The recent death of Osama bin Laden has given America’s Christian community a new opportunity to talk about loving enemies. For me, perhaps more than any other aspect of being Mennonite, this is something I understand literally. The words of Jesus on this topic are radical, compelling, and reinforced through his own choices to heal his enemies. Today, I’m going to share a story about my own struggle to implement what Jesus calls the second greatest commandment: to love others as we would love ourselves.
A Scene from Ethnographic Research on Westboro Baptist Church
On October 2, 2006, a heavily-armed man entered a one-room Amish school house in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, released the boys and barricaded the exits, then opened fire, killing three girls immediately; two more died later from injuries, and the remaining five were critically injured. Charlie Roberts then shot and killed himself. The crime was entirely senseless and the gunman apparently mentally ill.
Amazingly to outsiders, the community was not torn apart, even under the resulting media coverage of the event. In accordance with Amish tradition, nonviolence and forgiveness were required, and the individual sorrow of family members and survivors was surrendered to God, who alone provides peace and the ability to forgive. Within days, the schoolhouse was dismantled and the space of the tragedy returned to pasture; eventually, a new schoolhouse, the New Hope School, was built to serve students in the area. When donations began to arrive for the Amish girls who remained hospitalized, the Amish in the community insisted that a fund be opened for the children of the killer. The story of grace and forgiveness was, without romanticizing Amish life, beautiful.
Then, inexplicably to most, Westboro Baptists inserted themselves into the story. Insisting that “God Sent the Shooter,” they threatened to picket at the funerals of the dead Amish girls. I was not unfamiliar with Westboro Baptist Church’s pickets of scenes of national tragedy. They were at Ground Zero shortly after September 11, 2001, holding signs saying that “God is America’s Terrorist” and “Thank God for 9/11” even as smoke billowed behind them. Had the question Would Westboro Baptists picket the funeral of Amish schoolgirls killed in a mass shooting by an insane man? been posed to me hypothetically, I would have said, “Absolutely”—just as they would go on to picket in response to the Virginia Tech killings in 2007 and the murders of six people in Tuscon by Jared Lee Loughner in 2010 in his attempted assassination of Senator Gabrielle Giffords. And, familiar with the church’s theology of disaster, I would have said that such a picket was merely in line with the church’s coldly logical interpretation of hyper-Calvinism.
But this was different: this was my hometown.
I had run through scenes in which my academic life and my personal life could cross in potentially disastrous ways, primarily because both my brother-in-law and sister-in-law were serving in combat zones during my field work. Both lived within easy driving distance of the church, and if either were killed in combat, I knew that church members would picket, and I was prepared for that, as much as any Kansan is. But in imagining moments when I might see Westboro Baptists intrude upon my personal life, I had not expected this one. I had grown up in the area of the shooting; shopped at the Amish dry goods store, hardware store, and furniture store by the school; was baptized in the country Mennonite church only a short distance away. My grandparents taxi Amish school teachers—young, unmarried women—to their jobs each morning. And I had once been good friends with the wife of the killer, having attended school with her from kindergarten to graduation. We had played in her yard as children, and I had slept over at her house on her birthday, which was at Christmastime. As a high schooler, she had hosted a Bible study at her house that I attended. The shooting hurt so many I loved. My friend Erica, who was a resident in the Lancaster General Hospital emergency room, told me later that, before victims arrived, they had warned of a mass casualty incident but had no idea what it was. A terrorist attack? A bombing? When the bodies came in, she said, they were of young Amish girls—six, seven, eight year-olds, and, as the doctors began their duties, the scene made no more sense.
That members of a community I loved so much—and who were so kind to each other—would be victimized by my research subjects paralyzed me. Old doubts I thought I’d resolved reappeared: These people are detestable. Even studying them may corrupt you. What good will it do to learn about people who are obviously evil? Will you get sucked into their harmful theology? Will you justify their behavior?How could you explain to your friends and family at home what you are doing? Moreover, new questions emerged. What if they showed up at my child’s funeral? What if there was a shooting at my university? What would I say if I saw church members as I entered the funeral service or cemetery? What would I do if they called me out by name?
Thankfully, a fuller discussion with friends and family at home was curtailed when Westboro Baptists announced that they had accepted an offer of radio airtime on The Mike Gallagher Show, hosted by a conservative who did not support the church’s position, in exchange for canceling the picket. Still, I was ill-equipped to manage my own response to their threatened picket.
Consequently, I stopped researching, unsure if the break was a hiatus or the end of the project. I thought, six months later, that, despite having done nothing to actually address the situation, I would be fine to return to my work, and, in most regards, I was. Taking my cue from the Amish, I decided to forgive, as best I could, church members, even if they didn’t want it and even though their actions were not taken specifically against me. Not until nearly four years later—last summer—was I aware of how deep it was.
