Anyone who has lived through the 1970s and 80s in the UK knows well what picketing is – indeed a pop band was named after the practice. But could you imagine picketing a funeral? Could you take your placards and stand outside a cemetery shouting your protest at the family of the bereaved? Well this is what one Baptist church in the US has been doing for some time now outside the funerals of American troops killed in action in Afghanistan. And all in the name of a God who hates.

If a tag cloud was formed based on Westboro Baptist Church’s website ‘hate’ would be among the most prominent of words. Based in the city of Topeka, Kansas, this church has been picketing and protesting several funerals and other events over many years – their ire mainly directed at homosexuality. For them, God is one who hates first and loves second. Take even a quick look at their website and see how much this doctrine of a hating God drips from their lips. God hates gays (obviously); God hates America (less obvious but understandable at times); God hates the world (not obvious at all unless we’ve got John 3:16 very poorly translated).

Indeed it is clear that God only loves those who have surrendered to him. Everyone else he hates. And of course if he hates so much then so must his church and so they take their placards plastered with ‘God hates fags’ etc and remonstrate against the latest thing that has stirred up God’s abhorrence.

Why protest at a funeral? Because they believe that the death of a soldier is God punishing America for tolerating homosexuality. The same reasoning is applied to natural disasters such as hurricanes and also the spilling of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. All of them signs of God’s extreme distaste at current American values. ‘GodSmacks’ is their term for it.

As I drilled down into the detail of their website I found a rather disturbing fact. During the fight against segregation in the south, Westboro Church were on the right side – they stood against the practice and called for equal treatment for black people. Good on them. But here’s the disturbing thing – they received abusive phone calls calling them ‘nigger lovers’ and even making death threats. Which means there were people who existed who were even more hateful than them. Astounding.

Let me address this assertion about a hating, angry God. He doesn’t exist. God is love (1 John 4:8); God loves the world (John 3:16); God demonstrated his love by sending Jesus to die for us ‘while we were still sinners’ (Romans 5:8). He loves us not as a result of Jesus dying for us; rather Jesus died for us as a result of God’s love for us.

The really sad thing about this church is that for many they represent the Christian faith. Just as some insist on seeing Islam through the actions and attitudes of a handful of extremists, so many will see the church through the filter provided by Westboro Baptist Church. It makes you want to become a Buddhist.

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