An Unofficial Response to Westboro Baptist Church

The noto­ri­ous West­boro Bap­tist Church is hold­ing a protest at Stan­ford this Fri­day (see a good sum­ma­ry at Fiat Lux: why here, their iden­ti­ty, their beliefs, their legal his­to­ry). In response, the Stan­ford com­mu­ni­ty is plan­ning a counter-ral­ly at the same time and place as West­boro’s protest.

A group of Chris­t­ian min­istries signed a joint state­ment oppos­ing West­boro, but the Stan­ford Dai­ly has appar­ent­ly declined to pub­lish it (at least, I can’t find it in the online paper). Per­haps it will appear soon (UPDATE: it was pub­lished in the op-ed sec­tion the day after I put this post up). But in case it does not, I would like to give my own per­son­al response to them here. The offi­cial state­ment was designed to gar­ner sup­port from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent min­istries, but what fol­lows is lan­guage that no one else but me has signed off on. Con­se­quent­ly, it is con­sid­er­ably more direct.

I think West­boro Bap­tist Church is crazy. I also think it is unwise to hold a ral­ly oppos­ing a group which thrives on con­flict. Atten­tion is the drug they crave. They have become a recur­ring nation­al news sto­ry mere­ly because of their abil­i­ty to draw crowds and media.

I refuse to protest them, and I also refuse to ignore them. I am in no way ambiva­lent about their pres­ence on cam­pus: what they are doing is wrong. It heaps shame upon Christ and it caus­es peo­ple made in God’s image to expe­ri­ence an alien­at­ing anguish. I believe that prayer is the most effec­tive pos­si­ble response to this sit­u­a­tion. I, my min­istry, and sev­er­al oth­er Chris­t­ian groups at Stan­ford will hold a prayer meet­ing while the protest is going on at which we will ask God to con­vict West­boro mem­bers of their sin and lead them to repen­tance.

So yeah. That’s what one preach­er thinks about their pres­ence.