On a long van ride with church members to a military funeral in Omaha, Nebraska, where they would picket and I would observe and interview counter-picketers, Jonathan Phelps, one of founder Fred Phelps’ sons, asked about my background. For some months, I had been attending church services regularly and observing Sunday morning pickets of other churches in Topeka and had participated in Bible studies and post-Sunday service potlucks. I knew all church members by name, and though they seldom asked personal questions about me, they knew I was a graduate student with a spouse and young children. They were not very interested in my personal life, nor in converting me, believing that, if God wanted me, I would hear the truth of their words and join the church. Still, they were consistently friendly, always making sure that, during interviews, that I was comfortable and furnished with a drink. Though they sometimes sent me home with small gifts—a jar of salsa that they’d recently canned, for example—and allowed me access to their homes and families, they didn’t ask many personal questions. On this trip, though, Jonathan, who had shared some amusing stories of his childhood, took the opportunity to ask me questions about my own personal history. Where was I from? he wondered.
“Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,” I responded.
“Never heard of it,” he responded.
Given the church’s threatened picket of the Amish funerals, I knew this was not true.
“Lan-CAST-er,” I tried again..
“Nope, never heard of it,” he said again.
I felt a tightness in my chest, then a snap. He had heard of it, even if he’d forgotten. In 2006, he and his church had sent the county into an uproar, inflicting emotional pain on people I loved, merely with the threat that they would picket. Their pain, their preparation to respond to pickets—these were not his memory, had probably never even registered with him.
“Yes, you have,” I corrected, as bold as I have ever been with a church member, the words rushing out. “Nickel Mines is there. In October 2006, some Amish girls were gunned down at their school, and you threatened to picket.” I stopped, fearful that I had raised my voice to overcome the sound of the blood rushing in my head, fearful that, if I didn’t stop, I would unleash anger that I didn’t realize I still had. At the time, it did not occur to me that, in this moment, I might not just lose access—I might get dumped on the side of the road in rural Nebraska.
Jonathan paused for a moment, then chuckled. “Yeah, then Shirl”—his sister, Shirley, who had been interviewed on Hannity & Colmes—“she did that radio show, right?”
I sat back, stunned. An event that meant had so profoundly affected me, even years later, and my loved ones was not something Jonathan could even recall without prompting. When he did, it was with a chuckle as he recalled not the pain of the community but his sister’s radio performance. I remained silent, not because I was so emotionally controlled but because I could not imagine, for the first time, what to say to someone so heartless.
Soon, Fred Phelps, Sr., the driver, perhaps feeling my anger and confusion, turned the conversation to small talk. “You’ve heard of Lancaster,” he chided his brother. “Steve”—the church member who had converted after producing the documentary about Westboro—“went there for a conference last year. Remember that?” As the brothers recalled pleasant details of their co-congregant’s trip to a tourist-friendly area, I sat in silence, unsure if I was ready to re-engage and when, if ever, I would be released from my anger.
Lessons Learned
For me, the compassion I could feel for targets of Westboro Baptist Church was not merely a strategy to better understand the feelings of mourners of funerals who had long been victimized by the church; it was a gift that helped me better understand Jesus’ command that we love our enemies. Further, while my own feelings around the issue of the threatened Lancaster County picket remain, even today, unresolved to a certain extent, in growing in my compassion for targets of pickets, my capacity to care for Westboro Baptists, without invitation, grew, too.
This was illustrated to me on October 6, 2010, the day that the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Snyder v. Phelps, a civil case brought by the father of a fallen Marine, Matthew Snyder, whose funeral was picketed by the church. Originally, a jury had found for the father, Albert Snyder, awarding him nearly $11 million in damages, but the appeals court had reversed the decision and awarded court costs to the church, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court. Matthew Snyder was from York, Pennsylvania, just over the Susquehanna River from Lancaster, and his funeral was held in Maryland, so local interest in the case was strong. Very early on the morning of October 6, I arrived at the Supreme Court to join the blocks-long line of people hoping to hear the case.
The day before, Phelps-Chartered, the family law firm, had received a suspicious letter. Paulette Phelps, wife of Jonathan, had unsuspectingly opened the letter, which was filled with a white powder. The Topeka Fire Department and the Joint Terrorism Task Force investigated, part of the office was sealed, and, while Paulette was not quarantined while the FBI analyzed the powder, her clothing was contaminated (Fry, 2010). The arrival of the letter was timed to coincide with the Supreme Court arguments, but the church members who were picketing outside the Supreme Court that morning, including Jonathan, seemed relatively unconcerned.
