After reading the ruling of the courts recently that Westboro Baptist Church’s protests during funerals and others places are constitutional, I’m seriously contemplating starting a website called
Christians Against Christian Jerks
I wonder if http://christiansagainstchristiansjerks.com is available.
I’m not timid in saying that I really dislike them people. Sorry.
You’ve heard me already write and rant about the paradox of Christian jerks:
…“Christian jerks” are a tragic paradox – especially when they think they are doing the Kingdom a great favor.
Let’s contend for the Gospel but let’s not be jerks in the process. Nowhere do I read in the Scriptures, “Contend for the gospel as a jerk.”
But watching this video (below) this morning, I got that really sick feeling in my tummy again. Like really sick. Obviously, I wasn’t there and I don’t have the full context but what’s been reported by others is that a rally with Christians was gathering around the outside gates of the White House and Muslim man shows up to also pray, and several Christians then gather around – hurl insults, shouting “Jesus, Jesus” and even throws some crosses on the ground – as the Muslim person is praying.
…just as the rally was dying out, a Muslim man who showed up to pray in front of the White House. He was quickly surrounded by a large group of protestors who shouted an array of insults at him: mocking him for drinking Starbucks coffee, telling him to go back to his country and even throwing tiny crosses at his feet as he prayed.
Seriously? Really?
I know you wouldn’t do this but here’s my question:
If you were there, what would you have done in response to these Christians?
Update:
And one of my readers send me this link. Wow. I’m sure there’s some context for such hatred. Please tell me there’s some sort of context…
EUGENE CHO 
That video turns my gut! I’m with you Eugene.
i agree, they will know we are christians by our love. why can’t we get that?
here is a clip by dan merchant (life of brian) that kinda sums up my feelings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrFC_s5j8js
This made me cry. Still crying. I’d have gotten down on my knees with that man, right by his side, and prayed. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. Christ have mercy on us all.
This was the exact answer I was about to post. I only hope there would have been enough of us to surround him and block his view of the atrocity around us.
I’m anguished by it all – the common denominator in all of it is the white house, which is an interesting setting for this “display” but the inability to pray together is anguishing. How much more would anyone watching heard if those Christians had simply knelt with him? Unreal. Without context, obviously, you don’t get all of it. Frankly I’m somewhat relieved that a physical altercation didn’t break out. Heartbreaking.
Im with Randy Slever on this…..
Wow. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. I get so angry when I see people act like that. I grew up in a church that was like that, so judgmental, so hypocritical.
Jerks like these don’t understand the gospel.
You seriously ruined my day. I feel like vomiting…
i’m sorry,mike. sometimes, stuff like this needs to be shared.
Sometimes we should just vomit.
I can’t even get myself to watch the video … Ugh! And Randy’s comment is so right on. I can only imagine Jesus grieving grieving grieving. So sad and WRONG!
hard to watch – painfully misses the mark of 1 Peter 3:15 (“…Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”)
I TOTALLY agree with you, TF! Perfect verse for this situation. ICor. 13:1-3 “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”
Instead of starting a website or calling them jerks, shouldn’t we be praying for them instead?
@frank: you are a good man. and i am a self-confessed recovering cynic. i think i can pray for them but i think we should called stuff what they are. these actions are despicable.
I share in your absolute disgust and frustration at so called Christians. I am heartened by the comments above about joining in prayer. I think that is exactly what Jesus would have done.
As emotional as the Snyder VS Phelps Supreme Court decision is, I think we all need to take a step back and read the decision completely and not rely on a vary lazy media to decipher it for us.
Phelps with great malice of forethought has carefully crafted each funeral protest to never specifically mention the deceased or their family by name and to get all necessary public permits before protesting. This is the way they made sure the Supreme Court would rule in their favor. As long as they are not specifically attacking a private person by name , under the 1st amendment they are free to say what ever they want. Westboro and the Phelps family by their actions have made themselves “Public” persons and as such have forgone the specific rights that a “private person” has under the 1st amendment. perhaps we should take advantage of that and continue to protest them and use all legal means at our disposal to make this type of protest no longer useful to them. It will take some thinking but I am sure one of us can come up with a way to stop them with out curtailing constitutional rights. That is what a constitutional democracy is all about. May God inspire us to do the right thing. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-751.pdf
How dare those legal and social commentators, who never miss an opportunity to praise the Jehovah’s Witnesses for stretching the boundaries of the First Amendment, now condemn the Westboro Baptists, whose actions in our time are no more outrageous than were the actions of the Jehovah’s Witnesses during World War 2.
