Sympathy for the Devil: why I feel sorry for Fred Phelps

The Westboro Baptist Church has just 40 members and yet its reach over the last ten years has been far greater than that tiny figure deserves. This miniscule sect famous for picketing the funerals of gay people, soldiers, Jews, Muslims and anyone else that fits its warped vision of the world has attracted opprobrium and documentary makers in equal measure. And often it feels that the Church has revelled in the hatred and the scorn and attention poured over it. 

In some respects the Phelps family have become a sort of extremist version of the Kardashians - a family you hate to watch but can't help watching - a bunch of nobodies who have found global fame for a one note performance. We love to hate them and they in turn love our hatred. Indeed documentary makers have queued up at their door. Louis Theroux has descended on them twice. Lily Allen's dad has poked them with his semi-retired snarl. They have even appeared on the Jeremy Kyle show. Yes really. Jeremy Kyle. So it hasn't all been a bundle of laughs on the road to salvation.

This is the sort of media coverage that the Quakers, with about half a million adherents, or even the Church of Iceland would kill a Messiah for. You probably didn't even know there was a Church of Iceland did you? I didn't until about 4 minutes ago. It has a quarter of a million followers. The Westboro Baptist Church has just 40. Did I mention that?

Forty. 

Slightly bigger than a class of kids in an English primary school.

Half the number of people you can fit on a Routemaster bus.

Ten fewer than the number of Liberal Democrat MPs in Parliament.

Yes - as small as that.

And now Fred Phelps, the leader of this inglorious bunch of inglorious Baptists, is reaching his very own end time. 

Predictably the reaction has been less than sympathetic. There is even talk of activists picketing his funeral and giving the Phelps family a taste of their own very toxic medicine.

And why not? This after all is the leader of a church that revelled in the deaths of innocent people in the 9/11 attacks and who issued a press release after the Boston marathon bomb that read:

"Here's a hint — GOD SENT THE BOMBS! How many more terrifying ways will you have the LORD injure and kill your fellow countrymen because you insist on nation-dooming filthy fag marriage?!"

This is the church that has been allowed - largely via the magic of TV - to get its very odd and cancerous view of the world out to millions more than it would ever have reached otherwise. If it were an alcoholic Louis Theroux would be guilty of enabling it. But it isn't. It's a teeny weeny church with just 40 members.  

I feel rather sorry for Phelps. I feel rather sorry for his family. Those 40 people who have been abused for most if not all of their adult lives. And it is abuse. And it is THEY who have been abused. Sometimes by themselves. Mostly by each other. 

Nobody else has been hurt as much by this freak show. None of their victims has been loved any less because of the picketing or the silly message boards. THEY - the Phelps family have been condemned to a life of isolation, of misery and of suffering because somebody somewhere convinced Fred that an extreme reading of the Bible was the answer.

Of course it isn't. The Bible doesn't teach you much at all really. Although there are some very good knitting tips in Ecclesiastes if you look hard enough.

Fred Phelps' brief time on this planet has been an exercise in futility. He leaves no legacy. He dies a figure of hate; unloved; mourned by none bar his very closest supporters - from nothing he came - to nothing he goes. Unmissed. Unfulfilled. Confused. And wrong. After a lifetime of preaching and professing he leaves a congregation of 40 - just 40 people - behind. And that - in its own purposeless way -   is quite sad.