The pastor led the entire service and delivered 90 percent of the sermons. On occasion, if he was sick or at an out-of-town picket, then one of the other elder men would take his place. Women were not allowed to deliver the sermons, let alone speak, when we were gathered in the sanctuary. Alternates filling in would base the homily on one of the pastor’s hot topics. Nobody would want to usurp him by coming up with an independent idea, and the pastor never ran out of ideas. He was a cause monger, always with something on his mind. He read newspapers and monitored Fox News 24/7, trolling for issues.
The pastor would start a story at a regular volume, then crank it up a few decibels for dramatic effect before returning to his normal speaking voice. When he was specifying a sin, like a homosexual act, he’d grow more animated and make sure the words were clearly enunciated, not to be lost in the rest of the sentence. He was always very graphic, telling us that homosexuals were the type of people who would eat each other’s feces, have sex with each other’s feces, take “golden showers,” and drink each other’s semen. His sermon always connected a current event to a Bible story. First, he’d elaborate on a tale from the Old or New Testament, then demonstrate how it applied to his theme of the day. For example, he would equate George Bush with the Pharaoh of Egypt, saying that Bush viewed himself as America’s best president, just as the Pharaoh thought he was the best leader of Egypt. He’d then draw parallels between all the bad things happening to America and the plagues that befell Egypt. I found his sermons fascinating, unlike any I’d ever heard at any of the churches I had been to. They were filled with the scary consequences of God’s judgment. I loved that. I wanted to learn something new and be able to connect what the Bible was telling me to real-life situations. I thought that the pastor did that on a pretty large scale, and he drew parallels that I could follow.
Behind the pastor’s podium was a big easel on which he’d display whatever current event was being discussed. If the subject was more specific than homosexuality or American politics, such as a recent natural disaster that had killed a lot of people or a catastrophic plane crash somewhere in the world, we’d learn that God wanted these people dead, and of course, they were in hell. The pastor had a lot more fervor and animation at the pulpit than he did away from it. Perhaps it was because all of his sermons were recorded and posted on the Internet, so he wasn’t just preaching to us. Knowing that people outside of the church were going to be watching him, he wanted his sermons to be really dramatic, powerful, and memorable. If we were on an away picket, we’d take the time to listen to them on the Internet. They were organized by date on the website, so we could easily access the ones we wanted.
From the pulpit, the pastor would sometimes read us a letter or e-mail that had arrived at the church during the week from a complete stranger. The letter would confirm that we were not the only ones who thought God’s wrath and violence against sinners were justified. Writers would congratulate the pastor for shining a light on these issues, saying the view of our church was correct and thanking us for having the courage to speak out against sins such as homosexuality. Sometimes they would have actually been in a crowd at a place where we had picketed, but hadn’t had the courage to side with us. Even if it was a small voice somewhere, we had reached somebody.
During one sermon, the pastor read us a letter from someone who had been homosexual and turned straight. The writer told us his life had been miserable until he heard our message and changed his sinning ways. Others told us how happy they were that we protested the Catholic Church on behalf of the victims of priest abuse.
There was a reason letters of gratitude were so rare. “There are only a few of God’s people on earth who know the Truth,” the pastor would say. That would explain why only one in a million letters we got would be a thank-you. The rest would be everything from threats on our lives to vile attacks on our souls. But that one thank-you would be enough for us to say, “Wow, someone gets it.” Shirley would respond to the positive letters right away to show our appreciation for the endorsement.
Sometimes we’d have a follower who was rejuvenated by our message. He would join us for a Sunday service or a picket or two, and then he would fall away. We didn’t mind if we never saw these people again. We were a very tight community, and we were spiritually connected to one another. We were not in need of any reinforcements.
