the level of sin in a loving relationship.
Picketing is a terrible concept… it tends to lend weight to the idea that these people really mattered for something.
This is why I will prey for Fred Phelps