Fred Phelps Clan Caught in an Hypocritical Trap

Don't go to any of their websites.  Anything I cite, I'll print out here so they don't see a traffic bump and have an orgasm. 

On June 3, 2012, at 8:45 AM in the morning, the hateful Fred Phelps clan will be picketing the College Church of the Nazarene in Olathe, Kansas.  Why, you might ask?  Does this Olathe church preach that it's okay to be gay?  You would think so, with all the focus on Westboro Baptist Church's own addiction to gay sex.  They love it.  They have to print pictures on placards so they can look at it.  They show it to their children from the day they come out of the womb.  (Yeah...that was allegorical.  How would I know.  But, you can see plenty of pictures of their babies and little children on the curbs where they are protesting, to jump to that conclusion).

No.  Not because this church preaches love.  Not remotely.  In their own words, Westboro Baptist Church is picketing this church because:

"...[the church] tells the people that they have a free will to accept Jesus as their savior, thereby giving the power over salvation to the creature."

That's it.  Yep.  They are picketing this poor church because the people of WBC are strict neo-Calvanists!

But wait.  Something is wrong here.  If you watch this story of Lauren Drain, daughter of Steve Drain, member of WBC, you'll see a curious contradiction at work. 

Lauren was excommunicated from the church and begged her parents to forgive her.  She said she would do anything to stay. (The reader might wonder why a grown woman would beg to stay in such filthy hatred and a commune environment that caused her to be ostracized by the most people that would otherwise want to love her.  I know this feeling.  When it is all you know, leaving it is very fearful - especially when you have been told that you will burn in hell if you do leave.) When the reporter asked Steve Drain about his daughter, Steve acted completely indifferent and actually mocked her on camera.  He said that they gave her over to Satan.

Then, on camera, Steve Drain tells Louis Theroux that the members of WBC are the only elect (chosen by god to be in heaven, granted salvation through no power of their own).  How does he know?  He answers that question with a question:



"Do you see anyone else obeying the commands of the Lord and doing what we do?"

The question was rhetorical and he knew it.  He followed it up with a "that's how we know" and a confident fist bump to his god - a figment of his imagination.

Um...Steve?  Are you saying that you are the elect because you obey the commands of the Lord?  Are you not picketing a church tomorrow because they make "the blood of Jesus to no effect (sorry..the Bible uses a lot of Yoda-speak...bear with me)" by "giving the power of salvation over to the creature"?  Didn't you say on camera that, should Lauren ever come back and prove that she is one of the elect, you would accept her as the elect?  Wouldn't she be proving that of her own power, making election a fancy and useless misnomer?  Are you not concluding that you are the elect because you are the only blokes on this evil planet doing what the Lord commanded, thereby putting the power of salvation back into the hands of the creature?

I wouldn't expect the people of WBC - especially Steve Drain, who barfs out words that make no sense, designs placards that are simply stupid and meaningless (like his "Bitch Burger" sign), and puts together videos of random cartoons and faces of people and imagery that make no sense, even when he tries to explain them - to think long enough to try and refute me.  They'll throw out something like "you reject the word of the Lord and you're going to hell!"  More than likely, they'll have one of their kids do the deed.  But, there you have it (as if you really needed a reason). 

You can now reject Westboro Baptist Church and all their members as hypocrites.  Vile ones at that.  But don't tell them that.  They'll throw it back in your face, pretending that it actually means something.  Just go about your merry way and feel smug.

The Story of Liz Franklin, Installment 1 - The Only True Church

Hi!  My name is Liz, and I found this blog while researching the Duggars.  Before watching the show, I'd never heard of “Quiverfull”, “patriarchy”, Bill Gothard...any of it.  I was raised in a legalistic church that strangled any freedom, grace, and love even, so these blogs stirred up a lot of stuff for me.  I reached out and was asked to share my story, so here goes.

I was raised in the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist (Original Allegheny Conference) Church.  (Gotta get the name right; the church sued for the right to use it after a VERY IMPORTANT split with a part of the church that began disagreeing about some of the rules.)  It's wrong to sue people generally - says so right there in the Bible - but over the name of the church, well, that's different!  Especially when it's the One True Church.  Only the members of the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Church (AWMC) will get to go to heaven.  Everyone else is lost.

AWMC was built on the teachings of that great and good (*snort) John Wesley.  I'm 43 years old, and it has never dawned on me until just now that the very name of the church is basically Wesley's methods.  Methods to bring salvation, keep it, keep the people submitted and bound up.  Maybe you'd think The One True Church should be built on Jesus' teachings, but you'd be wrong. The one I was born into was built on John Wesley's.  Just an accident of birth, I guess.

I'm going to share the beliefs of the church, then get into my story:

AWMC believes in two works of grace: First, salvation. When you confess that you suck, and always will suck...I mean…when you confess your sins.  This is best done at the altar at church, where you get to parade your “suckiness” in front of everybody.  Salvation can be lost with a sneeze, by the way. 

The second work of grace is sanctification.  This is where the roots of sin (the very thing that makes you sin) are removed.  After this you'll be a holy robot…er…person.  The roots of sin are evidenced by anger (the big one), jealousy, pride...all the negative emotions we exemplify as humans.  To be sanctified, you have to "be willing."  While sometimes you are given specific things you have to be willing to do, for the most part, it means denying all of your natural feelings, denying your person-hood, and denying any rights you have to that person-hood. Since this isn't easy to do, you'll be encouraged to "pray clear through", which was never really explained.  Basically, you have to make yourself miserable in prayer any way you can.  Self-punishment, if that is what it takes, is encouraged, also.

While the church was vaguely patriarchal, women did have rights – as long as we stayed in our place. The husband is the head of the home, and women really have no thoughts worthy of being expressed, but it wasn't the blanket oppression I've found while reading other stories of ultra-conservative Christianity and patriarchy.  It was expected that young women get married, keep house, and have kids, but we could choose to do something else without endangering our souls.  The church also didn't care how many kids we had.

The big oppression was the outer standards, and the denial of the right to be a well-rounded, feeling person.  According to the church's standards, the Duggars are LIBERAL.  The church I was raised in took the Duggars' standards and ran with them.  Yes, we had to wear dresses or skirts.  We had to have long hair, but it had to be up in a bun.  Sleeves had to come past our elbows.  Just the women's.  Men were exempt.  Back in the day, somebody, John Wesley maybe, declared that our elbows looked like breasts.  There must be something wrong with my breasts!!  Or maybe it's my elbows, I don't know.  At any rate, they look nothing alike!!  We weren't allowed open-toed shoes.  We had to wear panty hose.  We weren't allowed to wear any kind of stretchy material for shirts without a blouse underneath.  Those pesky elbows…er… breasts, had to be bound at all costs. 

These standards became our "fruits", and it was the way we knew whether or not others were going to heaven.  This wasn't considered judgment because doesn't the Bible say "by your fruits you will know them"? 

Speaking of Bibles, God Himself wrote the King James Version, and other versions were of the devil.  The fact that maybe the KJV was harder to understand added to its appeal.  If it was harder to understand what god wants of his children, we'd have to work harder, and works are where it's at, after all.

So now you know a little of the mindset of the church I was born into.  In the next installment, I will begin to tell you how it started to affect me – from the age of three.