Church Disturbs Funeral of Soldiers

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Originally posted by Gromgor
They are owed at least a measure of thanks for providing the catalyst that brought about what is probably the greatest show of real patriotism...

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No, they're not.

I would also like to point out that the concept of evil can exist without allowing it to be expressed physically, thus making the yin and yang portion of your post more or less nonsensical. I have never understood some people's fascination with the idea that we just HAVE to have evil. No, we don't. It exists as a constant possibility, but the idea that there is no choice but for it to be expressed is nonsense. A good understanding of language would even reveal that what anyone means by "good" at any given time is not a constant, so how then is the struggle between good and evil supposed to be such a defining thing?

You may not know the difference between what you like and don't like until you've experienced both, but that doesn't mean you have to keep eating liver to enjoy a good center cut filet.

My MC had a Poker Run and I was talking to a member of the Patriot Guard
( the Assoc of Bikers that show up at funerals)
This so called Church is not sanctuned by the Baptist church
though they call themelves that.. it is mostly this Phelps family ,extended family and a few friends.
They are also lawyers hoping that someone does "assult" them so they can SUE, That is their main purpose in all of their actions is to set up a lawsuit for their own personal benefit.
It would be best if this would go away actually as the "Publicity "IS what they want to continue their "SCAM"
This was right from a biker that has been there first hand.

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Originally posted by xaxer
My MC had a Poker Run and I was talking to a member of the Patriot Guard
( the Assoc of Bikers that show up at funerals)
This so called Church is not sanctuned by the Baptist church
though they call themelves that.. it is mostly this Phelps family ,extended family and a few friends.
They are also lawyers hoping that someone does "assult" them so they can SUE, That is their main purpose in all of their actions is to set up a lawsuit for their own personal benefit.
It would be best if this would go away actually as the "Publicity "IS what they want to continue their "SCAM"
This was right from a biker that has been there first hand.

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Phelps is the one that runs the aforementioned website. Makes sense. I wondered in the back of my head how they got away with that sort of thing and maintained any sort of contact with the Baptist Convention.

Well, this may be premature though, maybe there is a web site that has more info.... lemme see.

I can't find anything very specific, but here's a quote about how he separated from the Souther Baptist convention.

"Despite being ordained as a Southern Baptist minister, Phelps touts himself as a Primitive Baptist preacher and an Old School preacher. No rules prevent him from switching denominations, said Mark Coppenger, an official with the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tenn.

"''I was ordained by the First Baptist Church of Vernal, Utah," Phelps says. "There is no such thing as being ordained by the Southern Baptists. You are ordained by the Baptist church. I went to that church, and we liked each other. They baptized me in a mountain stream that was cold and ordained me.'"

- http://cjonline.com/webindepth/phelp...phelps01.shtml

A lot of people have very little understanding of how denominations are maintained or how loose the restrictions are on starting or naming a church. Apparently he was ordained in the Souther Baptist convention but has since separated from it of his own accord.

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Originally posted by xaxer
This so called Church is not sanctuned by the Baptist church
though they call themelves that.

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I grew up the son of a Southern Baptist minister, and I felt this merited some clarification. There is no such thing as THE Baptist Church, in the sense of a central authority governing Baptist congregations. Any church can call itself a "Baptist" church, and most do, without answering to anyone but its own congregation. Many Baptist Churches do choose to affiliate themselves with a larger body, such as the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches American Baptist convention, Southern Baptist convention, etc., but even then, one of the few uniform tenants of all Baptist movements is congregational governance, which means that Baptist Churches within Baptist organizations still need not answer to those bodies as an authority.

Westboro Baptist is affiliated with the Primitive Baptist congregations, actually. For more information on this movement, here is a link with some good information: http://www.pb.org/pbfaq.html

The Baptist movement is very diverse when it comes to the issue of gays. On the more accepting side of the continuum, you have the Baptist Fellowship and American Baptists, and on the extreme other side you have Primitive Baptists and Southern Baptists, but any particular congregation within any particular group might vary a great deal.

In short, it isn't really accurate to call Westboro a "scam" church any more than to consider any church a con, which would be a whole other debate.

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Originally posted by Graeblyn
The Baptist movement is very diverse when it comes to the issue of gays. On the more accepting side of the continuum, you have the Baptist Fellowship and American Baptists, and on the extreme other side you have Primitive Baptists and Southern Baptists, but any particular congregation within any particular group might vary a great deal.

