Assailed To The Breaking Point - Part 1

You may be wondering why I started this blog with a word whose origin is from the 1200s, Assailed. It’s not exactly a word we use much in modern speech. One night I was actually woken up in the middle of the night by this word and this title. And I knew it was something I needed to explore. I discovered these definitions of assail on dictionary.com and they seem to capture very well who my father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr. was and what he wanted to do to his children to “break” them.

Assail

verb (used with object) 1. to attack vigorously or violently; assault.

2. to attack with arguments, criticism, ridicule, abuse, etc.: to assail one's opponent with slander.

3. to undertake with the purpose of mastering: He assailed his studies with new determination.

4. to impinge upon; make an impact on; beset: His mind was assailed by conflicting arguments. The light assailed their eyes.

As you read this blog that features my precious sister Katherine, and my wonderful older brother, Fred Jr., perhaps you will understand my word choice. And why this title expresses well what my father accomplished in their innocent young lives.

My sister Katherine Rose was my father’s favorite when she was a baby. She had beautiful blue eyes and dark hair. She was very pretty and he would spoil her. He used to bounce her on his knee and sing 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' to her. Katherine was born 340 days after I was born. Knowing the stress pregnancy puts on women’s’ bodies I marvel at what my mom went through having 15 pregnancies in 15 years and suffering two miscarriages.

Somehow Katherine managed to get quite a ways into her life without having much negative experience with my father, directly, though she endured his standard violence and fit throwing like we all did. Then came a time when suddenly Katherine, at about age 16, got in my father’s doghouse. A boy had called on the phone one time, for Katherine. From that time on, my father commenced beating her, and he stayed on her and stayed on her and stayed on her relentlessly.

He'd beat her routinely in the auditorium area of the church building/house where we lived, requiring her to lean forward with her hands against one of the foundation poles that ran down the middle of the church auditorium to allow him best swinging room and clear access to her backside with the oak mattock handle.

He'd beat her with the oak mattock handle and then twist her arm behind her back and bend her backwards over the back side of the bench seats in the church auditorium. While holding her arm painfully behind her back, he would hit her in her face with his fists. Then he would spit in her face. He would curse her with filthy, garbage, derogatory, demeaning language as he beat her. She'd be screaming-bloodcurdling screams-desperate screams of pain and fear, with no one to help her or stop her father’s assailing assaults. Often my father would sustain the beating of Katherine for an hour at a time, and I lost track of how many times she suffered such beatings. And all of this devastating brutality was started because a boy had called her on the telephone. Once! You have to understand, my father wanted her to have zero contact; absolutely no contact with any boy; none . . . Ever!

My father justified punching his daughter in the face with his bare fists, because a phone rang in our house one day that might be a boy interested in her. Simply unbelievable, right?! But true. My father acting in deadly rage and anger toward a young girl who had the horrible misfortune of growing up with Fred Phelps, Sr. as her father!

And time and time and time again I would stand by and watch and not say a word, not move a muscle. I stood by in quiet anguish, despair and fear, watching the brutal, savage beating my sister Katherine was suffering at the hand of her father. Had my father been teaching me how to be a godly, mature young man, he would have taught me to rescue any young woman, anywhere, any time who was being savagely beaten by a male perpetrator twice her age!

But, not in our house. No, in our house, the young men had to hold back and stuff down every natural instinct we had to protect our sisters and each other, knowing that the savage beatings of our father could instantly be turned on us and ultimately make Katherine’s life even harder. As I think about the horrible existence Katherine had I truly have no idea how she lived under this kind of brutality and what it did to her young mind and heart. I think of her often and hope with all my heart she has found healing and hope for her life.

As I think about how much society has changed in the last 40 years in its attitude towards physical abuse I wonder how Katherine’s story might have turned out if she’d been born even 10 or 15 years later. Today if there were a father committing the kinds of criminal abuse my father was inflicting on his children there would be district attorneys lining up to file multiple charges against him. And gratified to know their actions would be protecting vulnerable children from abuse.

Today we have the NFL taking steps to deal with domestic abuse in its players and there are cries for judges to step down from the bench who beat their wives. Society has reached a place where it is raising a collective outcry against abuse. Just this last week in Topeka my family put up on the Westboro Baptist Church marquee that “God h8s domestic violence” Indeed he does! But apparently the head of Westboro Baptist, my father, did not hate it at all. In fact he was a violent perpetrator of it on his family over many, many years.

But the political and social climate of Topeka Kansas in the 1960s and 1970s was just not where it needed to be to protect children from violence perpetrated within families. So the cries of the Phelps children were left unheeded by any who heard them. And the few interactions our family had with the police showed us that for many children of abuse; and most certainly for us; a one-time interaction with law enforcement often gets children even worse beatings. And those interactions would leave the children in greater despair. If Katherine were a child today I believe Topeka, Kansas and our society in general would have found ways to stand up to this abuser and give her the protection she so desperately needed. But, in our family, that blessing of legal rescue never came.

It got so if the phone rang and the caller hung up the phone when he would answer, my father would assume it was a boy trying to reach Katherine, that she was 'doing' him, and then she'd get beaten again. Yes, you heard me right. Katherine was being beaten by my father because of something he just assumed was happening . . . with absolutely no knowledge that any of it was happening. He beat her mercilessly because something MIGHT have been happening. The injustice of this is more than I can even think about now as an adult and as a father. But it was Katherine, our amazing, beautiful, sweet sister who had this injustice perpetrated on her by the man in her life who should have protected her from evil and harm. Her father!

And, on top of that, Katherine and my brother, Nathan, were getting beaten several times a week simply because they weighed more than my father thought they should weigh. My siblings were being beaten for a body weight that bothered my father. They risked internal injuries from the beatings, malnutrition and a host of other problems because of my father’s desire to control and to inflict pain and misery on them. I marvel at the indomitability of the human spirit that existed in Katherine and Nathan and their ability to handle such incredible injustice and violence, and still find a way to go on.

When I was in college Mom would take all the children to sell candy, but she'd leave Katherine home alone with my father. Katherine would get beaten during those times, just like Nathan had been beaten when he had been left home alone with my father.

Oh the profound despair Katherine and Nathan must have felt to be left totally alone with their abuser; and with no one even able to hear their cries of anguish. My family was made up of children who were never heard appropriately by adults for the meeting of their most basic needs as children. Along with my mother, Nathan, Katherine, and my brother, Fred Jr., took the brunt of my father’s violent rage. Fred, Jr. was the first boy, Katherine, was the first girl, and Nathan was the child who consistently tried to challenge my father on the wrongness of the injustice he was perpetrating on his family. And for being “firsts” in the family they truly took the brunt of my father’s rage.

But what impact did this kind of brutality leave on the rest of the family? How must it have felt to my mother to leave a defenseless child at home, alone with a man who was going to beat that child? What kind of damage did that do to her soul to knowingly leave a child in harm’s way? And what damage did it do to a carload of children going to sell candy to know that adults simply were unable to protect children from evil? Well I can tell you for some of us it produced real despair.

For a period of about six years, the sweets we sold were often a principal element in our diet. So principal, that some of the children began to gain weight. This visible development, particularly in my brother, Nathan, and my sister, Katherine, caused my father great upset. For one thing, after my father’s own successful battle against obesity, he had little patience for anyone else in the family who he thought had a little extra weight. For another thing, my father suspected some of the sales crew might be eating the profits.

My father used rigorous diet controls according to his own arbitrary, vicious will.

My father employed daily weighing for my brother Nathan and my sister Katherine. When this did not work, and their weight increased, he apparently deemed it time to use the oak mattock handle to beat them into svelte bodies that lived up to his standards of “bodily correctness.”

Fear would permeate the faces, hearts and bodies of Nathan and Katherine, routinely.

It is difficult to imagine anyone who runs 10 miles a day becoming obese. In fact, at the time my father imposed his Nazi-like Weight Loss Program, my brother, Nathan, was 5' 10" and weighed 185 pounds. Not leathery and lean, but not worthy of comment on a large-boned male. But to my father, that extra thickness on his son meant thinner profits from the children's candy selling crusade. So my father took steps. He designed a weight-loss regimen for Nathan and Katherine.