During WW2, Jehovah’s Witnesses specifically targeted the homes of parents and spouses of wounded and killed soldiers — knocked on those doors — and told wives, mothers, and fathers that their husbands and sons had died not only needlessly and pointlessly, but in support of a government which GOD considered His enemy and would soon destroy.
During WW2, Jehovah’s Witnesses would show up at War Bond Rallies and spew the same garbage.
1940s Jehovah’s Witnesses would park sound trucks across the street from public schools and during recess and blast the school campus with pre-recorded sermons decrying the Pledge of Allegiance. There were also instances of JWs going inside school buildings and passing out anti-Pledge literature to children in the hallways.
JWs also parked sound trucks outside of churches during ongoing services and blasted churches with pre-recorded sermons decrying church teachings.
JWs carried phonographs with pre-recorded sermons door-to-door decrying patriotism, Christianity, etc. During WW2, a WW1 veteran and then Deputy Sheriff ran two JWs out of his gasoline station after they started playing such a recording. One of the JW “pioneers” pulled a pistol and murdered the Deputy.
Post WW2, the WatchTower Society made a point of renting for conventions those facilities which had been named or renamed in honor of the WW2 veterans (Memorial Coliseum, Veterans Stadium, etc. etc.) so as to poke their fingers in the eyes of returning veterans and the cause for which they had fought, been wounded, or died.
1940s Jehovah’s Witnesses would specifically target urban Catholic neighborhoods with door-to-door sermons and literature which defamed the Pope and other Catholic hierarchy, Catholic theology, etc.
The JWs of WW2 were the Westboro Baptists of today.
Make up your minds, commentators.
FACT SOUCE:
http://jwemployees.bravehost.com/NewsReports/2031.html
In the end, you got your revenge, Hitler did not like the Jehovah’s Witnesses either, they were put in the concentration camps. Read any good source on the Holocaust, JWs were targetted too.
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/Jehovah.htm It’s hard to envision there being German Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1930s Nazi Germany but this essay indeed shows there were and a number died in the concentration camps. Quite a different take than James Gerald’s writeup though I’m sure it is truthful as well.
I see people using the name of Jesus in vain and imaging a god whom I don’t know, and I see respect for God in the physical posture of the Muslim man who’s trying to pray. It breaks my heart. I wish some of us could gather around the Muslim man, as a buffer between the loud mouths & him, and pray to our God near him, so that he feels enfolded with others who love & honor God, too.
Don’t give them any press.
kris:
i struggle with this often.
is it better to ignore and not give any press or acknowledge that there are “some” who see this and misperceive that this encapsulates the larger Christian community? and if it’s the latter, is it better to bring light to it and condemn it?
Right on, Randy S. I think a movement of Christians should start to surround people like this and do just what you say…the Copts and Muslims in Egypt are better than most of us.
This group should take note of their Christian brothers and sisters in Egypt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqXfZTgOCOE
Ouch! That video sucks. They are indeed a tragic paradox.
And we wonder why the world despises us?
Hoping that I would think about the option of getting on my knees and praying to Christ beside him…but I very much doubt that I would think of doing that.
tasersedge,
For the record, I wonder if I really would, too. My first instinct would be far less Jesus like, I’m afraid.
The trouble with starting a site like that is it would be responding in the same spirit of exclusion and antagonism. We’re gonna have to Love. As much as that sucks right now. Plus, you’d be spending valuable energy. #Diversion. However, I’m thinking about the Muslim man … Oh How I wish he could know not all followers of Jesus are like that. Lord have mercy on us …
I share in your absolute disgust and frustration at so called Christians. I am heartened by the comments above about joining in prayer. I think that is exactly what Jesus would have done.
As emotional as the Snyder VS Phelps Supreme Court decision is, I think we all need to take a step back and read the decision completely and not rely on a vary lazy media to decipher it for us.
Phelps with great malice of forethought has carefully crafted each funeral protest to never specifically mention the deceased or their family by name and to get all necessary public permits before protesting. This is the way they made sure the Supreme Court would rule in their favor. As long as they are not specifically attacking a private person by name , under the 1st amendment they are free to say what ever they want. Westboro and the Phelps family by their actions have made themselves “Public” persons and as such have forgone the specific rights that a “private person” has under the 1st amendment. perhaps we should take advantage of that and continue to protest them and use all legal means at our disposal to make this type of protest no longer useful to them. It will take some thinking but I am sure one of us can come up with a way to stop them with out curtailing constitutional rights. That is what a constitutional democracy is all about. May God inspire us to do the right thing. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-751.pdf
thank you Stephanie for saying this so succinctly! thats exactly why we can’t sue them for libel, etc. your ideas to legally get them to stop are very clever and push us in a new direction. we need to beat them at their own game. God gave us brains for a reason!
