What's the Matter With Kansas...Again?

By Tracy Dove, Ph.D
Editor, The Russia News Service

November 1, 2007

The Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas has made the news this week and now the laughs are coming from the other side of the aisle. In a landmark case of violation of privacy, the church was ordered to pay over $10 million in fines and damages for its insidious protest action outside the funeral of an American Soldier killed in Iraq. The signs they carry at all military funerals read "God hates fags", and their website- www.godhatesfags.com will explain why they do this. Without going too deep into their own propaganda- which is jaw-dropper for anyone who has a taste for the absurd- it is safe to say that the church has nothing to do with religion at all. But to see how the Bible could be distorted to fit the delusions of America's Christian Nazis, it is necessary to look back at how war and religion have coexisted comfortably since about 5 minutes after historical Jesus was crucified.

Without defamating legitimate Christianity, there are problems with the doctrine that allow an immoral minority to justify despicable acts in the name of God. The most significant problem is the practice of using the Bible as an ultimate authority reference without employing any cerebral faculties whatsoever. In it one can find holy justification for almost every human action as well as universal redemption for anyone who converts, confesses or convinces others that this is the genuine word of God. It is the equivalent of no-fault insurance, a license to lead in the vacuum of righteousness, and an all-powerful motivator toward social disintegration in the name of God. And there is nothing more gratifying than the end of the story- the book of Revelations- which is the final pay-off for all of those dogmatic believers who just can't wait to tell the rest of the world "I told you so".

But is it really the word of God? The legitimacy of the Bible is immediately suspect once one questions why the writings of the Apostle Thomas were left out of the final version. These have recently been uncovered and thoroughly studies by the historian Elaine Page who explains why Thomas was unacceptable to the Church fathers. The reason is earthly power. By the 4th century CE the authority of the Roman Empire had virtually evaporated, leaving the Western world without much secular leadership. Enter Augustine of Hippo; this Church father is credited with establishing much of the worldly Church authority in his famous writings, and in doing so he provided the justification of the Catholic Church to not only intervene in political affairs, but to actively legitimize rulers by allowing them to claim the virtue of God in their office. Among other things Augustine expanded the concept of the "just war", which was the biblical equivalent of using state power in the name of pursuing God's will.

The Crusades of the 11th century is a vivid example of how the "just war" theory was applied. Pope Urban VIII was able to rally Europe's leaders to contribute to an offensive war against Islam, which had captured the Holy Lands of Israel. Although the actions ultimately failed and caused more harm than good in the Middle East, the Catholic Church set an important precedent in calling for military actions to fulfill political ends. The next great Church father- Thomas Aquinas- further solidified the notion of "just war" by setting certain scholastic criteria which had to be met before a conflict could be resolved with the conflicting passages in the Bible that called for pacifism. No matter what the outcome, since the Bible remained a Latin exclusive for the clergy and was reserved for the Church to do all the interpreting for the rulers that needed God on their side. And so the doctrine was further edified.

And Martin Luther was no help in mediating the Bible's militaristic interpretation; the 16th and 17th centuries were the bloodiest for Europe's Christians, who fought in a series of wars that were apparently blessed for both sides to spread the conflicts. While historians claim that the 30-Year's War in the 17th century was the last conflict in which religion was the key motivator, this theory is quickly being chipped away at. The French Revolution, the Crimean War of 1853 and even World War I were born of religious discontent, but finally by 1918 many church leaders of the numerous Christian denominations were saying that enough is enough, and began to promote the pacifism that Jesus preached- at least according to those dusty passages in a selectively-read Bible.

At least until the advent of Bolshevism in 1917, which was also a conflict in which religion played a major role. Most religions saw the spread of Communism, liberalism and even tolerance as a threat to their survival, and so Enlightenment teachings were jettisoned in favor of a more reactionary interpretation of the Bible. Specifically, the Catholic Church had been on the losing side of the debates since 1871, and Hitler died a Catholic while Pope Pius XII excommunicated everyone and anyone who ever embraced Communism. Only after Vatican II in the 1960's did Catholicism embrace a more enlightened tolerance, although condoms and homosexuality remain anathema to Rome's doctrine.

Which takes us back to Kansas. The Westboro Baptist Church is simply following 2,000 years of Christian tradition in its message of violent opposition to human realities which it considers to be in violation of the Bible. As we have seen with other Christian leaders of the intolerant churches, many of those preachers, senators and politicians are actually closet homosexuals who can't deal with their orientation. Let this article be a call to Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church to do the right thing: come out of the closet and leave America's fallen soldiers alone.

Tracy Dove, editor of The Russia News Service, is a Professor of History and Dean of Summer Programs for the Lessing Institute. He also teaches history at the Anglo-American College in Prague.

See all previous articles by Tracy Dove here.