Can any of us who are loving fathers even fathom this barbaric behavior? I believe my father chose to beat growing, developing children because of his own shame in not providing adequately for his family. My father well knew that his children were eating the candy because he often couldn’t or wouldn’t provide us with good nutrition. What we learned in my father’s response to the natural weight gain that would occur from eating too much candy, and not enough other wholesome food is that it was “all about our father”. The sad thing is every behavior we ever witnessed in our growing up years was “all about my father.” He truly was the evil center around which we all orbited. As children we had no way of knowing how to understand that his own self-loathing as a man unable to provide our basic needs was being heaped instead upon his children. And not that it would have mattered at the end of the day. Because when you are recovering for four or five days after a terrible beating you don’t really want understanding. You just want it to stop.

Katherine and Nathan were required to go through the shame, humiliation and terror of having to weigh themselves in front of my father each night, on the doctor's scales sitting outside his bedroom. Mind you, this was what they had to look forward to at the end of a long day; sometime after 9:30 at night; that included a normal length school day, 5 hours of candy sales for their father’s ‘church’, and an hour and a half of running around the local high school track. If they didn't weigh less than they had the day before, they got a beating with the oak mattock handle. Sometimes the two were beaten every night of the week with the oak mattock handle. They must have experienced such intense rage and despair and who knows what else, but frantic terror filled their faces and most assuredly devastated their souls.

There is a phrase that has been coined by young women in this culture called “fat shaming” which describes the American fixation with top model thinness as a cultural value. I think the women of today would be horrified at the level my father went to in his fat shaming of my brother and sister.

Nathan would eat lunch but he would make sure he would throw up before going home. Or take Ex-Lax. So would Katherine. My father was essentially setting up my siblings to be bulimics with all the serious physical risks that condition entails! Think of this. When my brother and sister had growing adolescent bodies in need of wholesome food my father set up a dastardly scheme to deprive them of it. All because of his “need” to have his children look good to the culture, because his children were his work and his life. And if they failed to make him look good, he truthfully had nothing else. My father who disdained culture was caught in a vise grip of need to live up to it nonetheless.

My father’s expectations were impossible, so the two teenagers had to learn to manipulate the scales.

By manipulating the scales they hoped to avoid the brutality at least some of the time. Their strategy was to place a small piece of tape with several metal nuts attached in the palm of their hand. As they stepped onto the scales, they would rapidly, with slight-of-hand, stick the tape with the metal nuts to the backside of the balance beam on the scales. This would show their weight to be lower than it actually was because of where they learned to place the metal nuts. I have creative and smart siblings!

Unfortunately, one day the tape wouldn't stick properly and fell to the ground along with the metal nuts. My dear father didn't see it fall, but he did see that their weight was eight pounds higher than expected. ‘You've been eatin' my goddamed candy again!' yelled my father.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the supposed man of God.

This event led to a 10 hour ordeal of beatings for the two of them, followed by marathon running sessions, followed by more beatings, followed by running. The net result was that, at the end of the day, Nathan had lost 14 pounds and seriously injured his hip. The irony is that, since that weight loss was all fluid dehydration, when he replaced the fluids, he regained the weight. But Nathan didn't realize this, and my father didn’t care WHY he had regained the weight.

The next day, when Nathan had mysteriously shot up 14 pounds, the vexed father fell into a frustrated fury and son Nathan got beaten once more. The incident manifests my father’s trademark career combination of ignorance and violence.

Afterwards, the teenager was literally forbidden to eat until he lost those extra pounds. My father was running the equivalent of a concentration camp in his brutality and starvation techniques! All to protect his precious public image! Remember the Narcissistic Personality Disordered person has an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. My father would never get that admiration from his children because he beat us and abused us. So while he would never get it from us, he continued to seek it from the public. My father was a man of paradoxes, to be sure, because this was the same public who he actually had zero respect for.

Breakfast!? Nathan was never to get it after that. And when the family lined up for the food cooked in the great pots, Nathan wasn't allowed to eat with them. If the menu called for cabbage, curds, liver pills, brewers yeast or raw eggs, his siblings would envy him. But if father relented and something tasty awaited the hungry children-chicken, spaghetti, Spanish rice, refried beans or stew- Nathan was never given any.

My brother Nathan was neglected, starved and abused. And my culture simply was not prepared to rescue this child from that abuse. I know the child abuse laws and their implementation in this country are not perfect. But their need was evident in the lives of 13 children in Topeka Kansas in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, the man, Nate, is philosophical about the trials of the boy. "I'd just sneak food from the fridge later, or eat candy from the boxes," he observes. Incredibly, this father-enforced fast went on for five years. All the while, Nate's weight continued the same, and the pastor continued to accuse him of eating candy.

"Well...duh!" laughs Nate today. "If, after five years, I was still alive, I must have been eating something, right?"

Even our mother was not immune to the weight-watcher from hell.

My father got mad at Mom once; said she was getting too fat. Did my father understand anything at all about the toll it would take on a woman’s body to be pregnant 15 times in 15 years? Right in front of me, he beat her with the oak mattock handle. I mean . . . it was a really . . . really degrading, humiliating kind of experience to watch my mother being treated like that . . . by my father . . . by her own husband. This from a man who allowed his own weight to balloon to 270 pounds before self-imposing a fast of 47 days to reduce his weight to 135 pounds.

But as researchers about Narcissistic Personality Disorder would say my father “lacked insight” about his own life and behavior and had the characteristic lack of empathy seen in this disorder! It would never occur to him to have compassion for people who struggled with something he himself had struggled with.

There is a concept among people of faith that you can “sear” your own conscience by repeatedly ignoring its impulses to avoid wrongdoing. That over time you can ignore your conscience till it no longer has impact on your decision making. I believe that is part of what happened to my father. His increasing raging and violence at some point were no longer checked by a working conscience. He was out of the reach of any of the normal methods people have for pointing their compass toward good instead of evil. And of course, he no longer saw his own behavior as evil.

When my father was not successful getting Katherine’s weight under control with daily weighing, diet control and oak mattock handle beatings, he had another strategy up his sleeve.

It was time to confine his daughter, Katherine, in a nook outside his bedroom, upstairs. For 40 plus days Katherine was confined, without food, only water, and allowed exit only to use the bathroom, until her weight was acceptable to my dear father. This is the stuff of torture and concentration camps. I can hardly bear to think of it. I cannot imagine how this may be affecting some of you readers. My heart goes out to you right now in your pain as some of you think of your own perpetrators’ violence toward you.

I remember that either her sister Margie or her sister Shirley once smuggled Katherine a glass of tomato juice. Well, my father caught his eldest daughter with it. When Katherine refused to tell who'd given her the tomato juice, my father yelled and cursed and beat her for nearly two hours. It was one of the worst beatings she ever received. It was delivered by fist and oak mattock handle to a starving teenage girl. Katherine had an open sore on her backside for over a year because it could not heal due to such frequent beatings. I can still see my sister Katherine’s face in my mind’s eye; the terror, despair and frantic look in her eyes; and her quivering hands as she approached her mother to request help in tending to her sore.

Katherine tried to escape the nightmare called 'home' at the Westboro Baptist Church at least three times between the ages of 17 and 18. Each time, my father found out where she was living and led a Phelps' quick-reaction team to literally snatch her away from her life and bring her back. The dealer of abuse was bent on dealing his abuse against Katherine again and again! There was no escape from the torture!

In one incident, Katherine was living in a quiet Topeka neighborhood and dating a boy from our high school. It was the summertime, about 6:30 in the evening. Katherine’s boyfriend pulled in to pick her up on a date. We'd been waiting for her to come out of the house, and when she did, we just swooped in. We had two cars. I was driving one and my father the other.

It was a real 'Starsky and Hutch' covert operation. We blocked off the departing vehicle, and pulled Katherine out of the car while her date just sat there stunned. Back at home my father beat her terribly. It was then she was confined in the nook for 40 days on nothing but water. This 'parental intercession' was actually a kidnapping: Katherine was 18 when it occurred. She easily had a cause of action against my father if she had wanted to pursue it.

Katherine, if you are reading these words today, I ask your forgiveness for my part in bringing you back that day. Oh how I wish I had had the strength to stand up to our father in those moments. I have never stopped praying for you, sister, and hoping your life has turned out well when you were able to finally leave and begin again.

Though she eventually finished college and graduated from law school, I am concerned that Katherine has not yet been able to find resolution to her anger and the self-destruction that often accompanies this level of abuse. (And some might even argue that acts of “self-destruction” are beautiful signs of life as the abused person begins to make new and very different decisions than the ones prescribed by the controlling abuser.) She allowed her active status as an attorney to lapse, waitressed at Topeka's Ramada Inn, got laid off, and went on public assistance. Are you surprised? What might you have done living with the level of abuse and torture my sister suffered? What might any of us have done with the psychological and physical scars she has from the horrendous abuse she suffered? From the person who should have loved her, defended her, championed her, admired her, and sought to bring all good things into her life - - her father.

