News-Record.com

He does it for the publicity. We need to stop giving him any.

Inoperative, Lex. Lots of people do bad things for the publicity, but if they're newsworthy they warrant coverage. It doesn't appear that Phelps is winning many converts with all his publicity.

If one follows the implications of millenialist Christianity, however (isn't Pastor Graham of that ilk?), doesn't lack of belief in Jesus of a very particular interpretation lead to rather nasty consequences? Phelps' tactics are beyond the pale, alright, but sugar-coating it doesn't hide the intolerance and ultimately (perhaps unintentionally) patronizing attitude of most conservative Southern Baptists.

I am not a Baptist, and I certainly invite responses from readers who are. But I don't think Phelps represents their theology in any way, shape or form.

Phelps grossly perverts the Christian gospels, in my opinion.

I am not a Baptist either, so I, too, will defer on that sect's particular doctrines. However, isn't it intrinsic to dismiss the possibility of the moral equivalence and/or eventual "happy afterlife" of someone, no matter how "good" in this life, who doesn't "come to Jesus" or simply espouse belief in the divinity of said deity/man?

The basic Christian doctrine has made sense to billions of people over the past 2,000 years and will continue to do so.

Yep, Doug that sums it up pretty well. There were unbelievers then and there will continue to be unbelievers.

As a former Baptist, I can say that Fred Phelps does not represent any of the teachings of the Baptist church that I once lead or attended.
The only thing Fred Phelps does is use the scripture to create chaos, get attention and wrap about himself his righteous robes which have shown only to be as filthy rags. He perverts the scripture to one of hate rather than one of love. No one can teach the hate that he spews out and still claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ. His leader appears to be the great deceiver who will use those like Fred Phelps to tear down true Christian teaching.
I basically left the Baptist Church when they lost focus on who they should be lifting up and the purpose of the church. They lifted up man and sought money as the goal to growth. They forgot the message and instead inserted programs which had nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.They left the teachings of God for the teachings of man and inserted their own brand of doctrine into the scripture thus polluting it and yet they wonder why they are loosing membership.

I admire Billy Graham because he has not allowed fame to change his message in all these years. I remember hearing him preach back in the 50's as a young boy and he preached the same message then as he did just a few weeks ago. He has never stopped preaching "For God so loved, the entire world of humanity, that He gave His only Son so that those who chose to believe will not have to be eternally separated from Him but can be with Him for eternity." The scripture continues and says that He didn't come to condemn us but that through Him, and what He did on the cross, that all those sins can and will be forgiven if we only believe in Him. And that is the message of grace and not justice, for if it were justice all of us would found guilty and spend eternity seperated from God. That is as simple a message as any can preach and Billy has preached that same message for nearly his entire life. I am proud to have called him neighbor and to call him friend.
He will attend the statue dedication but it is not fame and reward that he seeks here on this earth for his reward is already prepared for him by the one God that he has served for all these years.

So, the response to whether being a Christian believer requires dismissing those who aren't is: dismissive.

After all, Confucianism and Taoism made sense for more billions for 2500 years, but did not, to my knowledge, require thinking those who believed in some other god were headed for some sort of hellish punishment in a netherworld.

Being a Christian doesn't require thinking anything about what other people believe or assuming anything about their relationship with God. Being a Christian means accepting Christ as one's own savior and seeking to live the kind of life he modeled.

I am happy to hear this bit of news, Mr. Clark. I have run into and read reports of self-professed Christians who have said they believed (often---usually, even--- with sincere discomfort and distress for the fate of others) that non-Christians were not going to be rewarded in an afterlife with heavenly peace, but would more likely face tribulations of hellfire, etc. Thus, the call to avengelize.
If Christians and other missionary-type religions did not care about what followers or other faiths believed, then why do many risk their lives, spend lots of time and money to try and change what another person's relationship to God might be?

Evangelizing, or sharing the good news of the Christian faith, is perfectly appropriate. It's often done most effectively through mission work, bringing medical, food and other assistance to people who need it. Passing judgment on other people isn't part of the equation.

Thank you Doug for I could not have said it any better at all.

Mission work as far as bringing food and aid to the suffering is a tremendous good, I grant. Americares, for instance, is an excellent organization doing this.

However, are those who are approached by an evangelist, food in hand, perhaps, and then in the process of conversation or invitation to a revival or some sort of meeting, are told they ought to accept Jesus because, yes, he loves them, but also because they will otherwise certainly burn in hell--- are they somehow not to feel "judged"?

The response you gave here, Mr. Clark, is that the aforementioned evangelist is spreading "the good news". How is that "good news" to someone who has, say, been perfectly content as a Buddhist or Hindu, or even a pagan animist? Remember the schools we whites set up (and forcibly relocated children to away from their tribal homes) to "educate" Native Americans OUT of their indigenous (and, until the 1930s, illegal) beliefs.

