WHY does Fred Phelps convey his message in such an obnoxious way?

I think I know. And to know you have to learn a little more about him than knowing him as the guy who upsets bereaved military families.

The key to Fred as I see it is that he is just about the last of a long line of preachers who go back thousands of years. He preaches a demanding God rather than a God who just goes around helping people. And the message of a demanding God was the norm within the memory of people still alive.

It's only in the second half of the 20th century that a drastic and sudden watering down of the old faith occurred. And it's not only in the mainstream churches that the old Gospel has been transformed. Even most evangelicals seem to have succumbed to the new message -- though it varies in degree of course. The old binary God who was both a God of love and a God of judgement has largely disappeared. And Fred is one of the few holdouts from the old religion.

And he knows that. And it makes him desperate to see how few people now hear what he regards as the true gospel. So he goes to extraordinary lengths to get attention to his message.

As an atheist I have no dog in the fight concerned but if you want to step into a time machine and hear the sort of preaching that your grandparents heard routinely in their youth, click on the video below. It's still pretty powerful preaching.



Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).