Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Westboro Baptist Church at Boston University

Readers are likely familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church as the strange cult run by Fred Phelps which is devoted to telling the world that God hates them. A lot. They are most known for the slogans "God Hates America" and "God Hates Fags." Pretty much there is no group they don't hate. They even have a song about called God Hates the World, to the tune of "We Are the World." They have a fascinating eschatology in which in the end time God will ask them what should be done with the rest of humanity and they'll gleefully tell God to send humanity to hell. Some people who don't know much about the Church have speculated that the Church exists really just to make the right-wing look bad.

Why am I thinking of the Westboro Baptist Church? Today they came to Boston University to protest. I think this time they were nominally protesting Jews. Or something like that. Apparently they had signs attacking a lot of different groups.

Unfortunately, I had office hours when they were protesting. This isn't fun. When Ray Comfort was distributing his version of Origin of Species to a hundred universities across the nation, he neglected to include Boston University and I was unable to get to Harvard or MIT where there was distribution.

I've concluded that there is a God. God is taunting me by dangling interesting groups just close enough that I'm aware of them but not so close as to actually get to talk to them. God probably sees me as sort of like a cat and sees the various crazies as akin to a laser pointer.

Just my luck, Neturei Karta will probably come to campus and I'll miss them also.

3 comments:

Vashty said...

Thanks for the post! I'm glad I'm not the only one who is fascinated by the WBC and NK. I like visiting their websites and I would love to be able to talk with a WBC member.

The fascinating eschatology has gotten even more interesting lately, as they have pronounced our president to be the Antichrist. This means that the time has come. I really can't wait to see how it develops as the president fails to live up to this, and how the eschatology will have to change. For now, they are looking for 100,000+ Jews to join their church as foretold in Revelations.

Gabreille Ehrlich said...

Wow, I was at Harvard when they were handing them out and I just assumed it was the actual origin of species. I got one, but I never looked at it again until I read this :p

Oh well, missed that completely.

Joshua said...

Can I take a look at it? I haven't had a chance to see a copy yet.