My precious sister, Katherine......oh, everything my father did to her...she's just been so deeply hurt as a human being. How my heart breaks for her. It is so difficult to accept that her life was so destroyed by my father. She had hardly begun her life and it was permanently crippled by her own father. I have a lot of righteous anger against my father’s actions towards Katherine as I am sure many of you who are reading this do! It was terribly wrong and should never have been allowed!

Once, while she was going to college and living in the family compound, Katherine went jogging late one night, as was her habit. But, this time, the sight of a woman running through a darkened residential neighborhood after 1 a.m. caught the attention of a patrol car. When the officer tried to question her from the rolling vehicle, Katherine turned and ran the other way. When he overtook her on foot, jumped ahead of her and tried to block her passage, she jumped on him like a wild animal. Other officers were called and Katherine fought them with the same intense ferocity. She was finally subdued and arrested. When the case went to court, my brother Nate was there: "The judge asked why she fought when the officer tried to stop her. She turned to him-and I was shocked by the hate in her face-and she almost spit out the words: 'I can't stand for a man to touch me!'" Continues Nate: "That face full of hate I'll never forget. My sister was very, very angry about something."

Hmmm, I wonder where all that anger originated!? Can you imagine the irony of this? My father, who had such an aberrant view of a boy even calling my sister on the phone, who could not stand the thought of my sister being in a normal relationship with a man, would create from his savage beatings my sister learning to hate the touch of any man. My father who was so twisted and tortured in his own soul managed to foist his own pain on those closest to him.

Katherine was willing to fight back with several police officers because she felt safer and more able to fight back with them than she did trying to fight back against her own father. She had observed her father’s rage and brutality toward her brothers and her mother and knew, deep in her soul, that any resistance or attempt to protect or stand up for herself against her father would only result in greater abuse and greater pain. We all knew this about our father because we were trained so skillfully and thoroughly from the earliest days of our lives. All of us knew his hair-trigger temper and the instant, vicious escalation of his rage at the least sign of resistance on our part! We all knew . . . there was no stopping my father!!

My father once had a sweet relationship with Katherine. She was truly the apple of his eye. And then she did what all children do. She grew up. And by growing up my father knew that she was stepping into adulthood and would one day not be under his control any more. Watching children grow up is not easy for parents. Even normal parents struggle with the end of the sweet relationships they once had with their small children. But, normal, loving parents push through to allow their kids to become all they can be. And appropriately push aside their personal needs and emotions to provide that freedom.

My father, however, was running a cult. And he followed the first rule of cults which is that mind control is the order of the day and no one is allowed to leave. I think my father’s heart broke as a father the day Katherine appeared to him to be a young woman. And he must have realized she would truly leave him. For her own life, and for a loving, caring man who might be her husband. And that my father would not tolerate. And as one who ran a cult he had powers beyond that of a normal parent. And he exercised them! My father even warned others of his children that the cult phenomenon would continue into their marriages. And that he would maintain control of them INTO their marriages. And make decisions for them. And that they would never, ever be treated as autonomous adults. Are you amazed that anyone EVER married into our family? I am!

My older brother, Fred Jr., wanted to be a history teacher. Ever since he'd been a kid, he wanted to be a history teacher. At Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas Fred Jr. was a masterful history student. He got A’s in history, even Chinese history. High A’s!! He wanted to teach history, and he held on to that. He'd say: 'I have that right!” and my father would try to beat it out of him, literally, with the oak mattock handle.

I can remember my father beating Fred Jr. when he was 17, 18 and 19 because of his desire to be a history professor and his efforts to accomplish this goal. I couldn't believe my brother, Fred Jr., would even try to argue with my father! I think I did not understand the depth of Fred’s desire to use the talents and gifts God had given him. And that he knew would express who he truly was. That desire must have been incredibly powerful, but I couldn’t believe my brother, Fred Jr., kept pushing and pushing; and getting beat over and over and over!

My brother, Fred Jr., was an amazing, strong, talented and gifted young man who simply wanted a chance to be! And he tried so hard to gain the right to be his own person. And my father took that simple, beautiful, honest desire to be a person and hoped to beat that desire out of him. He knew his first born was an example that would be set for other siblings and he simply had to break Fred Jr. Do you remember definition #3 of assailed was “to undertake with the purpose of mastering?” Well, my father planned to “master” young Fred and not allow him to be his own man. And master he did . . . eventually! But for those of us who saw the beautiful young man Fred, Jr. was becoming it was horrible to watch that process.

Personally, I had learned better! My father knew nothing of my heart, nothing of my interests, nothing of my desires and nothing of my needs! I was not about to reveal anything, only to be ridiculed and maligned . . . and beaten! I was a master at hiding who I was! My father thought I accepted every aspect of his filthy language, despicable lies and felonious destruction of his family. He continued to believe this until the night I left ‘The Place’ . . . permanently! And it is because of this meticulous hiding of my own heart that I survived and was ultimately able to leave.

Normal children in safe environments love to “try out” their dreams and desires by talking about them to parents, siblings, coaches, teachers and friends. To get advice, counsel, help and encouragement from people in that relatively safe world. But there was nothing normal about being a Phelps kid. So my stance of protecting myself and my dreams from all view and all critique ended up being a way to protect them also from destruction.

But when I think of Fred Jr. and his valiant efforts to be a person while under his father’s care, I admire him. I took a different path, of protecting myself at all costs, but I admire my brother Fred Jr’s tenacity in the face of such blatant, vicious, brutal abuse and lack of respect shown by my father for who Fred Jr. was as a person.

I remember when my brother, Fred Jr., was 18, and in his struggle to find his way, he had decided to move out of his father’s house to live on his own. My father vehemently opposed it, but Fred Jr. stood up for himself. After several beatings from my father with the oak mattock handle and Fred Jr. even still refusing and refusing and refusing to relent, the two finally compromised: the son would go and live with one of his father's business associates. Bob Martin was a retired army officer who ran Bo-Mar Investigations, a private detective agency. After Fred, Jr. had been staying with Martin for a week in his house, I remember my father received a phone call. It was Martin.

"Let's go!" said my father to me! I had become the squad leader in my father’s schemes. While we drove to the detective's place, my father explained the plan he and Martin had for Fred Jr.: wait till he was in the shower and then confront him; a naked man feels vulnerable and powerless. Fred Jr. had just come in from work and gone into the bathroom. "When he comes out, we'll be waiting," chuckled my father. And so we were. As Fred Jr. came out, towel around his waist, he was confronted by my father, by me, and a suddenly hostile Bob Martin.

"Get your clothes! You're going home!" snapped my father. The eldest son complied without argument. The next part I'll never forget. When we got out to the car, I was in the back on the right, my father was behind the wheel, and Fred Jr. was in the front passenger seat. Bob had followed us and he opened the door on my brother's side. Through the space between the front seat and the door, I could see him place a revolver against my brother's knee. And he said: "If you run away again, I have orders to come after you. And when I catch you, I'm going to shoot you right here." Of course . . . my father issued these orders to Bob Martin regarding his own son!

My father was not ABOUT to let Fred Jr. be who he was created by God to be, even if it meant violating the criminal laws of society. Fred Jr. was going to be a lawyer because that’s what my father said he was going to be. My father viewed his children as an extension of his empire, and in no way as precious, vibrant individuals who deserved to be able to have their own dreams. My father would have their dreams for them.

Eventually, I think, my brother's spirit was simply broken. And he capitulated to my father’s will and became a lawyer. After that, he submitted totally to my father. He'd lost his thrill for life. He went to law school, like father wanted; he married a girl father approved of; and he shouldered a role in ‘The Place’. And that's where he is today. He recently turned 61. But I doubt his heart has ever been in the things my father “programmed” into his life whether he wanted it that way or not! Fred was a dutiful soldier in a battleground he never wanted to be part of. The history teacher was finally beaten into total submission. And the world missed out on a magnificent teacher who could have opened up young minds and hearts through an honest look at history. This was our society’s loss for sure.