After the pastor had finished his sermon, he would make his brief announcements. These were usually about local news events and the upcoming picket schedule. When they were finished, the service was officially over. At that point, we’d have a chance to greet the pastor and have a quick talk with him about anything we wanted. Megan, Rebekah, Jael, and some of the other girls would go up to the pulpit and hug their grandfather, but I preferred hanging back. He was so powerful that no matter how much I wanted him to think favorably of me, I’d inevitably tighten up when he was in my proximity.
For the rest of Sunday, we might picket again if there was something on the schedule. Otherwise, we’d do schoolwork, help out with jobs around the compound, or do something with our nuclear family. On the last Sunday of each month, we’d celebrate the birthdays of people who had been born that month. In good weather, the party was held in the yard, where we’d play volleyball and basketball; otherwise it was held in Shirley’s basement. There was always lots of food and the singing of “Happy Birthday” to the guests of honor.
As I became more familiar with the pastor, I decided that the impression that most of the world had of him was wrong. I was aware of what people said about him, but he was not a vulgar, whacked-out, misanthropic crab. His truth was anchored in fundamental Christian theology, he didn’t make it up as he went, and his passionate issue was that Christians underestimated the wrath of God. Within the church, the pastor was revered and respected by everybody.
I didn’t know what the proper relationship I should have with him should be. He seemed so omniscient that I feared anything I said would sound dumb. I couldn’t take my cues from his granddaughters, because as family members their rules would be different. I was worried that if I was too friendly, my behavior might be interpreted as disrespectful. If I was too detached, he might think I was bored or, worse, vain. I wasn’t sure why I was scared to ask Megan, Rebekah, and Jael what they thought, but I couldn’t. I just hoped and prayed that I was worthy to be in the church in the eyes of the pastor.
He was friendly to me, but not warm. “So, Lauren, how are you doing? How’s everyone treating you?” he’d ask. “Do you like being here? Are you getting along well with the girls?” I felt mildly uncomfortable, but I thought he was genuine and sincere. One-on-one, he seemed gentle, humble, honest, and patient. Like the stereotypical gentle grandfather, he was very nonthreatening. He used big words and knew a lot of history and biblical concepts. Sometimes, I felt a little intimidated by his knowledge. He’d ask me a biblical question, and I would try to answer, but in my head, I worried that I was wrong.
I was probably being oversensitive, but I’d feel particularly awkward when the pastor would tell his biological grandchildren how much they meant to him right in front of me. “You’re not going to leave me,” he’d say, giving them a big embrace. I took these to be slights, a subliminal communication that I was an outsider. I was always on guard, wondering what he had heard people saying about me. Most cultures labeled people who talked about you behind your back as gossips, but in the church it was a way to keep people from straying toward evil. As time went on, the pastor warmed up to me. He would tell me I was like his real granddaughters, right there in his heart. Things like that made me feel much more included.
I could tell that the pastor’s devotion to his church was genuine. He had founded the WBC when he was just twenty-six years old. The name he chose, Westboro Baptist Church, was a bit of a misnomer. The word Baptist in the title didn’t mean it was aligned or associated with the Baptist world. Lots of Baptist churches were independent, because there were more personal freedoms outside it. Indepe
ndence was good. The independent churches, usually more conservative and fundamental, could set up their own rules and govern themselves. I thought other Baptists must be terrified we’d be the bane of their faith. The disclaimer on the Primitive Baptist Church’s website read “PB-Online and the Primitive Baptist Church do not recognize the ministry of ‘pastor’ Fred Phelps, nor do we have fellowship with the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.…We find the actions of these people to be deplorable and against the very Scriptures they claim to believe.”
As for the word Westboro, it was the name of a neighborhood that began just a block south of the church. It was a really cool residential area, filled with historic bungalows built in the 1920s and 1930s in the style of the famous “arts and crafts” movement. A local architect, L. F. Garlinghouse, had wanted to promote his home-building business by marketing floor plans to the bungalows in a catalog, so each month he’d put four or five floor plans into the catalog. The idea was that the rest of the schematic could be purchased if a homebuilder wanted that floor plan. He had a favorite designer who went around the country taking pictures of designs she liked. She brought them back to Topeka, the models were built, and the Westboro neighborhood was born.