As I approached him, Jonathan was busily explaining why church members celebrate all death as God’s judgment on evil humanity to a group of students from nearby American University. (“What if your own child was killed in an accident?” one student asked, gesturing toward a young boy who, though too small to hold a sign, was clearly with the church. “That child over there?” Jonathan asked, pointing to his great-nephew. “Well, he’s not my child, but he’s my nephew, and if he was killed in an accident—or if my own child was killed—then I’d say, ‘Thank God,’ because everything God does is for His glory and you have to give God thanks for everything.” The students were duly impressed with his commitment to his theological position, abhorrent as they found it.) Noticing me, he gave a big smile, and I stepped into the small crowd around him. When the students quieted down, I asked about Paulette’s health, wondering if he was as peaceful with his wife’s actual brush with danger as he was with his nephew’s hypothetical death. Was she well? And was he worried about her, as he was so far from home? “Oh, she’s fine,” he laughed, expressing his gratitude for my concern. “We just need to give her some training in safe mail handling practices.” And, no, he wasn’t worried—as with all things, if God wanted Paulette dead, there would be nothing he or anyone could do about it, but he was confident that God would keep them safe.
I felt a sense of relief that wasn’t due solely to my distaste for vigilante justice. My concern for Paulette, Jonathan, and the other workers (as well as clients) in the law office was sincere, and, beyond that, I did not like the thought of anyone living under threat of terrorism. I noticed my feelings, glad that, though Jonathan had not been concerned about my feelings regarding the threatened Lancaster County picket, I was concerned for him. I did not feel self-righteous about my ability to care for someone who did not care for me and my community in the same way I cared for his, but I felt relief that one of my worst fears about researching this group was unrealized: I had not become deadened to the pain of others, insensitive to the words of the church or the harm they caused. Indeed, I remained sensitive enough to others that that sensitive could extend even to church members.
Thank goodness, for as I turned from Jonathan, I saw members of Matthew Snyder’s family in line a few feet behind me. Wearing pins on their jackets with a photo of Matthew Snyder in his Marine uniform with the words “My Hero” underneath it, they stood stoically as the sun rose over the United States Capital building across the street. Had they witnessed my concern for Paulette? I wondered. Did I look like a sympathizer with the people who have made their loss so much more acute? I silently asked the family to forgive me if it hurt them to witness the scene in which I was engaged, to endure my concern for the Phelpses, grateful, even now, for that capacity. Approaching them, I introduced myself not as a scholar but as someone with an interest in the case and concern for their family. “Thank you for being here,” I said, glad that I could, in a very small way, understand their pain a bit better.
My compassion for Westboro Baptist Church is quite imperfect. In reaching for it, though, I extend my compassion to others who I might not naturally love otherwise, including Charlie Roberts, including Matthew Snyder. The heart, as I remind my own children as they struggle with kindness, is muscle that grows only through exercise. Just as the words of Jesus remind us that there is no credit for loving those who are good to us, we do not grow in compassion by loving those who are easy to love—we need the resistance, the weight of the difficult-to-love, to help us build our strength. I might never learn to fully love Westboro Baptist Church, but, in trying, I love so many others better than I would otherwise. And so my obedience to Jesus’ command to love my enemy is not only, and in this case, maybe not at all, for my enemy’s sake but for my own.
-Rebecca Barrett-Fox
Thank you for a beautifully written article. I found this while researching responses of various organizations to the Westboro Baptist Church. This search was prompted by recent insights into the formation of the Patriot Guard Riders, who they are, and what their core mission is. I thought them to be a group of bikers and all the negative stereotypes that are called to mind, Then I learned more about them and I am impressed with them. It challenged me to look into what the response of the Mennonite Church has been, particularly because of our peace stance and how that relates to how we react (or fail to react) to the protests at military funerals. As a non-ethnic Mennonite, I am often distressed that we so rarely address the need for compassion for the families of military personnel who have been lost in combat. We seem to ignore the issue and the need. It was challenging to learn that a group of stereotypical bikers is providing comfort to those mourning the loss of loved ones, while my own church does not. It seems like we allow our peace stance to get in the way of our compassion for those who do not share it. I would like to see this change.
Thank you,
Dave L.
Great article!!! It’s amazing to read how compassionate and understanding you are towards those who have no compassion or understanding!! Christ has obviously strengthened you greatly! Spread the agape, Rebecca!!!
Thank you for sharing so transparently your process as you have, and are, journeying this.
I have only watched an interview on Westboro Baptist Church and kept thinking about His love, not just for all of us, but also for WBC. I will be praying for them.
Bless you so much.
Sorry, but I beg to differ. Westboro is a business organization, that keeps an extended family employed. A hateful, inbred, awful family. They make money off of lawsuits, and that great “tax free” status that they enjoy. You know, the “religion exemption”. I could actually do something like Westboro. Call myself “Charles Church of Indiana”, enjoy a tax free building, pay myself, and sue any person that dared to challenge me. Not that I would do that, but still. I find it funny that these little “business folks” are still being called a church. They had a great run, getting free trips, free publicity, and lots of money. Alas, the curtain is falling on them. Thank God. Respectfully, Charles