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| © David Hartman |
Earlier this week, they overturned a lower court ruling giving millions to the family of a dead marine after members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas picketed the marine's funeral with their hate rhetoric that God hates homosexuals and America.
The court ruled 8-1 that the protestors had the right to protest after all.
I'm not surprised by ruling. I'm surprised there was a dissenting vote. Someone needs to refamiliarize Justice Samuel Alito with the First Amendment. If ever a slam dunk was thrown in the lap of the high court, this was it.
Look, I don't like the Westboro Baptists any more than the next guy. It's just fair to say I probably dislike them less than most. Stick with me a minute before you start firing off the hateful comments and e-mails.
If you're unfamiliar with the Westboro Baptists, it's a small church headed by a guy named Fred Phelps. Fred has a lot of kids. His kids have a lot of kids. The family tree comprises the lion's share of the Westboro membership. No mainstream Baptist group that I'm aware of claims fellowship with them.
In a nutshell, their mission in life is to warn Americans that God hates them because America has given itself over to homosexuality. God will surely destroy America for this and damn us all to Hell. Phelps rails against some other sins as well, but his pet sin is homosexuality.
To spread their message, the family protests high-profile events throughout the country, most often funerals of dead American soldiers. There, they wave their anti-American, anti-homosexuality signs on the streetcorners and shout their message to cars passing by.
If you wonder why they picket funerals of dead soldiers, their reasoning is simple: not only does God hate fags, he hates anyone who enables fags. The group takes guilt by association to extremes. If you fight to protect America -- a nation given over to homosexuality -- you're as damned as the homosexual himself. Presumably, if you so much as pledge allegiance to the United States, you're an enabler, and therefore damned.There's no Jesus in their message. No forgiveness, no love. Just Hell.
One of Phelps' daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper, serves as the spokeswoman for the church. Back in my reporter days, I had an opportunity to spend about 30 minutes on the phone with Shirley before they were to protest a military funeral in my town. At the funeral protest itself, I spoke with her again, this time among a group of reporters who covered the protest in a makeshift streetcorner press conference.
The Westboro Baptists don't see saving the United States from hell as their mission. Theirs is not to worry if or how you come to salvation. Their goal is simply to warn you of what they believe is coming. Think of them more as John the Baptist types, not Jesus types, and you'll understand them better.
Their method of spreading their message is offensive, but effective. Every funeral they picket, they make news. People talk about them. Municipalities adopt new ordinances to prohibit them from being near funerals. Police arrest them.
But the Phelps family is legal smart. Most of the adults in the family are lawyers, so they get all their representation pro bono. And they usually win, simply because no matter how offensive people find the message, sharing their message isn't illegal. And for that matter, it shouldn't be.
Let's be clear. They offend me. I don't believe their extreme "guilt by association" theology is Biblical. I don't believe Jesus teaches us to confront people with their sin without offering a message of hope and salvation. God hates sin; he loves sinners. He made them. He wants them to be reconciled. Jesus said if you're not with me in that reconciliation project, you're against me. Since the Westboro group isn't trying to save souls, I'm pretty confident I know where they stand with Jesus.
It's just that I've long ago gotten past letting Fred Phelps and his kids upset me. My God is bigger than Fred Phelps; He'll deal with Fred.
But in a contemporary religious climate where anything goes, I have to admit I find it a bit refreshing that someone out there is willing to call a sin a sin and declare the consequences of sin without caring who they offend in the process.
In that streetcorner press conference with Phelps-Roper, one of the reporters confronted her with the story of Jesus forgiving the woman caught in adultry.
"Yes, he did," Phelps-Roper replied. "But when he had forgiven her, he didn't tell her to go march in some adulterer's pride parade, did he?"
On that point, Phelps-Roper nails it, and raises a problem much larger and more dangerous in the kingdom than the Westboro Baptists pose themselves.
On the opposite end of the Westboro spectrum are the hundreds of "churches" who adopt a "come as you are, stay as you are" theology that refuses to confront any sin at all.
Jesus was all about "come as you are." He was never about "stay as you are."
It just saddens me that well-meaning Christians get so worked up about the Westboro Baptists -- a church that isn't growing, by the way -- but don't seem nearly as concerned about the churches that draw football-sized crowds every Sunday to tell people it's okay to live however they want. That God loves everyone and God will let no one perish because he loves them is more polite, yet far more harmful and deceptive kingdom rhetoric than "God hates fags."
The power of the cross to save is directly proportionate to the power of sin to condemn. No more, no less. If sin doesn't destroy, then no cross necessary.
It's a message we need to hear more often.
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