The pastor’s first church in Topeka was not the Westboro Baptist Church, where he gave his first sermon in November 1955. His first church had been the East Side Baptist Church, a traditional Baptist church across town. I heard a few competing stories about why he left, but whatever the true reason, he wasn’t there long. Some members of the East Side congregation followed him, including two of our elders, Bill and Mary Hockenbarger. George Stutzman and his wife, whose name I never knew, were another couple who came with the pastor, although I never met either of them. Many of the East Siders who chose to follow him left his ministry pretty quickly. Only the Hockenbargers and George Stutzman remained. Even though his Westboro congregation was small, the few willing to give him a try believed in him. Then as now, his views were fundamental, extreme, and provocative; his sermons focused on scripture as it related to current events; and his presentation was always compelling and full of conviction.
I was in awe of the high standards the pastor set for himself and his commitment to his passions, especially to God. He had always been a high achiever. He once told us a story of how he had planned to attend the U.S. Military Academy, partly because his father had always wanted him to be a West Point cadet. To make that dream come true, he had worked hard at his public high school in Meridian, Mississippi. He made great grades, worked on the school newspaper, ran hurdles for the track team, was a star of the boxing club, played two instruments—the cornet and the bass horn—in the marching band, and belonged to the social fraternity. Not only that, he graduated sixth in his class at the age of sixteen. His focus and determination paid off, and he was accepted at West Point. However, under the Academy’s rules, he couldn’t actually matriculate until he turned seventeen. Around this time, the pastor had a huge change of direction and decided to pursue theology instead. He would have still been a teenager when he decided to go to Bob Jones College, a very strict, conservative Protestant college then in Cleveland, Tennessee; it’s now called Bob Jones University and is located in South Carolina.
Students at Bob Jones were encouraged to do missionary work and plant evangelical churches in parts of the world that didn’t have many, and the pastor said it was during a missionary trip to Utah with a friend that his life changed. During a tent revival there, he said the God of glory appeared to him, and he had his experience of grace. Whenever I heard stories of these kinds of spiritual awakenings in any of the elders, I could feel my insecurities coming back. Dad had had his own moment when he had gone to interview the pastor in Topeka for the first time. He had expected to find a snake oil salesman, but instead he found the truth about the Lord. I sometimes felt a little dejected that God hadn’t come to me in such a singularly moving moment. Even though I had done my best to ignore Libby’s comment that I didn’t belong, I was still left with an insidious self-doubt that maybe she had a point: maybe I was unworthy.
Before the pastor’s summer in Utah was over, he knew he wanted to be ordained, so made his case before ten pastors at the First Baptist Church of Vernal, which had been sponsoring him, and he was baptized in a very cold mountain stream near Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. When he went back to Tennessee, the pastor was a seventeen-year-old minister, years younger than most.
The pastor stayed only one more semester at Bob Jones College. I’m not sure why, but he went to the Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada, next, then finally earned his theology degree from John Muir College in Pasadena, California. That was where he really started making sure he was loud and vocal enough to be noticed. He spent a lot of his free time preaching on the street corners of the city against the decadent behavior of students and teachers. His curbside preaching got him a cameo in Time magazine. The article that mentioned him was clipped, framed, and displayed in his office. The clipping was dated June 11, 1951, and titled “Repentance in Pasadena.” I finished it with the conclusion that it didn’t really have a bias either for or against the pastor. It said only that Fred Phelps spent a lot of his free time preaching against the decadent behavior of students and teachers, using the public sidewalks to condemn the weaknesses of profanity and filthy jokes. I thought the article was less about the pastor’s values and more about his passion and his aggressive style of spreading his message. I realized that even then he had been willing to voice his opinion so boldly, whatever his audience thought of him. I was impressed that a person could be that fervent and courageous to speak his mind, even at the age of twenty-one.
