Son of Westboro Baptist Church patriarch discusses abuse, faith

Nate Phelps grew up in a household of hate.

The Westboro Baptist Church, led by his father, pastor Fred Phelps, gained infamy for its protests at soldiers’ funerals around the United States.

Nate Phelps spoke Tuesday night about “Life Beyond Westboro” at Southeast Missouri State University’s Academic Hall Auditorium.

About 70 people attended the event sponsored by the Secular Student Alliance and SEMO PRIDE, a student organization that seeks to “educate and celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and ally community.”

Phelps said he, his mother and his siblings were physically and verbally abused by his father at their home in Topeka, Kansas.

Phelps remembered he and his siblings often were severely beaten with a long tool until they were bloody. His father often would curse them while doling out the punishment, he said.

His father also would lash out at them with his feet and fists, Nate Phelps recalled.

The sixth of 13 children, Phelps said he was taught his father’s extreme version of Calvinism from an early age. Nate Phelps described it as a “raging, hateful ideology” that castigated gays and “ridiculed and abused strangers.”

Nate Phelps said his father, who earned a law degree, was quick to anger. When Fred Phelps’ law license was suspended for two years, he sent his children out to sell candy to raise money.

Nate Phelps said he and his siblings peddled chocolates at bars and nightclubs on weekends as strippers performed nearby.

Nate Phelps said his father once chopped off his mother’s hair because he found her to be disobedient.

At age 18, Nate Phelps fled in the middle of the night in a cheap car he had bought and hidden from his family. He moved to Southern California and eventually married.

But Phelps said he spent years trying to wrestle with his faith.

He initially took his children to church. But he had increasing doubts about religion.

“I stopped taking my kids to church,” he recalled, adding he encouraged his children to think for themselves.

Phelps, who now lives in Canada, warned against “blind faith.”

He said faith leads people to argue gays, transgender people and others are evil.

Phelps said he opposes “all ideas that separate us and isolate us from one another.”

He said his focus is not on an “after life” but on the “here and now.”

Phelps voiced concern about what he called “hateful ideologies” and violent protests on the left and right.

“This is not our better nature,” he told the audience. “Countering hate with hate never works.”

Phelps said, “We have to learn to tolerate each other.”

mbliss@semissourian.com

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