These would seem to be forms of tacit, if not explicit, criticism of said non-Christian beliefs and the accompanying lifestyle choices of each "fallen" individual encountered. How is this not being "judged"?

Perhaps if the stakes are perceived and earnestly felt loss of a fellow human being's soul, it is not so bad that an evangelist may actually "judge" that person's seemingly invalid non-Christian system of belief; are people so afraid to admit they think critically at times of another person's religion?

Freddy, I think you're worrying overmuch about these issues. It's a natural human tendency for people to share knowledge they think might benefit others. If you read a good book, you might recommend it to your friend. Christians have read a Good Book and are doing the same. They're hardly unique in doing that. Muslims try to make converts to Islam. I remember when you'd see Hare Krishnas recruiting in airports or malls. I'm really not offended by it.

I am not actually deeply offended by a Christian or other religion-follower wanting to convert another; that's their prerogative. I am simply trying to get people to admit that part of the impulse comes from being critical and, yes, judgemental. We are so namby-pamby today about our motivations and dress things up to sound like we are all so ever-tolerant when, frankly, we aren't. So be it. Just say it. Intellectual honesty and what Sartre calls "good faith".

And that makes me wonder what was the last good book you read (fiction, please), Mr. Clark, which you would recommend as "life-changing"?

Of course people are judgmental. I simply disagree that Christian doctrine requires it.

I rarely read fiction anymore. I'd have to think for a while to recall a novel that I found to be life-changing, although many have been influential. How about you?

I'll just mention three that do come to mind that I'd call influential, for various reasons:

"Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

"The Tenants of Time" by Thomas Flanagan

Bear with me, the answers here are complex, as was the question.

African-American philosopher Adran Piper identifies the need for "good discrimination": it allows us to make aesthetic, ethical and economic choices. Admitting we WANT to be judgmental is hard for many, though. "INdiscriminate discrimination", however, is a form of prejudice (or, as one of my students wonderfully mangled it, "predigest").

Christian official doctrine (argued at conventions, issued by papal bull, etc.) or dogma may not require discriminating judgements (except their god's?), but the Christian bible, like most every scriptural religious document (some Asian systems don't) contains admonitions to distinguish among sins & sinners, beliefs & believers. I think it is a fair conclusion, then, to expect Christians to be judgemental toward non-Christians or even fellow Christians who are "fallen away". Jesus may have asked who cast the first stone, but even he is reported to have turned over merchants' tables in anger, judging them as unholy, unworthy. "Do as I say, not as I do"?

As for books, it's a shame few men, especially, and increasing numbers of women, make time for fiction (except, perhaps, religious stories, boot-strap can-doers and self-help confessionals). Poetry here in Greensboro seems to have made a small comeback, but its pleasures, and they are many, are of a different order than longer fiction or even short stories. Rilke says Art (and Beauty?) demands we change our lives!

Here's a partial list of life-changers for me (I have an short explanation why, if you'd like it):

Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and "Dubliners"
Nabokov's "Lolita" (not why you think...)
Melville "Billy Budd", "Bartleby" and, yes, "Moby Dick"
Eliot's "Silas Marner"
Clemens/Twain's "Huck" and "Letters from Earth"
Crane's "Open Boat" and, as a boy, "Red Badge of Courage"
Mann's "Three Stories" ("Magic Mountain" is great, too)
Merton's "Seven-Storey Mountain", to speak of peaks and stories
Levi's fables and, although true, "If This is a Man"
Wiesel's "Night"
Cervantes' "Quixote" (another youthful discretion, like "Lord of the Rings", but much funnier and wiser)
Borges' short stories
Fitzgerald's "Gatsby"
Ellison's "Invisble Man"
Bellow's "Seize the Day" and "Herzog"

and recent-er:
Achebe's "Things Fall Apart"
Ishiguro's "Remains of the Day" and "Never Let Me Go"
Heller's "Catch-22"
Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea"

My summer project is to finally read more Philip Roth, judged by his peers the greatest living author in the English language.

Among several plays, Shakespeare's (Lear reduces me to tears and trembling) and Beckett's (Godot is the best metaphor of the last century) have had maybe even more impact than novels, as I have been lucky (not Lucky) enough to perform a few.

Well Mr. Phelps couldn't be in a better place because the heartland is at the epicenter of a great spiritual awakening.

Google: LOVING GOD'S HATE to read an expose of Fred Phelps and family by the Topeka Capitol-Journal, Phelps hometown newspaper. Also, Google: matthewsnyder.org to see the website of the man who is suing Phelps for defamation of his fallen soldier son.

Loving God's Hate is a lengthy expose that highlights much insanity by Phelps, including: several of Phelps' children allege severe child abuse, details of Phelps' disbarment by the Kansas Supreme Court and Federal courts, large unpaid bills from vendors who had to sue to get paid.

Despite several of Phelps' children being attorneys, they have never sued the C-J for libel. I wonder why?