Culture
- Culture
Those who never lived through the Great Depression scarce want to imagine how much worse it was than the Great Recession we are currently enduring. With each economic indicator we hope to see upticks in production, manufacturing, GDP and the rest of the measures indicating health, while a fall in unemployment would also be welcome news. The Federal Reserve reported in June the median net worth for American…
To bring this recent series on the Westboro cult to a close, I wanted to point your attention to a BBC documentary entitled The Most Hated Family in America. In 2007 British documentary film maker Louis Theroux traveled to Topeka, Kansas to spend time with the family of Westoro cult founder, Fred Phelps. Theroux allows nearly all of the primaries–including Fred Phelps himself–do the talking for themselves. His…
After my post asking that Fred Phelps’ family religious group be termed a cult a few people wondered at the wisdom of the media making such a designation. The Topeka based group refers to themselves as The Westboro Baptist Church and has since the 1940s. Why then, should the media refer to them as a cult rather than how they define themselves? In a word: accuracy. For many…
To All Media Outlets, Reporters, Writers and Editors: It is abundantly clear to most Americans that the “Westboro Baptist Church” is neither “Baptist” nor a “church” according to any commonly accepted meaning of either word. As a Christ follower, and a long time church attender, I enter this plea to stop using the phrase “Westboro Baptist Church” in favor of the more accurate “the Westboro cult.” The journalistic…
Christ followers should take the lead in this. We have spoken the truth for years. Without forsaking it, we should also be quicker to hear than we have been and love more in deed than in word.