Disgusting. The text that comes to mind is the following: “Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'” Matthew 7:23. For my Muslim friends who may see this they should know that Jesus [PBUH] said he never knew people like this. In other words, they are not his people, nor should they be ours. The term “Christian” is more an adjective, describing the character of a person that resembles Christ. It was in the Bible ascribed by others upon people who were “little Christ ones!” It was never self ascribed in our Holy Book.
Salaams
thanks andy for your comment. can’t wait for you, mike, and your team to launch your website. what you guys are doing is so critical.
I am disgusted by the video, and disgusted by this small group of Christians and question their real motives for their prayer vigil outside the WH does nothing to promote Christianity to nonbelievers. I also question the motives of the Muslim who came to pray, uninvited, in the midst of these Christians. It is not like this was an ecumenical service where he would have been welcomed with open arms. No, I think both Christians and Muslim are guilty of very un-Christian and un-Muslim motives and they gave each other just what each wanted…the opportunity to point fingers and accuse the other of hate and religious intolerance and use the video to inspire more hate and intolerance. I think there was more at work here than meets the eye…..
“I also question the motives of the Muslim who came to pray, uninvited, in the midst of these Christians.”
I’m sorry. Who is it that has the authority to invite or disinvite anybody to pray anywhere?
Christ does. He spoke against those who pray in public just to make themselves look good and praised those who lock themselves away and pray sincerely without drawing attention. This teaching applies to Christians and would apply to a Muslim as Islam recognizes Jesus as a prophet but not the Savior.
These people should get all the publicity they seek and more. Eveyone should see what these folks are about, and that it has nothing to do with Christianity. Nothing is gained by ignoring them or not talking about them. People need to decide whether they are for or against this kind of “Christianity” Obviously, most people will be repulsed. In the bright light of publicity, the power of this group will be significantly diminished. Sometimes people with good hearts and good sense need that kind of motivation to stand up against such hate groups. I for one would be happy to join in a counter protest whenever these hate-mongers show up in town.
agreed.
light needs to shine on darkness.
This is heartbreaking. It makes me feel so ashamed of these people who claim to know Christ. I am definitely a Christian against Christian jerks. I pray God will show them how HE sees this man trying to pray. These people don’t realize that through their actions, they might be making Jesus appear like the jerk. Jesus shows loving kindness, mercy, and grace…not hatred.
Yes Jerks. I some yearsago saw Bible School I said said pray on steps of a Gay church.
The same dude rebuke them in a mall in my neighborhood. Jerks so I get it. This was not
appropiate.
….”33 “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. 34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. 35 A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. 36 But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. 37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12
Just a thought?
When I hear about what they are doing in the name of “Christianity” if just floors me. Westboro is also vowing to quadruple the number of protests at military funerals. As a military wife and daughter this is deeply disturbing as well.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Supreme_Court/westboro-baptist-church-quadruple-military-funeral-protests-supreme/story?id=13039045
I don’t think Westboro has enough members to quadruple their protests. I believe they are mostly made up of one family, the Phelps. I think they have less than 50 members. They just know how to manipulate media to seem more important than they are.
Right, exactly, that is what I heard to, they are more of a family than a church. Egads. What a household.
I really have no words. But one point I found interesting was at 1:17 in the first video. A Christian man asks, “what kind of God would tell you to kill somebody because you don’t believe in their God”? I don’t know what specific question was asked, but it makes me think of “saved by the sword” of the crusades and I found this protest and the one after it (as did all of you) ugly.
Extreme hate should be met with extreme love.
Wow.
It is unkind to gang up on someone like that, he’s just praying to GOD, the GOD how he knows best. And it is ironically unAmerican to say go back home. Said and said again, but we don’t live in the theocracy of Israel old, but America where all people are free to express themselves. But as I’m reminded, freedom to express is not freedom from consequences. The angels will and do punish all infractions of the Laws of YHWH. So be good,
After watching the first ‘clip’, in my opinion these types of ‘gatherings’ do NOTHING to bring anyone to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Quite the opposite!! It grieves me to think that anyone would think otherwise.
A sick feeling indeed. Both of these videos turned my stomach. I am a Christian who doesn’t agree with these kinds of hateful actions. It doesn’t represent what Jesus taught. While watching the 2nd video I sadly had the image enter my mind from those old newsreels and Nazi propaganda films of Jews walking the streets of Germany in the 1930’s being persecuted with tirades of the same sort of chants of ‘go home’. Well, we all know what that led to. It can’t happen here? We can only pray to God it doesn’t. ‘Forgive them father for they know not what they do’
It’s funny how people like this will defend themselves with some of the harsher texts. Things like “brood of vipers” and the whip incident in the temple. They never seem to understand that Jesus was talking about and chasing THEM from the temple. The legislation of morality at its worst.
Well, the bar is set pretty low when it comes to being allowed to call oneself a “Christian” so one must admit that, human nature being what it is, you are going to get folks travelling through life under this umbrella that may have some faith, but none of the spirit. They believe in “something”, but it is more a mechanism to shelter their egos from a world that they otherwise feel helpless and feeble operating within it than it is coherent, genuine Christian faith.
As far as Westboro Baptish Church goes, they’re no more than a family of con artists looking to incite behavior that will opportune them to sue the livin’ whee out of anybody and everybody within a sixteen block radius of them. I think we do the Christian faith a disservice including them in the cohort of Christian churches. As Molly Ivins once joked about Texas Baptists, “There’s nothing wrong with them except that they don’t hold ’em under water long enough.”, I think we can substitute “Westboro” for “Texas” without much efforts. There’s probably nothing to be done directly about them. How God sorts them out will happen when it happens and, while I doubt we’ll know about it, I’m sure it would be fairly gratifying if we were to know. 🙂
A friend wrote in a song, “God is love. Only love. Nothing more. Nothing less.” While perhaps an oversimplification, it’s a fine jumping off point, nonetheless, and seems to have been missed by these folks.
Enough rambling. Thanks for the fine article.
In the end though, IF you want to even call these folks Christian, they are probably about .000000000000000000000000001% of the US Christian population and I understand they are from Kansas NOT Texas, some of the things written here above by Brett and Larry likewise is incendiary speech. I’ve also heard that as opposed to being a Church, the Westboro people are more like a family.
Reminds me of the video of those Teabaggers ganging up on a man who had Parkinson’s disease. Berating him as a “leech” and throwing money on him.
My youngest sister was disabled and she was treated as if she was retarded just for having an ungainly walk by her church and those outside the church. This kind of thing just burns me up.
Reminds me of those SEIU Union thugs beating a black man because he was at a Tea Party rally. Reminds me of the Palm Springs Liberals and Progressives protesting in favor of a National Healthcare Program saying Clarence Thomas should “go back to the fields” and be “strung up”. Yeh, this article by Cho is real unbiased, hey, and what about the Somali who was trying to bomb a Christmas tree lighting celebration in Seattle, didn’t see that mentioned anywhere either.
It is because of people like the christians in this video that I reject Christian religion and political propaganda but I still embrace the spirituality and life philosophy of Christianity. Jesus taught love and acceptance. Jesus was a rebel in society because he embraced those who people who the church rejected. Not one person can show me a scripture where Jesus openly endorses discrimination or war. Islamic terrorists are people who are misrepresenting Islam to the western world and so it is up to other Muslims to defend their religion by openly opposing those vile extremists. In contrast, here we have so-called Christians misrepresenting Christianity to the world and it is up to true Christians to openly oppose this disgusting behavior. The most dangerous and greatest enemies come from within our own house and purport to fly our same flag and sing our same songs.
Fine, if you are ever in an earthquake or hurricane ravaged area, you can wait for the Atheist Charities to bail you out.
I highly doubt that the people who protest and scream at Muslims are the same people who rush to help people in crisis from a hurricane or earthquake. The people being discussed here are protesters. Honestly, people who rush to aid those in crisis usually have better things to do than protest and scream at or about people who disagree with them.
Hopefully when we decide to take a big stance on something, or get in somebody’s face and yell at them we stop and think about it before we do it. Will this actually accomplish anything? Will this benefit the person it targets? Does the Bible at least suggest that this a good idea? (This sounds corny, but) Would Jesus do this?
I am constantly asking myself why Christians are making picket signs at all.
Has it ended abortion? Has it made people not gay?(or whatever other reason Christians were doing it) I mean, really, what do we think we are accomplishing? Couldn’t our passion and energy be better used in *actually* helping people?
I do not support Islam in any way. It subjugates woman all over the world, propagating female circumcision and honor killings. However, if I respond to Muslims out of my disgust for their belief system, how am I being like Jesus? Those people are God’s kids too, and He wants to set them free.
His kindness leads us to repentance. So few Christians seem to grasp that these days. We would rather mock and ridicule everyone we see as not agreeing with us. Where is the compassion in that? It is disgusting.