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I just realized this might be a bit misleading. If a church strays too much from the standards of a particular groups rules, they might refuse to accept delegates from that church. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention often kicks churches out of the convention for ordaining women, accepting openly gay members to their churches, etc., but that doesn't mean that the church in question can't keep calling itself Southern Baptist, it just means that the church can no longer attend and vote in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Hey Graeb. Good post. Very informative.

I did not find, and I admittedly didn't look very hard, but I didn't find any indication that they were indeed affiliated with the primitive baptists. A church doesn't have to be affiliated with anyone at all. That's a big part of the whole community church movement.

All the references I have found simply say he "calls himself" primitive baptist or "Old School".

The thing that would tend to make me think he is not is that by and large churches organized into larger bodies have respect for the concept of not bending or breaking the law. I had a great grandfather that was primative baptist, and he and his family would have absolutely not tolerated this Phelps' fellows way of going about things. There is a certain respect for just common decency that would not have encompassed Mr. Phelps' actions.

I would imagine most Primitive Baptist Churches would not approve, and indeed would condemn, Westboro's tactics. Sadly, though, it doesn't really matter, since they are free to call themselves Primitive Baptist anyway, if they like.

My point, really, is that there is no way to "qualify" the legitimacy of a Baptist Church, at least not in the way Xaxer was implying. As much as I would love being able to claim Westboro Baptist is just a scam being perpetrated by the Phelps family, that isn't really a fair characterization.

Incidentally, to illustrate my point about the diversity of positions even by "official" Baptist groups, take a look at these links from Religious Tolerance reflecting the positions of five different Baptist sects:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/homalbapt.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_cbf.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_aba.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_sbc.htm
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_abc.htm

In my experience with Xaxer, he rarely means to imply much under the surface. There are a lot of debates over what is and is not officially Christian, but the simple practical fact is that Mr. Phelps does not represent any organized, well recognized Christian set of beliefs, either Baptist or otherwise. As you say, he's free for a number of reasons to call his church whatever he wants, but it's very misleading to just lump him together with Baptists in general no matter what he calls himself.

To press the point further, any number of Baptists that I know, if I could be allowed to hypothesize on how they would speak of Mr. Phelps, a significant portion would likely refer to him as an anti-Christian figure controlled by the Devil to misguide people about the nature of the church. So you have all the fundamentalism, all the anti-homosexual beliefs, everything working together to make them every bit as anathema to liberals as Phelps, except that they would oppose him still on the grounds that he shows no Christian fruit of the Spirit in how he goes about things.

There's a letter from one of his sons that illustrates the point I am making here.

http://cjonline.com/webindepth/phelp...phelps03.shtml

I guess my point, in the final analysis, is that it is perfectly within the realm of reason to distance Mr. Phelps from mainstream Christianity, and even Baptists, in the way Xaxer did. I don't think he implied anything all that subtle. I think he was just speaking for a lot of us who would prefer debates of this sort to be held with an eye towards being civil, decent human beings during the process. As I said before, it seems that 9 out of 10 times, if someone wants to bring up how someone is being rude in their political leanings, no matter how many kids show up to an anti-globalization rally or what sort of carnage they leave in their wake, some nit wit with with a single church can somehow color conservatives more completely than thousands of people openly defying the law, decency, or normalcy seems to stick to the liberal movements.

AGAIN
What I wrote was from a Biker member of Patriot guard
Not an Informed member of ANY church.
It was a general conversation about what he saw and felt and
heard when he was there.
so the words- THE -, and Scam where this indviduals
not mine or anyone in any place of Authority.
Within Biker Assoc. or Any Church

These people showed up to the funeral of Pvt. Christopher Alcozer, a platoonmate, a good guy and a friend. That man didn't deserve that, and his poor family certainly didn't either. I can't imagine how selfish a person has to be in order to do something so despicable to draw attention to their own personal hatred. I cannot express the level of hurt and anger among his friends back here when we read the news article that came down to us about this.

But we do understand that there are a lott've good folks back there too. When a candle on a little shrine to their fallen son burned their house down a whole lott've people got together and helped raise the money to get his family back on their feet, and I'm willing to bet that a good deal of that money came from churches of a more charitable nature.