Just to the right of this post, under “Pages”, you’ll see a tab for this collection of six videos about the Phelps family and their Westboro Baptist Church. I invite you to watch them. Hopefully, you haven’t just eaten..
(The title of this post, is the actual title of the BBC program.)
The First Morning 
They’re certainly getting plenty of attention lately. I’ve just watched yet another documentary about them, although this one wasn’t quite as genteel as some others. The language of the reporter (Keith Allen?) was dire, and his attitude about as oppositionally bad as Shirley’s, so they just ended up having rather heated arguments that served neither of them any purpose. Like so many other cults/sects before them, their difficulty is that while they may have an underlying form of Christianity, they’ve ignored the Gospel message in favour of a judgemental one – while God’s wrath may indeed be upon sinners, it’s upon ALL sinners, not just those selected by the WBC. Plus, the whole point of the Gospel message is to provide the hope of God’s grace to those who repent, and redemption to those who accept Jesus as their payment/sacrifice for their sin. The way they act does nothing to promote the Gospel message in any shape or form, but rather turns people away and worse yet, perhaps even provokes many to sin who may not otherwise, through anger. There is no love to be seen in the WBC, and that’s what people need to see in Christians – Jesus told his disciples that they (and we) *must* love others as themselves, because by that love would the world see and know Him, and that they and we are His. Blessings, TKR :).
Thanks, TKR. What fascinates me about the Phelps is that their “badness” has been planted, cultivated, and encouraged to flourish. The teenagers are torn between being girls and being members of the WBC; Theroux enables us to see that. In their misbegotten desire to be decent (as defined by Gramps), they are plunging into the foulest kind of indecency, just a dynamite vest away from some of their fundamentalist Muslim brethren’s brand of “decency.” Religion really does identify that which is worst in humans. Jesus sees the best in humans which, he said, was already in them.