Let’s talk about what happened to the hearts of Phelps children. If you are a student of the human heart you know of its amazing resilience but you also know it can be pushed to a point of breaking. As little children our father took our hearts and pretty much stomped all over them. He was incapable of showing kindness or gentleness or any type of compassion to us and instead terrorized and physically abused us all. To the point where all we could think about was our own safety. I honestly still marvel at the courage my brother Nathan was able to show as he stood up to our father repeatedly. And I have never forgotten the initial courage of my brother Fred Jr.! And I never will.

But most of us first cowered and wept and then finally we became little automatons who tried to shut out all feelings. So we could survive. I had the immense blessing of being able to leave the fold and over several decades, was able to seek healing that was necessary to undo the work in my heart that my father had done there. But for those who stayed under my father’s domination the damage to their hearts continued. They were not just told what to do as young children, every waking moment of every day, in kind of a federal prison, every-decision-being-made-for-you way. These precious siblings of mine had to endure the shame of being considered non-entities who had no right to be young adults. No right to think for themselves. No right to pick a major or a career, a spouse or a way of raising their own children. Their lives continued to be scripted by their father, in details that did not reflect the respect owed an adult son or daughter by their own father.

Remember me telling you I was awakened one night by the phrase “assailed to the breaking point”? Well, I think that was exactly what my father was able to do with most of us in our family. He was able to “to attack vigorously or violently; assault.” He was able to “attack with arguments, criticism, ridicule, abuse, etc.: to assail one's opponent with slander.” And he was able to “undertake with the purpose of mastering.”

My strong desire, for my siblings and for all of you in my blog audience, is to give you the hope that the human spirit and psyche and soul is able to come back from that breaking point. That while it is true that enormous damage has been done, with enormous consequence, there is still tremendous hope for each of you.

What you will be reading about in the days and months to come in this blog is my return from the near breaking point of my own life. And that with hard work, helpful, kind souls and truly the help of God himself, I have come back. Or perhaps, I have actually gone forward. To new things I would never have dreamed possible back on 12th St. in Topeka, Kansas. And I hope and pray for those new things for each of you. If you need to write to me about the journey you are on or wanting to start, I would love to encourage you in that process. There is much cause for hope in this, friends!

Mark Phelps

Teach The Children Well - Part 2

Remember I’ve explained that my father began to realize he might lose members from his very small church as we, his children, were beginning to grow up. My father knew we would naturally find husbands and wives and begin to live our own lives. And because the level of physical abuse we were suffering was something any normal child would seek to escape. What we couldn’t have predicted was that my father’s megalomania would manifest itself in his need to control not just our lives as we reached adulthood but to control us into our adult lives. My father believed he had the right to pick our spouses for us, veto any marriage that didn’t suit him, and that he had the final say in the major decisions in our marriages. That included what jobs we took, and the way we would go forward with our livelihoods. But one surprising way he chose to get compliance from his parishioners and his children as the largest group was to keep telling them God hated people. Well that God hated everyone else. But us! Strange methods my father used.

So, along the lines of controlling his children and his congregation my father continued to teach that God was the one who was this controlling God. And that this God was forever controlling people when all along it was my father wanting that control and “using” God as his henchman!

One way he did this was to instill in his children that God is always angry at us and it is terrifyingly unclear how to keep him from being angry. Therefore, you must live in a continual state of anxiety and despair as you try to live up to all the rules, while continually looking over your shoulder to see what horrible disaster is coming upon you next. Remember I said my father’s rules were like shifting sand?

We know through experience that many children wrongly ascribe characteristics to God that actually belong to an abusive earthly father or other unloving person. It makes perfect sense to me that without help to understand who God really was that I would easily default to thinking the real God was just like my earthly father. And that would mean in my case a God who was cold, unfeeling, unconcerned about the welfare of others, and one who chose to hurt at any time and for no reason. And my father desired us to have this view of God because it allowed him to control us.

Another teaching we all received was that God is dangerous, vicious and terrifying. My father made sure I knew God was my biggest threat and my biggest risk. Big trouble with God, he would explain to us, is impossible to avoid. No matter how I try, how hard I work, how vigilant I am, sooner or later I am going to miss a piece of dust on the floor, or fail to get an errand run quickly enough, or I won’t have the right words to say, at the right time, or I will make the mistake of any normal eight-year-old child, and because of my failure I am going to get beaten or hit or knocked down or experience God’s verbal tirade. (Oh, did I say ‘God’? I meant my father! Or did I? Did I really mean God? Maybe I did! I’m not sure. I’m so confused!) There it is again . . . a very short putt for the Phelps children to have to go from our mean-spirited abusing father to believing this about God.

This is one of the things my father passed on as a legacy that hurts the most. Not only did my father keep us all from knowing God, but he painted a horrible and wrong picture of him. So that even for my siblings, and nephews and nieces who have left the fold, without serious psychological and spiritual help of some kind they will find it very hard to undo that damage. What a damaging portrayal of the true God my father gave to us all . . . and what heaviness of soul that has brought to all of us who haven’t been able to heal from this.

And if this were not enough my father taught, repetitively, that God is after revenge and he has the power and wisdom to exact revenge continually and perfectly. It seems he sees everything and he is present everywhere. He has exceptional ability to find me and hurt me, because I did something wrong, though I did not know what it was I did wrong. This teaching about God that my father taught; actually that my father exploded into our psyches with his words and his fists and his oak mattock handle; took a huge toll on all of us. This level of poisonous teaching can take years and years to undo.

One time my father yelled at me to get some work done in the yard, and I ran out one door so scared I forgot my shoes. A yell by my father was actually a terrifying command to be obeyed immediately, and without question. When I ran back in the other door to get my shoes, my father was at that door and he knocked me up side my head and the hit threw me across the floor. I got dizzy and couldn’t get up for a few seconds so he started kicking me, yelling at me to get up. I didn’t expect him to be at this other door and I needed to get my shoes on to work in the yard. I never knew where and when the pain would come. Ever! I was nine years old and I just knew the pain would come!

See again the view a child has of his father and how it plays right into his understanding of the heavenly father? Oh, earthly fathers, if you are abusers, you need to seek help immediately because you are not just damaging your children’s little hearts and souls but you are dramatically damaging their ability to connect with the loving God of the universe. This is NOT something you should take lightly. Seek help!

My father also taught us that God would punish us for laughing and playing unless my father specifically said it was okay to laugh. So how were we to navigate the showing of normal childhood emotions and responses? We learned it was okay to laugh if my father was saying something clever. Always! But horse play around the house or playing as a child in the yard was punishable by beating, verbal rage, humiliation and isolation if it was not sanctioned by my father. In fact, God will punish me if I have any fun at all, unless He says it’s okay to have fun. (Did I say God again? Oh my, I keep getting my father and God mixed up. And this was very much by my father’s design).

I had permission from my father to have fun playing the organ for his ‘church’, or running his legal documents to the court clerk, or doing lawn work, or doing house chores or selling candy for his ‘church’ or beating one of my brothers or sisters for him or running long distances every day. What I never had permission for was the normal bubbling up, beautiful, spontaneous laughter of a child. And the sad thing is my father chose to teach this about God because this is what my father wanted in his controlled little world and not because it was what God wanted. God, who invented children and laughter and delight, would not be putting these restrictions on precious little children. But, who was there to teach me about a loving God? Not my father. Neither to me nor to any of my siblings!

The truth is, God by my father’s teaching wanted me working hard for Him . . . non-stop! I was to be at his beck and call at all times. If he rings his large brass bell I had better get in front of him as quickly as possible to learn of his newest demands, and comply, or there will be big trouble. My father skillfully wove his own demands and his own personality into his teachings about God so that at some point they became one in our minds. And we never had a fighting chance to develop our own relationships with God. The most beautiful, gracious, loving being in the universe was someone my father did not want us to know. And he made sure we would never try as he wreaked havoc on a true view of who God is.

My father also ably taught us you can't hide from God, no chance, no way, so there is only continual dread and terror. God is going to get me, sooner or later, one way or another, God is going to get me. It is impossible to go continually, day after day, without doing something that displeases God, and when you displease him, it will be like running into the hulk: “Don’t make me angry! You won’t like me when I’m angry!” God is going to punish me. I mean, he is really going to hurt me. He is going to devastate me. The punishment will very likely be extremely painful, far beyond the gravity of my offense.

Doesn’t this sound exactly like the dynamic in a home with a physically and verbally abusive father? Why would a normal father ever want to destroy any hope his children had of being in a loving relationship with a loving God by twisting the truth of who God really is? What level of damage or twistedness to his own soul would allow him to damage the souls of his children? We will never know the answer to this question but the immense damage he did to us and the pain we have had to live with is very real.