Probably more than any of our other social causes these days, we should be praying for the call to repentance of our own body.
Good points Miss Goody Two Shoes and Slavery was in the USA for 300 years and would still be around if people had not protested it, spilled blood over it.
I take that back, the 2nd paragraph you wrote was right on: we should pray for our adversaries. This place really went to the dogs a bit with the cat away, the mice will play.
I wasn’t trying to imply that there aren’t things worth fighting for. It was more my thought that we could be much more effective and constructive in the world – instead of usually just being reeaalllyy mouthy. 🙂
Mockers, Scoffers, hate mongers…opposite of Christ. What is happening? I don’t get it. 😦
The paradox is that we are called to love our neighbors: intolerant and Muslim. It is the hardest thing we are called to do: love our enemies. What does that love look like? That is what I am trying to sort out especially for the first group. As someone close to me said yesterday, ‘The people that I have the hardest time liking as those who are full of hate.’ Prayer is one life giving answer. I welcome other suggestions. I suspect that treating them like people who love their children and want to keep this country safe may be a place to start. Listen to them REALLY carefully. Ask them new kinds of questions. What are things you are really proud of? What does a healthy safe community look like to you?
Serve as witnesses. Join interfaith organizations. Make real connections with your neighbors, learn their names and what matters to them. See them as God’s children even in though they misbehave.
Hate Comes To Orange County, Ok, so we heard the word “Baggers” above. Okay, fair enough.
Read this quote: “They even sounded a shofar, the ram’s horn usually used in Jewish prayer services. Protester Dena Newman said it, “is also used in battle to announce to the enemy that God’s army is coming.” -http://www.examiner.com/muslim-in-san-francisco/shocking-anti-muslim-hate-rally-on-video Author Davi Barker, American convert to Islam, married the executive director of CAIR in San Francisco.
Okay, taking upon others who “judge”, maybe we should judge ourselves. If we are calling people Baggers, well, at the Orange County rally, Jews protested too, a Shofur was blown as said above by a Muslim Journalist. Okay. So, hey, let’s call Jews names too. Right?
Furthermore, over the weekend and a Palestinian organization accepted responsibility of the act, a family was killed, 2 parents, 3 children, 1 a baby, Jews. Hey, I think it’s about time there was equal time here if what the Baggers have done is so horrid. Iran’s Islamic Government hanged over 60 people in January alone, they are real angels too aren’t they http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12317138 , even hanged an Iranian female citizen of Netherands and they accused her of smuggling drugs but their families say it was because the woman was in the protests in Iran. How tolerant of protests these Iranians were. Oh and of course, we all know they’ve hanged gays as well. Yeh, real tolerant. I heard Christians are even put into education camps in Malaysia.
Despite Westboro being scoundrels, I guess the Court was protecting the rights to protest, I don’t think Westboro are allowed to do it right at the funeral, they have to be a distance away. Thank God, something kept them from being able to do this at that little girl’s funeral who was killed in Arizona, some radio show may have given them some airtime in turn of them not protesting.
Only one person here referred to “teabaggers” so I’m not sure where you got the “we”. I didn’t see much namecalling here, so please don’t make it out that “we” are doing anything of the sort.
The original post here was about Christians who screamed and yelled at a Muslim man for praying publicly. It isn’t about Iran, it isn’t about Jews or Muslims, it is about how some Christians, our brothers and sisters in Faith, are being verbally abusive to other people, and how this kind of action is not Biblical, loving, or like Jesus in any way. It is not meant to be a comparison to anything else.
AMEN to a great post Eugene! How hatred could be mixed up or built from a belief in the God of the Bible is beyond me. I really wish Christ’s name wouldn’t be casually attached to us humans, and this is a prime example of such a thing occurring..
On another note, I just wanted to thank you for all of the work you put into this site. I have really enjoyed following your posts since discovering it in 2010. You and a few others have actually inspired me to start my own blog (http://thecaffeinecemetery.blogspot.com/). Hopefully you don’t mind that little bit of “spam!” 🙂
In any case, I’m really looking forward to the words God will give your readers through this blog in the future. Take care and God bless you brother!
Sola scriptura
Distresses me that Westboro Baptist Church is going to the Liz Taylor (RIP) Funeral. Where do these people get funding to do these things? I guess if your a nobody, they won’t protest your funeral.
Faith Without Works Is Dead
Even though this is a month ago, this makes me really sad to hear that this is how Christians are treating other people. 😦 It really breaks my heart.