Could I attend a Sunday service at Westboro Baptist Church?

Factual Questions
21

I attended a wedding service there once in 1983, when my childhood friend Brent married Fred’s daughter Shirley.

This was back before the national notoriety began, but the family, and Fred in particular, were already well known in Topeka for their legal shenanigans. By this I don’t mean “illegal activities” but rather their publicity-generating work in the courts as a collective law firm. Fred was known to be eccentric but more of a local nuisance than a national disgrace back then. This is the way I remember it, at least. I had moved away from Topeka some years before so may have missed out on more recent developments, but while I was living there and heard talk of the Phelps clan I thought “crazy lawyers” rather than “religious fanatics”. (This view may have been slanted because I knew they were putting my friend Brent through law school, however.)

Fred conducted a loooong church service before the wedding (or perhaps immediately after, I can’t recall), full of the kind of frothing-at-the-mouth fire and brimstone you can imagine. I don’t remember any specific vitriol, and as far as I know the word “fags” never came up, but one theme he dwelt on was his daughter’s purity and virtue… he commended her for never missing a single church service, and made some point about her never having cut her hair. Apparently this was also some sign of virtue within the church (or perhaps I totally misunderstood or misremembered what was said, but whenever I see Shirley in the news I see she still keeps her hair very long, so I don’t think I imagined this comment).

These commendations prompted one attendee to quip after the service that the ringbearer, Shirley’s 4-year-old illegitimate son, must have been conceived on a rare night when church services were not held. Everyone there knew he was her son and that this was her first marriage, so I was surprised to hear his illegitimacy reported in recent years as though it had been a deep dark secret.

The only other strong memory I have of it was that the church auditorium (if you can even call it that) was very small. It had a very low ceiling and seems (in my distant memory) to be no more than about 20’ x 30’ in area. It might have been an adjunct to another building, possibly Fred’s house. Again, however, this was almost 30 years ago and I haven’t thought much about it in that time, so I could be conflating this with a memory of another place. In all likelihood the church has expanded or relocated by now anyway.

I haven’t kept in touch with Brent since that day, and never had anything to do with the church before or since, so this is the extent of my insight on the WBC.

Regarding Brent himself: I’m sure he is fully inculcated in the church by now, but I remember him as just a typical kid, very clever and bright with a wicked sense of humor (we got into a lot of boys-will-be-boys trouble back then), and one of the last people I’d expect to find standing on streetcorners screaming about God’s sexual preference. Part of me wonders whether he joined the church as a joke and is still laughing about it 30 years later.

(Forgive me for all the qualifiers regarding my memory above, but the last thing I need is for someone from the WBC to read this and come after me for misrepresentation. What I’ve written here is true to the best of my decades-old recollection.)

22

Interesting coincidence - you can find details of that wedding sermon on their web page. Seems to be the only wedding sermon they have seen fit to publish on their web page. An excerpt mentions your comments about her church attendance and hair length.

23

Fred once cut off most of his own wife’s hair in a fit of rage according to one of his apostate sons . He has some kind of major league hair fetish, don’t he?

Has it ever been revealed who the father of Shirley’s oldest son is? Any chance it was Brent (the father of the next 10)? I know that Fred and one of the brothers have both publicly admitted to wife beating “as needed”- no idea if Brent follows suit. (Seeing her crazy self on TV I seriously doubt she’d feel loved without physical abuse from time to time; I wonder if somebody like her ever has moments of clarity.)

24

I am pretty certain Brent is not the biological father of the eldest son. He (Sam) was presumably born in 1979, and while Brent joined the church around that same time, I never even heard him mention Shirley before I left Topeka a year or two later. I think their courtship began sometime after that.

Also, not to derail the thread, but in the interest of ignorance fighting: I see Brent characterized as a “homeless teenager” in all of his mentions on the net, but I don’t know where this came from. Throughout the time I knew him, he and his younger brother lived with their mom and spent most evenings and weekends at their grandmother’s (my next-door neighbor’s) house. That might qualify by some definition of “homeless” I guess.

25

That is indeed interesting, and your quote jibes with what I thought I heard. I must have actually been paying attention to what was said inside a church for once.

I’m curious to see the full text, but when I go to their website (the one listed on Wikipedia at least) I just get a blank page… hmmm, you think maybe they’ve blacklisted my IP address for my activity here? :slight_smile: I also tried googling a few salient phrases from your quote, but the only hits I get are for this very thread.

Any chance you can post a link to the page you found?

26

Disregard, I found it with a less stringent search. Still can’t download it from their site, but am able to see it via Google’s “Quick View”.

