To: Fred Phelps
C/o: Westboro Baptist Church
P.O. Box 1886
Topeka, KS 66601

Mr. Phelps,

In the 3rd Chapter of James, we are gifted with the following words:

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.

When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, 8but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Though I am not a teacher as you are, these words have always spoken to me. They are a constant reminder of struggle to control my tongue. The tongue speaks from the overflow of the heart, and that dose not speaks well for me sometimes. I am sure you understand what I mean.

Hate is easy, so much more so that the more positive emotions. We cry out for justice, or our perception thereof, and often forget that the objects of our justice have need of salvation – yet no more right to it than we do. It is something which comes to us all too easy, and something we must fight.

1 John 2: 9, 10, 11

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

1 John 3:15

Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

I think the Bible’s, and so God’s stance on hatred is very clear. We are warned against speaking it, teaching it, and wallowing in it, yet that is exactly what your Church is doing.

I write to you as a believer in Christ, one who believes the Bibles abhorrence on homosexuality, spiritual wickedness, and the murder of the unborn. I believe in heaven, and in hell. I believe in Christ’s death on the cross as a payment for our sins. I believe in his resurrection, in his ascendance, and in his imminent return.

But I cannot accept your actions, and find you a poor reflection of our Lord.

It is easy to latch onto the mistaken belief that hate and anger can be as righteous as love and forgiveness, but that is not what we are taught. Your message leaves no room for grace, though you profess its existence. It leaves no margin for forgiveness, though that is a cornerstone of the Christian faith.

By picketing funerals of the honorable soldiers, who answered a call to protect one of the last bastions of Christianity in the free world, you have done more to harm our cause than promote it. By taking a good and right message against homosexuality and wrapping it in evil, you build a resistance that may cost a soul otherwise saved.

You actions are wrong. There may be a kernel of sound doctrine in your message, but it is lost in the delivery. We are called to be servants, not executioners.

I am sure this is not the first, nor the last such letter you have received. I can only hope and pray you feel my intensity and change the course you are on.

You and your congregation will be in my prayers, that you will see the error of your ways before you stand before He who is our Judge.

I pulled the following article down from Reuters, and normally liberal news outlet who took some time last night to comment on the Democrats plan (or lack of) for Iraq.

From Reuters:

President George W. Bush and Republicans have taken a battering over Iraq, but it’s not because voters believe Democrats have a clear strategy for ending the conflict and bringing American soldiers home.

“If you ask people out on the street what the message is, they wouldn’t know,” said Joan Lowery, a 60-year-old insurance company manager, at a recent Democratic fund-raiser in Cincinnati.

Lowery is not alone. Only a quarter of Americans think Democrats in the Congress have a clear plan for Iraq, far less than the 36 percent who believe the president has one, a USA Today/Gallup poll in mid-September found.

This goes to show how fed-up the American people are with the war in Iraq. Only 25% of Americans say that the Democrats have a plan for Iraq, and only 36% think the President has a plan for Iraq. This doesn’t speak well for our elected officials of either party.

But experts said the lack of a clear Democratic plan made no difference at all to most voters. Ambiguity has been part of the Democratic strategy on Iraq all along and has worked quite well, they said.

“For a lot of Democrats it is a very successful strategy to simply mirror the voters’ underlying discontent with the war, but not to offer specifics that make them a vulnerable target,” said Matthew Woessner, an assistant professor of public policy at Pennsylvania State University.

That is, I must say, sad; both for the Democrat politicians, and the party voters. The Democratic Party is, effectively, steering a course of ambiguity to avoid alienating any potential voters. This is playing to the masses, and may help in elections, but is no way to run a country.