So I learned the clear lesson of individual, intimate, personal, precise judgment and accountability to an angry God and the punishment I had coming, which God had prepared especially for me. But I never, ever learned of a God who loved me just as personally and individually and intimately and precisely, who could forgive me and who intentionally paid the ultimate price to have a personal relationship with me. This beautiful, amazing truth was never taught to me. Why? It was there in the Bible as plain as day for anyone to read, especially the pastor of a church.

My father continued his abuse by teaching us that God scoffs and mocks at anyone who challenges him or disagrees with him. God expects unquestioning loyalty - God wants ‘yes men’, and that is all he will tolerate. And it is very difficult to be a passive yes man with God. You must have original, spontaneous ‘words’, ‘good words’ to offer in agreement and affirmation of him when he is upset or he will rail and curse and scream and rage all the more. Because this God needs his ego affirmed you are asking?

Here is where it got very twisted in my home. It was actually my father who desperately needed a “good word” from his kids. He would say “what’s the good word? Got any good words for me?” Some lists of symptoms for those with megalomania or Narcissistic Personality Disorder include that the person has a very fragile ego. On the outside it may have looked like my father had a fragile ego with what appeared to be his need to be told good things about his church or his mission on earth. Which was, remember, to tell people God hated them and to find ways to devalue them and show disdain for them.

I have come to believe that one reason my father chose to have us give him a “good word” was his ego, yes, but also because it was a great way to continue our indoctrination. He reinforced his constant teaching by requiring us to verbally feed his lies and deceit back to him while under duress from him! Never mind that we often had to lie about whatever we were saying because there was nothing to tell him he wanted to hear! This was a powerful way for my father to reinforce his deceitful teaching about God. This God was hateful yet he apparently wanted us to make up stuff about his pastors who needed to be bolstered. And wanted to indoctrinate their subjects…Are you as confused as we children were?

God/my father wanted me to feel ashamed and dirty and worthless and hopeless. He expected me to function in full operational mode, but he had a strong desire that I function while feeling dirty and worthless and full of despair and hopelessness. Only then were the effects of his rage temporarily assuaged . . . maybe!

God/my father had all the power and there was nothing I could do about it and he will always use his power to hurt me. Is it becoming clear that my father’s mind control techniques were so effective that I started to meld God and my father into one!? And I believed that my father’s attributes were God’s. What a sad state of affairs for young, defenseless children with no help to know the true, loving God.

My father was pulling verses from the Bible that painted this evil picture of God. And the scary, eerie reality of all this was my father was remaking God in his own image. And all the cruel, inhumane and evil tendencies my father had . . . he began to teach were true about God. And he would find verses to try to prove just that. The wickedness of this and its toll on my siblings’ lives is just incalculable.

Immediately following are a listing of some of the things my father said about his own beliefs and behaviors that he truly wanted us to believe were true about God, and that he truly wanted us to believe and comply with (my comments are in parentheses):

-I expect you to cut off all ties and relationships with everybody who does not attend my church, especially any family members who may not happen to attend my church.

-I practice what I preach. I rejected my own father and never spoke to him again after he tried to get me to ‘stop all this nonsense and get back into the Methodist church’ and because he refused to ‘get right with God’ by getting into my church. I also rejected my sister for trying to reconcile my father and me. She knew never to contact me again, ever!

-God does not love the world! Such teaching is drivel; mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy nonsense! This teaching is a namby-pamby fag-enabling belief.

-God did NOT give his only begotten son that whosoever believes on him will never perish but have eternal life. No, God did not do this, not at all! This teaching is a lie! (My father took on Jesus, the Savior of the world. The audacity of this is shocking to me now.)

-Everything I teach is exact, perfect truth. All others teach lies and you are to have absolutely nothing to do with them.

-I believe and teach Absolute Predestination – the destinies of all people are specifically and precisely determined by God, in every detail, from eternity past, and the individual human being has no say in their eternal destiny. (If this were true, my father was predestined by God to hurt us, just as other children were predestined by God to be hurt. This is such nonsense!) By the way, most every human being is going to hell because I hate them and I have the power to send them to hell! (Is the “I” in this last sentence God or my father? Exactly! Now you understand the dilemma we lived!)

-Once you are saved you cannot lose your salvation, unless you leave my church, in which case, you are going straight to hell. Of course, you are not going straight to hell because you lose your salvation. You are going straight to hell because you were never saved. The evidence you were never saved is, you left my church. (And if I drove you away by beating you and hurting you and demeaning you and mocking you, and that made you choose to leave, well too bad for you.) We will mock you from the pulpit for this decision. For years!

-If a person challenges you, disagrees with you, confronts you, argues with you or is in any way counter to or against you, that is specific, distinct, clear and unmistakable evidence that what you believe, what you are doing, or what you are saying is the truth! (No matter how outrageous and evil your words or behaviors are that would elicit those responses.)

-If you leave my church, you will not have children because children are an inheritance from the Lord and blessed is the man who has his ‘quiver’ full of them. No ‘The Place’, no children!

-Women are second class citizens and are to me absolutely, utterly dominated and controlled by men, who have complete God-given control and power over every aspect of their personal selves and lives! (Forget how much love Jesus showed women in his lifetime!)

-Any level of hatefulness is acceptable if it is done in God’s name. Any level of hatefulness!!

-Feeding the hungry of the world is not something a Christian or a Christian church is supposed to do. This is foolish nonsense, and worthless drivel. World Vision is a fag organization! (My father apparently never believed the truths talked about in Matthew 25 where Christ placed incredible importance on taking care of the hungry.)

-It is not important for my church to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation”. (My father felt comfortable calling his church a church of Jesus Christ but he mocked this Jesus and his teachings in every possible way.) It is not important to preach the truth of God’s love and goodness and the sacrificial death of his Son to people at all because if a person is to be saved, God will get them to my church. An all-powerful God is certainly capable of doing something this simple.

-I’m telling you to hate your enemies and fight them with all of your might and resources and I expect you to join me in fighting my enemies. (Do not ever believe Jesus, the head of the church, that you are to love your enemies and pray for them!) You must ‘stand at the gate’, with me, against all my enemies, which is anyone who crosses me! Hate who I hate!

-When your enemy is sick or dies, rejoice and taunt them, insult them cruelly, and pronounce your righteous judgment on them! Actively humiliate them, publicly, and humiliate their loved ones who have just lost them and are suffering in their grief. (Do this in ever more public ways as the sickness and depravity of your church grows.)

-I expect you to hate most everybody, without fail! It is the right and proper thing to do! Kick your enemy in the shins. Hit your enemy in the mouth, hard! Get in the first blow and every other blow possible, and don’t stop kicking and hitting them!

-It is important to tell the world that God hates them and that they are going to hell! That’s what’s important. None of this lovey-dovey balderdash! (If you mock God in the doing of this, so be it.) I am the god of this church and will tell you what to think.

-It is eternally irrelevant what anybody thinks about my preaching; supremely and eternally irrelevant. I could not care less whether somebody agrees with me, or not. I am preaching the truth!!

-God is willing for virtually every person to perish, to die in their sins and to go to hell. The truth is he delights in this! In fact, he is “jumping up and down happy” about this important truth!! He’s so happy, he’s laughing! He is clapping his hands with delight! As far as God is concerned, the more people in hell, the better. (You all know what I am going to say, right? That these are wretched untruths my father was throwing at us and our culture through his picket signs and his actions!)

-Most of the 4 billion human beings on the earth are brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed.

-God is full of wrath and anger toward most every person in the world, and everybody else should be also. Certainly anybody who knows God should be angry at this world of sinners we live in! I know I am!

-The world is full of bad, evil, wicked filthy people and you are not to have anything to do with them, starting with our next door neighbors! Stay completely away from and have nothing to do with the people of the world. Don’t talk to them or get involved with them in any way, and do not attempt to have a relationship with them. The more you avoid them, the better Christian you are and the better off you will be. And the better you will get along with me! In fact if I catch you even talking to a neighbor child I will give you a beating!

-The most important thing is to have the correct doctrine; the correct beliefs; and to preach these correct doctrines. Good works are not important. Works can’t save you. Spiritual fruit is not important. Just make sure you are in my church, ‘The Place’! That’s what is supremely important. And be sure you believe exactly how I instruct you to believe! And don’t you dare question me!!

-People are made to be used and abused, not appreciated and loved.