From Pasadena, the pastor moved to Arizona to attend the Arizona Bible Institute. There, he met his future wife, Marge Simms, who was four years his senior but looked tiny next to him, at only four foot eleven compared to his six-foot-four frame. I really liked the very soft-spoken and kind Marge and enjoyed her company. The word was that she had been the pastor’s one and only girl, and that he had never dated anybody else.
They were married in 1952 in Arizona. Within a year, the children started coming, one at a time for the next sixteen years. Fred Jr. was born in Arizona in 1953, and the rest were born in Topeka—Mark, Katherine, Margie, Shirley, Nathan, Jonathan, Rebekah, Elizabeth, Timothy, Dortha, Rachel, and finally Abigail in 1968. What’s more, Marge didn’t even start having children until she was twenty-eight.
I had never known a family with more than four kids and was amazed that anyone could raise that many children. Marge, one of nine children herself, said she raised hers with the same five rules that her own mother had used—keep the kids’ faces clean, their hands clean, their clothes clean, the house clean, and feed them. She told me that in those days, she had two washing machines and two clothes dryers operating all day long. She did have the older children to help her with the smaller ones, but her biggest dread was that when one child became ill, all the rest would get sick as well.
From bits I heard, I assumed the huge Phelps clan had to live for quite a few years on very modest means. The pastor never had a big congregation, nor did he want one. But preaching didn’t bring in enough money to support his family. I read somewhere that he sold vacuum cleaners and baby carriages door-to-door to make extra money in the lean years. I also heard that his children sold candy door-to-door after school and on weekends, from the age of five on up. The pastor would buy it wholesale and have them sell it retail, using the profits to pay the bills. He said he had never intended to be a minister for the salary, but preached only for the opportunity to spread the Word of God.
I thought that the amount of negative attention directed at him meant his message really did mess with the moral high ground of his sinning critics. Of course they were going to condemn him and call him a heretic and a lunatic. Even Jesus Christ had only a handful of believers in his lifetime. The pastor was only the messenger, no matter how unpopular the message. The words he spoke, which came off s
ounding spitted, violent, and despicable to the people not in the church, were all found in the Bible. Mainstream religion had so watered down God’s wrath and guidance that the new myth was that God was a kind, benevolent presence and followers could do what they wanted. The pastor wanted that myth shattered. God was the One who elaborated on the cardinal sins and what would happen to the sinners.
There hadn’t been any other pastor willing to tell the truth on a daily basis in the name of God. He certainly looked stern and angry when he was preaching, and he carried himself with a slouch, but that was because he was old. He really got himself worked up only when he needed to let God’s people know they were disobedient. He didn’t raise his voice when he was not picketing or preaching. Nobody in the WBC challenged the pastor, but we had no need to. He was our spiritual leader and was motivated only by our salvation.
If I was intimidated by the pastor, it was not out of fear but out of a sense of inferiority. To me, he was bigger than life. From my childhood in Florida and Kansas to my disrespectful, rebellious early teens, I could never have imagined myself so blessed as to be in the presence of and guided by such a holy man.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.
—Isaiah 58:1
Although I had experienced the two WBC pickets in Jacksonville and New York prior to our move to Topeka, I had no idea how important this form of public activism was for the church. Picketing was the fundamental way to get God’s Word to the heretics, and it was an activity with a higher priority than marrying and bearing children. There were daily pickets, noon pickets, and out-of-town pickets. There were bigger pickets that took lots of advance planning, and small ones, like the biweekly ones outside our school, which could be organized in very little time. The picket schedule would go up on the church’s website, but it was also e-mailed out to families, so that everyone knew who was supposed to be where, and when. We didn’t care if people outside of our church knew our schedule. We weren’t hiding anything from anyone.
Banished : Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church (9781455518470) Page 9