27

Thread won.

28

I have always had an interest in odd and peculiar religions. I know a lot about Westboro Baptist Church and find these fascinating to say the least. I read their website almost everyday. Frankly, I think this group is the closest adherents to what the Bible is and what it says.

I think one has to have permission from them to be allowed entry. I remember the Louis Theroux documentary when Fred told Louis that he did not want him to be there. You can call them and ask. Their number is in the phone book and online. I think if you can show that you have an interest in their religion, you can join. Others outside the Phelps realm have joined Westboro. Brent Roper is one of them mentioned. There is at least two families in the group who are not related to the Phelps, the Drain’s and the Hockenberry (might be a bit off on the spelling) families. Steve Drain uprooted his entire family from Florida to Kansas and is a leader in the organization. This asshole kicked out his grown daughter for not following the church to his standards and forbid the grown daughter from having any contact with her minor brother, who is about 7 and daughter who’s about 5.

There is also a little black kid in the group. He is about 6 and looks like Obama as a child. I have never seen any other blacks in Westboro, so he is a mystery. I have even asked online who that kid is.

I wonder where they get the money for these protests? They travel the country. How do they afford the airfare, hotels, transportation for this? They claim to refuse money. I have thought that someone funds them, or maybe they are being used by someone or a group unwittingly. They are all lawyers and for many years made money from lawsuits.

Shirley’s oldest son is not the child of her husband, but from a previous relationship. She refuses to talk about that, or any “sins” that she committed in her past.

29

Can you even do this ? Call yourself a church and be recognized as such by the authorities even without doing anything remotely church-like ? The Beer & Pizzas Church of Pals And I would really like to know - we could use the tax breaks :wink:

30

I disagree. The Bible has fewer than a dozen passages that even might refer to homosexuality, and when it does it’s in a very different context to what the Phelps would call ‘fags’ since the notion of gays didn’t exist. (There’s always been same-sex attraction and intercourse but gays as a subculture is a very modern concept, though admittedly the Phelps use the word ‘fag’ to apply to absolutely anything and anyone they don’t like- a heterosexual serviceman killed in Iraq is a fag who was killed fighting for the fag laws of a fag country).

The ancients were never absolutely obsessed over the notion of homosexuality or any other sin; they weren’t “one item” worshipers. The Phelps clan brought that to the party.

31

You answered your own question. They fund their activities via the Phelps-Chartered law firm.

32

Oh, the phun ve haff!

33

On the contrary they’re apostate heretics who are equally damned as the people they condemn.

34

“No Fags In Heaven!”

Are there no designated smoking areas in Paradise?

35

Under federal tax law (and the First Amendment) the question is actually whether you do things that are “remotely church-like.” The IRS’s “Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations” (Publication 1828 [large pdf]) defines a church as follows:
Church. Certain characteristics are generally attributed to churches. These attributes of a church have been developed by the IRS and by court decisions. They include: distinct legal existence; recognized creed and form of worship; definite and distinct ecclesiastical government; formal code of doctrine and discipline; distinct religious history; membership not associated with any other church or denomination; organization of ordained ministers; ordained ministers selected after completing prescribed courses of study; literature of its own; established places of worship; regular congregations; regular religious services; Sunday schools for the religious instruction of the young; schools for the preparation of its ministers.

The IRS generally uses a combination of these characteristics, together with other facts and circumstances, to determine whether an organization is considered a church for federal tax purposes. The IRS makes no attempt to evaluate the content of whatever doctrine a particular organization claims is religious, provided the particular beliefs of the organization are truly and sincerely held by those professing them and the practices and rites associated with the organization’s belief or creed are not illegal or contrary to clearly defined public policy.

The WBC holds appears to have a regular congregation, hold regularly scheduled Sunday services in an established place of worship, hold particular religious beliefs and its members appear to hold those beliefs truly and sincerely, if not fervently. Under the First Amendment the IRS does not, and cannot, evaluate the merits of the WBC’s religious beliefs. As such, I don’t think that there is any doubt that the WBC constitutes a church.

If you and your buddies gather every Saturday night in your basement to drink beer and eat pizza, and you can that you do it religiously, meaning not that you do it every Saturday, but that you do it with certain rites and rituals and out of a sincere spiritual belief, and can convince the IRS you do it because of your religion’s tenets and not just because you like to have beer and pizza on Saturday nights, you should be able to get in. It’s your First Amendment right to create a church worshiping beer and pizza just like someone else could set up a church devoted to Jesus, Allah, Satan or the Budda. Just be prepared for some healthy skepticism.