-It is not important to maintain honesty or decency or integrity in your dealings with the people of the world. Take advantage of them, use them for what you need, and otherwise despise them. But don’t you cross me, or try to cheat me, or it will be disaster for you!!

-God hates Israel because they crucified Christ and turned their back on God. God is done with Israel forever! Israel is Doomed!

-God is not concerned with injustice all you evil people may experience in this world. This is nothing but a fag notion. God couldn’t care less about injustice experienced by all the fag enablers this world is populated with. But it is time for this world to be merciful to me and mine!! I could not care less about you! However God DOES justify all of my behavior no matter how hateful, mean, hurtful or unjust it may be to others!

-If you tell people God loves them you are a lying, mealy-mouthed, sissy telling fag lies.

-If you disagree with me you are a fag, and I hate you, God hates you, and you are going to hell!

-I am the head of the house of every family in my church, like it or not! That’s how it is! Don’t fill the air with empty words about the husband being the head of the house. I know better.

-All my children and all their family members must get permission from me to do anything ‘off the charts’ and if I do not agree with and authorize your plans, you are going to hell if you follow through with your plans. I expect all of my children to give their lives for me and my church!

-I require husbands to beat their wives and children severely, regularly and promptly; betimes; to insure they are kept in complete subjection to me and my church.

-If you beat a child he will not die. In fact the more the child refuses to obey your every command the more it is necessary to beat them. If a large leather strap does not get results, then get an oak mattock handle and beat them harder. If that does not get results, beat them with your fists and feet and knees and spit in their face. If your wife does not obey you, hit her in the mouth and throw her down the stairs. Slap your wife across the face! Beat ‘em all until they comply perfectly with your demands! Beat ‘em harder and harder. While beating ‘em, be sure to curse and rage at them and throw everything you can get your hands on. If all of this does not work, threaten them with a gun. If this still does not work, confine them and hold them in confinement, refuse them food for forty days or more.

-My church is the pillar and ground of the truth!

-Having concern for orphans, widows, and those in jail, is silly drivel, and has nothing to do with the ‘Church of The Lord Jesus Christ’, ‘The Place’, my church. The last things you need to be worried about are some fag orphans, fag widows and fag prisoners. God couldn’t care less about these fags, neither do I and neither should you! God hates all these fag churches who are always talking about helping orphans, widows and prisoners!!

-The fruit of the spirit in my life or any other person’s life is never an issue, it is not important and has nothing to do with anything that would matter or take up any of the precious room in my perfect doctrinal system or take up any of my time or thought. I behave the way I choose to behave and that, by definition, makes it the right behavior. Got it!?

-God’s curse and mighty hand of destruction and judgment is on every person not in my church! I’m telling you, God Almighty is going to get all of you!!

-I am not interested in what the Bible says, or what God has to say on the subject, IF I do not agree with it. I am only interested in those things God says, that I agree with! Got it!? Don’t come in here talking about some Bible verse or passage that you have twisted to your own destruction. Just shut your silly fag mouth and listen to me, if you want to know the truth!

-Every other church on the earth teaches nothing but a pack of lies. They are all reprobate, heretic, backslidden, pussyfooting liars anyway, and they are all going to hell and so are all the poor dumb fools who follow their teachings! Me and my church are the only place; “THE PLACE”; on earth who teach the full and complete truth of God.

-I am the head of Christ’s church on the earth. I have been given all authority on earth to bind and loose and what I bind or loose on earth is bound or loosed in heaven, accordingly. No one has the authority except me. I do not answer to a denomination, or some goofy board of elders, or certainly not the members of my church. If I say my children who have left my church are going to hell, then they are going to hell! That settles it!! I only answer to God, as the head of His church here on earth. I could care less what people think of me. What people think of me is supremely irrelevant!

-Wives obey your husbands!

-Women Keep Silent!

-Women wear a Covering – some type of hat – AT ALL TIMES - in ‘The Place’!

-Women, don’t you dare ever cut your hair, unless you want to go to hell! After all, your hair is given to you for a covering and demonstrates publicly that you are under my authority! But if you don’t agree with everything I say; everything I tell you to do; and subject yourself to me continually, I will cut your hair off to the scalp so the whole world will see you are a rebellious insubordinate sassy-mouthed jezebel!

-My daughters are under my authority, no matter their age, until I grant them permission to marry. Of course, whether male or female, there will be no marrying, unless both parties are in ‘The Place’ and living in subjection to me and my church and unless I say, specifically, that it is okay for them to get married! I reserve the God-given right to have my say in what goes on in the marriages of my daughters also. I am the boss of their marriages!

-Wives are good targets and containers for the cursing and raging of men.

-Wives are good for getting pregnant.

-Wives are good for making babies.

-Wives are good for throwing down the staircase, if you are in the mood to throw your wife down the staircase.

-Wives are good for having their arms pulled out of socket, when the whim hits you as you are raging and beating them.

-Wives are good for beating with an oak mattock handle if they ‘disobey’ or displease you or if they weigh too much to please you.

-Wives are good for humiliating – cutting off their hair in choppy fashion for the entire world to see – to teach them a lesson if not FULLY AGREEING with and kowtowing to their husband, continually!

-Women make excellent servants for men.

If you have stayed with me long enough to get through this list you are a brave soul. Because you have undoubtedly gotten a sense of the twisted way my father portrayed a loving God who wanted to save the world, and wanted people to live in loving relationships with him and with each other while they are here on planet earth.

The concept of ‘Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it’ from the Bible never crossed my ears or mind, while attending ‘The Place’. In other words, my father never taught this important truth from the Bible, ever!

Though the Bible teaches ‘The two shall leave father and mother and cleave to one another and the two shall become one flesh’ my father specifically said to my older brother, in front of me, on one particularly happy day, distinctly and clearly, that he (Preacher/Father) was probably going to be the head of their household any time he saw the need, and that my brother better get used to that idea right now! This was BEFORE my older brother was ever married.

You see, the Bible was applied rigorously by my father when it fit my father’s goals of controlling and intimidating those in ‘The Place’, and abusing those in the rest of world; and the Bible was ignored when it held no such helpful utility!

My father actually did something even worse than just twisting the truth of God and His truths in the Bible, cutting and pasting from the Bible and whiting out large sections of the Bible to suit himself. He actually “recreated” God in his own image and taught all of us as children, and any who would sit still for my father’s preaching, that God was essentially mean like Fred W. Phelps, Sr. That God hated people, and wanted to use them and hurt them and make their lives utterly miserable.

If my siblings and I could have flipped a switch at some point to turn off the horrible teaching of my father, about God and about us in relation to God, that would have been marvelous. But the damage my father did with telling us the most horrific lies about God and about ourselves are the kind of abuse that can take years to undo. I can tell you that it took about an equal amount of time healing from my father’s abuse (20 years) as I sat under it the first 20 years of my life.

Those of us who have been through my father’s hate mill have ended up with physical problems from the beatings, depression, suicidal thoughts, strained relationships with people close to us and people in the community, and an overall sense of wretchedness and despair that is hard to understand if you have not suffered abuse at the level we did.

But perhaps saddest of all for me is that my father so twisted who God is and preached his fake god so vociferously that people in my family and some in my culture actually believe the picture of god my father has painted. And have had no one who loves them to turn to in their darkest hour.

My father was a man of influence in his own way. He was not a Washington or a Gandhi but he influenced nonetheless. And the influence he wielded didn’t just affect peoples’ lives here on earth but for eternity. When you get the character of God as wrong as my father did you are going to hurt people. And continue to hurt them by causing people to fear and even loathe connecting with this loving God. That was my father’s influence on his culture ultimately. And it is one that did immense damage.

If any of you reading this blog have suffered abuse and especially abuse where God and His character have been destroyed by your abuser, I would really like to talk to you. In whatever way you are comfortable. I would love to encourage you to take steps toward your own healing; toward yourself, toward your fellow humans and toward God. If I can encourage you in this even a little bit, I would love that opportunity.

Mark Phelps

Teach The Children Well - Part 1

A story of extreme religious abuse in a church

Do you ever wonder as you look at the lives of people who influenced others what factors made them into influencers? If you looked at the lives of Gandhi, Stalin, FDR, Hitler, George Washington, Alexander the Great, Mother Theresa or Thomas Edison what would you see in their lives that took them from being people who simply did things and said things and wrote things to people who influenced the culture at large? Would there be a specific time when you could see the rudder of their lives take a sharp turn in the direction of either good or evil?

