Sunday, September 13, 2015

Former Westboro Baptist Church member says their hateful views came from misinterpreting Bible verses

The Raw Story has this about Megan Phelps-Roper who left the Westboro Baptist Church because of their hateful and offensive activities and protests. There is also a podcast to listen to. The podcast is quite lengthy but is quite fascinating. Here is an excerpt from the article:
     “My family didn’t come to the table with hatred for LGBT people and then look to the Bible to justify their hatred, which is a common charge. They read, ‘If a man also lie with mankind as he lie with a woman, both of them having committed abomination, they will surely be put to death, their blood shall be upon them,’ and walked away from that with – not just that verse, but lots of others ones – they walked away from that with ‘God hates f*gs’ and supporting the death penalty for gays.”
     “To categorically deny a connection between those words from Leviticus and our beliefs, to say that we read into the text what we wanted to see, is I think to be blind to the nearly all encompassing power of that sort of blinding faith,” she added.
     Phelps-Roper said a Jewish man on Twitter was the first person to plant the seed of doubt in her mind, after pointing out that a member of the church had had a child out of wedlock.
     He said having a child out of wedlock was also a sin worthy of death, she recalled. [emphasis added] “If she had been killed – if you kill someone as soon as they sin, you completely cut off the opportunity to repeat and be forgiven, which is a major foundation of Christian theology. This is what we were preaching, repent or perish.”
You can follow the Raw Story on Twitter by clicking on the "Follow" icon below. Travis Gettys is one of favorite writers at the online magazine: