Because Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church keep claiming that someone bombed their church, it's time to revisit the details of what exactly did happen in 1995.The Emporia Gazette did just that and reminds us:
On Aug. 20, 1995, an explosive device of some sort went off in the driveway of a house occupied by one of Phelps’ daughters. No one was injured and property damage was small. A year later, a man was sentenced to 16 days in jail for the blast.
End of story. Not terribly significant, but Phelps and clan are claiming that God is killing Americans in Iraq with IEDs because of that bombing. The Gazette reports on one recent Westboro fax.
“You bombed our church,” one fax asserts, “and instituted a 15-year reign of terror against us — for warning you of fag sins. America is now in God’s eternal cross-hairs.”
Uh huh. I've been here, living not all that far from the Phelps, and I haven't noticed much in the way of a reign of terror aimed at them for the last 15 years. The only reign anyone can see is the reign of hatred that pours out of the Phelps' compound in Topeka.
If such a God exists -- a God that would kill thousands because someone popped a hole in a driveway -- then that is a petty God indeed.
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PHOTO: Yup, that really is Fred Phelps in his pulpit. When I first met him more than 20 years ago in the Kansas Statehouse, he looked a tad younger, but just as wild eyed, although at the time he was wearing a jogging suit and clutching a diet pop as if it were a life preserver.
1 comment:
Do you have any source documents on the "bombing" Phelps claims?
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