I don’t know much about my father’s early life and all the factors that would come together to make him a man who would influence others but I do know he lost his mother to cancer at the age of five. My father, Fred W. Phelps, Sr., grew up in a family where it appeared he received love and support. However at the age of around 19 while my father was still in college he showed signs of having a mental illness of the severity that he was given a choice by the administration of his college to either get treatment or be forced to leave school. Many of us who knew my father well believe he had a personality disorder called Narcissistic Personality Disorder which was formerly called megalomania.

The distinctives of this disorder include:

Narcissistic Traits

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

• Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

• Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

• Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

• Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

• Is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her

• Requires excessive admiration

• Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

• Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

• Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

https://www.bpdcentral.com/narcissistic-disorder/hallmarks-of-npd/

Of course, each person with this diagnosis will manifest it differently. I believe my father indeed had a preoccupation with the fantasy of power over others. And the way he ended up wielding this power was through his preaching and ultimately the actions connected with that preaching. And those actions would one day be taken into the public arena to be viewed with horror by his nation.

My father would tell his family and anyone sitting in the pews of his church that his particular take on God and the Bible was right and that everyone else’s was wrong. You have probably known people who are this rigid in their views on religion or politics. What made my father uniquely so is he really believed himself to be a kind of modern day prophet fashioned after the Old Testament prophets who used to speak for God. And my father was very happy to speak for God. To a culture he believed was truly “getting it wrong.”

What my father decided to do was make the case for the fact that God hated people. Not that God was a holy God who had a high standard that wasn’t being lived up to. No, just that God hated people. If my father was attempting to be like an Old Testament prophet he failed miserably, because he missed the key message God always gave through his prophets. This key message was that IF the prophets’ culture would turn away from sinning and hurting people that God would forgive them and be their God and love them and guide them. My father seemed to forget that last part about God’s love for people, and would continue to forget it for the remainder of his fairly long life.

One of the ways my father got in trouble, as far as many who are knowledgeable about the Bible can tell, is that He pored over the Bible to select out the parts that seemed to further his own ideas. His personal agenda! And in that process he completely forgot the main thrust of the Bible which was that God loved mankind. That He made them uniquely in his image and wanted to have fellowship with them. Not as puppets without the ability to reason and think through the relationship being offered, but as sons and daughters. My father apparently didn’t believe this and certainly didn’t preach it. He preached the opposite, that God hated people. The Bible speaks about God’s love in a myriad of ways and I think my father just could not stomach that truth. My father didn’t love people at all, and he just did not “get” why the God of the universe did. It honestly baffled him and almost offended him.

The Old Testament teaches that worship was tied to a specific location, the temple Jerusalem. When Jesus began his preaching ministry he began teaching that worship would now be able to be anywhere, and was a spiritual matter not tied to a location. For some reason my father decided not to believe Jesus on this important change. So early in our lives my father began teaching that his church was ‘The Place’ and there was no other church or ‘place’ that was an acceptable place to worship. He didn’t like the New Testament teaching that said worship could happen anywhere and he couldn’t very well move us to Jerusalem so on his own he decided to say the new ‘Place’ where worship of the living God could happen was in Topeka, Kansas at his church, and nowhere else. If you are struck by the absurdity of this claim, welcome to the club.

My father made it clear to us, as we got older, that if we left ‘The Place’ we would now be going to hell. Just for leaving his church. My father’s teaching had this pesky little habit of changing along the way to suit his purposes. Since his church was very small, and peopled almost exclusively by his own family, my father had to convince us we couldn’t leave or he would have had no congregation. That we truly could NOT leave. So, he told us not only were we going to hell but that God would kill us if we left.

My father was not above strong-arm tactics like this! Remember one of the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder is to be personally exploitative and willing to use others for the persons’ own ends? My father must have believed if he didn’t frighten us into staying that with the level of physical and verbal abuse he had used on us over the years that we might all leave. And with the level of abuse he used it was a legitimate worry. I believe at some level he well knew this. But he did far more than frighten us. He terrorized us to the point that we truly believed we would die if we left, and go straight to hell!

For those of you who grew up in normal homes (where your powers of reasoning and your ability to exercise them with disagreements with your parents was alive and well), you must find this hard to believe. But, remember, we were being brainwashed from the time we were little children. And the power of the ever present fear tactics and beatings was a formidable combination. The night I finally left home at 19 I barely slept, believing that I would undoubtedly be dead by morning . . . and in hell. One of the first cracks in my father’s façade of teaching for me came that next morning when I woke up and realized I’d made it through the night. Well, at that point, at least I figured God was giving me a second chance. And he was! He gloriously, truly was!

In order to set up the ruse that his church was the only church in the world where one could be saved my father borrowed several ideas from the Old Testament. He spent a lot of time teaching on passages from the Old Testament about how the people of Israel would worship on every high place and on every green hill, instead of where God had told them to worship. He would then apply these passages to reinforce his teachings about ‘The Place’. It amazes me now to think my father had the guts to say that his church in Topeka, Kansas was the one and only place where people could have a right relationship with God and not go to hell. But he did teach this, most days of my existence. And he mixed this teaching with such hatefulness and terrorizing treatment, beginning at such an early age in our lives, that . . . we just believed him!

To understand the power of my father’s words and what they did to us as children you have to understand how he used repetition of words, phrases and concepts. When you read about mind control and brainwashing techniques the research shows the power of repetition. My father seemed to instinctively understand this and used it with chilling effect on his children many of whom are afraid to leave his church even to this day.

My father made it clear that not only were all of his teachings accurate but the teachings of every other church, and every other preacher, were NOT accurate. My father simply did not understand the principles the Bible speaks of where “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” He didn’t believe he could be sharpened or needed to be sharpened by other pastors and lay people who possessed knowledge and wisdom in the very areas he was preaching about. He placed major emphasis on what he called the ‘right’ beliefs and believed that he had found those right beliefs and that this knowledge was unavailable to others.

Remember a person with Narcissistic Behavior Disorder believes he is “special” and unique and can only be understood by other special people. And truthfully I am not sure my father thought anyone was as special as he was, so that on this earth he had no peer who could teach him anything. So in light of this he specifically, overtly taught that his church was the only true church preaching the truth, and all other churches were false.

He emphasized over and over that only his teachings were accurate, truthful teaching, in the whole world! Now that is the definition of special! He used Billy Graham as a distinct object lesson of false preaching, as well as Jerry Falwell and other well-known preachers of his era. Often as children we heard the so-called errors of these various preachers being refuted point by point. My father was the master of using the straw man argument where he would base his arguments on a misrepresentation of his opponents’ arguments. This works well only if the audience is ignorant or uninformed of the original argument, which was generally the case because we were children!

My father made it clear that God hates most all of the people of the world. And that the teachings of Jesus were largely to be ignored. When Jesus said ‘God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ my father actually said this was just a bunch of mealy-mouthed hogwash, and sentimental lies. My father apparently felt comfortable challenging Jesus, the head of the world wide church and calling him a liar! ‘World’, according to my father, meant “‘The Place’; his church” so therefore God does love us in ‘The Place’, but God does not love the whole world. Remember the “us” in this scenario meant only 20 to 30 people which have now grown to more than double that size with the marriages and grandchildren that would be produced from the nine children that did not leave our home and our father’s church.

My father emphasized over and over that to teach that God loved the whole world – and every person in it– was a lie and was heresy. There is a verse in 2 Peter where it says the Lord “is patient toward you, not desiring any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” Of course my father taught the ‘all’ in this verse was referring to all of those in ‘The Place’, which was his church. My father had no trouble ignoring the plain meaning of Scripture if it furthered his agenda!

Using a passage here and there, from within the Bible, often out of context, my father constructed his personal teachings. His view of life! He took bits and pieces of the words of other scholars and commentators throughout history to form his own ‘truth’; changed their thoughts into something unique to him alone. And those my father borrowed from would have been horrified at the way their words were being twisted by him.

When my father taught on predestination, a topic that good willed people inevitably disagree on, he preached it in a way that had never been taught in all of church history! His take was that God had predestined his church (my father’s church) to be THE church; ‘THE PLACE’; in this present world, and if there happened to be other believers somewhere in the world that God would get them to his church in Topeka, Kansas. My father believed there was no need to speak the gospel to others around the neighborhood, around the city, or around the world, because if any of the people in the world were going to be saved, God would save them and get them to his church, ‘The Place’.

