Life inside the Westboro Baptist Church - an increbily brave talk by Nate Phelps

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gwendes

Guest
#1
#1
Many of you will be aware that the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church - Fred Phelps - the group that picket the funerals of dead soldiers (amongst others) died recently.

I was fortunate enough to attend a conference this weekend in Manchester where Nate Phelps, his son, was talking about his experiences growing up in what is generally referred to as 'The Most Hated Family in America'

I recorded video of the majority of the talk - it isn't perfect but I highly recommend taking some time to hear the personal and deeply moving account of life inside the WBC.

Split into a few videos, hope this is of interest to some of you. We were honestly in tears.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj2JnrwMTtQ

Completely inspirational.
 
posthuman

posthuman

Senior Member
#2
Jul 31, 2013
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#2
dead link - i think this is the right video (? )

[video=youtube_share;pj2JnrwMTtQ]http://youtu.be/pj2JnrwMTtQ[/video]
 
cinder

cinder

Senior Member
#3
Mar 26, 2014
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Wow. Watched the whole thing. If his upbringing represented a true biblical model I would not be a Christian either. I find it sad, but not surprising that he has chosen atheism as his new system of belief. I do find his presentation biased however in that he cites a few examples of extreme faith, then concludes that faith is bad and dangerous. Much good has also been done in the name of faith (particularly the Christian faith). I'll cut him slack for his horrific background, but think the only fair conclusion he can make is that a faith community that does not accept and address honest doubts and questions is a very unsafe place to be.
 
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gwendes

Guest
#4
#4
posthuman said:
dead link - i think this is the right video (? )

[video=youtube_share;pj2JnrwMTtQ]http://youtu.be/pj2JnrwMTtQ[/video]
Click to expand...
It is. Many thanks :)
 
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gwendes

Guest
#5
#5
cinder said:
Wow. Watched the whole thing. If his upbringing represented a true biblical model I would not be a Christian either. I find it sad, but not surprising that he has chosen atheism as his new system of belief. I do find his presentation biased however in that he cites a few examples of extreme faith, then concludes that faith is bad and dangerous. Much good has also been done in the name of faith (particularly the Christian faith). I'll cut him slack for his horrific background, but think the only fair conclusion he can make is that a faith community that does not accept and address honest doubts and questions is a very unsafe place to be.
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Thanks for your comment. I'm certainly not drawing a comparison between what Westboro Batist Church does and, in particular, the disgusting behaviour of Fred Phelps. Not presented entirely without comment but thought it may be of interest here considering that we're all aware of a spectrum of truths that churches all claim to be the Truth.

I think that Nate's choice to become an atheist is few very interesting - it would have been very easy for him to reach out and find support from one of the many churches that do so much work to support victims of the sort of abuse he suffered.
 
PennEd

PennEd

Senior Member
#6
Apr 22, 2013
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#6
Just for edification the OP is NOT a Christian. Not judging, not saying he said he was. Just wanted people to understand where he is coming from because I have many times been confronted by atheists and others who want to try and paint all Christians with the Westboro baptist church brush.
 
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gwendes

Guest
#7
#7
PennEd said:
Just for edification the OP is NOT a Christian. Not judging, not saying he said he was. Just wanted people to understand where he is coming from because I have many times been confronted by atheists and others who want to try and paint all Christians with the Westboro baptist church brush.
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That's not at all where I coming from :)

This is mostly of interest to two groups of people as far as I can see, those that are actively religious and those that are actively areligious. I'm certainly not posting to liken anyone here to what is clearly a very extreme church but only to see and take part in the discussions on the skeptical/atheist forums and those that are religious and compare those. And to share what I think is a fascinating story that moved me deeply.
 
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JDecree

Guest
#8
#8
Glad to see the man left the WBC...sad to see it killed his faith. Took me a while watching the videos before I realized that. I regret giving the post a like.

In watching his presentation I was really hoping he was going to talk about how the WBC has given the enemy the perfect weapon against Christ and how he sees that now and is speaking out against it. Unfortunately he has fallen to that very weapon. :( I can see why he would have, being raised in that environment which is not unlike the kind of upbringing I'm sure many atheists have had, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
 
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gwendes

Guest
#9
#9
JDecree said:
I can see why he would have, being raised in that environment which is not unlike the kind of upbringing I'm sure many atheists have had, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
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I think extreme positions help us to see how, religious or not, we're all really very similar and can learn a lot from each other and a shared knowledge of how wrong the fringes are bring us all closer together.

To be honest, I don't care if someone is religious or not, I care about how much I enjoy time in their company, interesting things I can learn and share... that kind of thing. Start any conversation with an 'agenda' and I think generally I am unlikely to stick around for tea and biscuits. Unless you've got some Jaffa Cakes.
 
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