Fred Phelps--Apostle of Modernity

["Doug Jones" <credenda@moscow.com>]

> Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas, and
owner
> of the site www.godhatesfags.com will visit the University of Idaho to
> burn American Pride flags in protest.
> . . . .
> Members of the Community of Moscow will organize a peaceful counter
> demonstration at Friendship Square July 6th.  For those interested
I'll
> keep you informed on the details of that protest.
> 

Yes, I know that Fred Phelps ("God Hates Fags") is supposed to be an
embarrassment to Christianity, but he is actually a wonderful apostle of
Modern values -- in fact, a poster-boy for Modernity. Modernity made
him, and he lives it faithfully. In all candor, the Modernists among us
have to be ready to see their own values expressed in him when he
arrives, though I won't hold my breath.

But do consider the parallels: Modernity loves individualism,
unaccountability, generational breeches, rationalism, intellectualism,
shock politics, intolerance-called-love, and dualistic simplicity.
Phelps has lived these values for decades. He rejects inter-church
accountability, traditional creedal constraints, exegetes in unitarian
woodenness, lives as a theological lone-ranger, has estranged his son
(that alone should immediately disqualify him from church office), and
thinks that simply declaring sentences, not living them, makes all the
difference in the world. He is simply a hyper Modernist wearing a Moses
mask. 

And notice what the Modernist response is: yet more rationalism -- a
"peace protest" where, in response to Phelps' sentences cast into the
air, we offer opposing sentences cast into the air, as if both were
appeasing the gods of Platonism. How typically intellectualistic. Both
gnostic "protests" assume that reality runs by primarily by ideas, not
flesh and blood living. No wonder his son repudiated him: modernity is
ugly.

Doug Jones