If you dug into my father’s teachings you could find little bits and pieces of truth scattered throughout. In other words, my father’s teachings were not utter and complete falsehoods. Had they been, he would not have been as able to control his family as he did. Mixing falsehood in with some measure of truth is a powerful way to pass the tainted mixture off on other people. The following are some of his main teachings which he borrowed from various scholars but which he inevitably changed to something no one had ever believed in the totality of church history.

Mankind is Completely Wicked and Unable Even to Respond to God’s Offer of Eternal Life – My father taught that all mankind is wicked to their core and truly unable to even respond to God’s offer of eternal life without God essentially making them respond. Therefore, unless you were predestined to be saved, you are going to hell, no matter what! And remember the specific way my father taught this was that if you did not attend HIS church that in itself was grounds for going to hell. By his reckoning God had come to save Fred W. Phelps Senior’s family and the couple of families my father would manage to keep around listening to his message of hate.

If God decided you were to be saved, you would be, whether you wanted to be or not – My father’s teaching was that there was no way anyone could actually be saved. What a weird sales pitch my father had for mankind! He has to “sell” a product that was broken. That couldn’t help people. His pitch was that this amazing gift was up to God to give you and there was no response by the human heart . . . kind of a puppet view of mankind. There are no conditions to be met, to be saved. If God has decided to save you, you will be saved. You are one of God’s chosen ones. If God has decided you are not to be saved, you will NOT be saved. If my father thought this was an entirely pre-determined deal, where there was no hope for people, why on earth did he torment people with it? But torment he did.

He preached that if you are one who God has chosen, you will, without question, beyond a shadow of a doubt, find your way to ‘The Place’, his church. If you are currently in ‘The Place’, or somehow find your way to ‘The Place’, and you then leave ‘The Place’, it is because you were never saved; that you never belonged to God in the first place. You were never one of God’s chosen according to my father, and you are doomed to go to hell. But remember even by today’s numbers at Westboro Baptist Church this apparently meant Jesus came to save about 100 people. In all of history! And of course this is completely contrary to verses in the Bible that say “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” That means in Pakistan and Russia and China and Sierra Leone and Rwanda and Brazil and Iceland and North Korea and Mexico and Iraq. Not just in one location in the United States.

Christ’s death on the cross was not meant for everyone –My father believed that Christ’s death was not enough to pay for all the sins of all mankind for all of time. That it was only for a select group of people. My father believed that not all people were even able to respond to God’s gift of eternal life despite verses in the Bible to the contrary, and that there was some kind of limitation to the amazing, saving work of Christ. Well my father sure thought there was a limit! Out of almost 4 billion human beings on the earth, (at that time I was a child) twenty or thirty were in his church and were saved. They were the only ones on the planet. My father taught that ‘The Place’; my father’s church; is God’s church. And it’s where the “chosen” reside; all of them! And they reside nowhere else!

On the other hand the Bible says “He (Jesus) gave his life to pay for our sins. But he not only paid for our sins. He also paid for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:2. I am not sure if my father categorized that sort of verse as more mealy-mouthed, sentimental lies. But again these are my father’s arguments used against Christ, the savior of the world . . . that Christ’s life was not really given for the whole world despite Christ’s claims to the contrary! It took a real sleight of hand for my father to make “world” mean a street corner in Topeka, Kansas where he and his wife and 13 children lived. And which doubled for the only place on the planet where Jesus death counted for anything. Jesus was clear that he came to “seek and save the lost.” Jesus never ever said he came only to save people at a certain location on earth. My father twisted the greatest truth of all time and discouraged people from coming to the God who loves and the God who saves. If there was something wicked it was that teaching!

To get to be one of the special 30 people who were going to be saved there was no behavior requirement other than to be in ‘The Place’. That part is actually consistent with the Bible in that Christ came to save lost people who truly could not save themselves. And Christ never expected people to get “all fixed up” before He saved them. He simply saved them in whatever state they were in. But the Bible is also filled with teaching about how one’s life is going to change once God is actually part of your life. That you will have spiritual fruit in your life, fruit you and others will be able to observe and experience.

One list found in the Bible says the fruit that comes from people having the Spirit of God in their lives is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control.” I can tell you as one who lived on that street corner in Topeka, Kansas, those qualities were not evident in my father or really in any of us. Apparently my father was not concerned that there be evidence of spiritual fruit in our lives. The fruit of the spirit and the blessing that fruit could mean to a world full of hurting and needy people was never a topic of my father’s preaching.

Had he taught on the fruit of the Spirit with any integrity, he would have had to change his daily behavior or at least humbly seek to do so. Since he obviously did not intend to change his own behavior, he stuck with teaching what he called doctrine or basic truths only, and shied away from any evidence that true change had taken place in a person’s life because of God. My father’s “basics” were that the whole world was going to hell except the 20 or 30 people who stayed tied to that piece of real estate in Topeka, Kansas. And this in direct disagreement with Jesus’ teaching that God could be worshiped now anywhere in the world and tied to no particular place.

Instead of focusing on the teaching in God’s word regarding the fruits of the Spirit and a need as Christ followers to grow to be mature, humble, caring people, we learned to focus on what made Daddy mad! This might truthfully be said to be one of the greatest pitfalls of having a father for a preacher. And especially if that father is an immature, angry man with a personality disorder and who chose abuse as his vehicle for controlling people in his care. The theme and guiding principle for our household was the answer to the question “Is Daddy Mad?!” “Is Daddy Mad?!” Any time I would leave the property, upon return my all-consuming obsession would be ‘Is Daddy Mad?!” The first person I would see when returning would get asked the question of paramount importance; that was my only interest. . . ‘Is Daddy Mad?!’

The reason for this hyper vigilant behavior on the part of children towards parents is a necessary coping skill for all children of abuse. We learned our lessons well in regard to what was acceptable and what was not acceptable behavior for us to stay safe from harm. If the behavior got us in trouble with Daddy, we knew to avoid or hide the behavior. If the behavior put us in favor with Daddy, we learned to behave accordingly, or at least lie and tell Daddy we had behaved accordingly; even if, in the process of making Daddy happy, we violated the laws of society . . . or the laws of God! Had my father been a believer himself he would have wanted more than anything in the world to have children grow into honest people who could tell the truth in all situations, even when it was hard. But he actually taught the opposite of that. To say anything and everything not to get beaten by this man was our goal and our guide . . . the all-consuming focus of our young lives.

It did not matter if our behavior was right or wrong, according to the teaching of God’s word, common sense or according to the laws of the land. If it was acceptable to my father, it was our family’s rule of law! Or, if the behavior was wrong but we were able to hide the behavior from my father, it was fine too. Though Mother would make valiant attempts to keep us in line, mostly in order to avoid violent blow-ups with our father, she could only do so much, because we were a group of children who were out of control. The ratio was one adult to 13 children and my mother had no help from my father in raising us.

My father was not a godly man who exhibited the qualities the Bible expected him to which was that of love, kindness, humility, wisdom and gentleness to all. He lived the exact opposite of that. But for his children the standard for behavior changed at my father’s whim and changed minute by minute. It was shifting sand and we spent our lives trying to stay on top of the situation so as not to get pulled into the quicksand of yet another brutal beating. We learned no consistent behaviors that one would expect out of maturing, growing young people. We simply lived as if in a war zone, the war zone of life with an abusive father.

The Spirit of God and His influence did not seem to have any place in our lives. There was never any teaching along the lines of walking by the help of God’s Spirit or following the leading of the Spirit of Christ, except to mock this idea. He did not seem to care that his preaching in no way was helping us be better people. Remember my father was focused on his “doctrine” which was that some amazingly small number of us in Topeka was going to avoid hell. That was his life preaching in a nutshell. To live a life that was worthy of the God who would save him apparently did not cross my father’s mind nor did he help others to try to live exemplary, loving Christian lives.

None of us exhibited self-control; there was no control EXCEPT for the control of my father! As a result, we behaved like little devils when our perception was we would not be caught. It was the law of the jungle in my house, but when the head of the pride came home he could beat us into senselessness if his whim dictated.

The majority of my behavior was directly related to hiding or lying, for the sake of remaining safe from the raging, violent, crushing hatred of my father! This avoidance of my father as an effort to protect myself consumed me. We had no adult role model for behaving as growing, maturing young people. Our role model, our father, was unable to live the Christian life himself and he seemed to seek to destroy anyone who had peace or hope or life left in them.

Fighting was typical, among the children in my home. Bickering and arguing was standard place.

Cursing was also commonplace. I cursed like a sailor, having learned my lesson very well from my father’s habit of filthy cursing behavior! Imagine the thought that the church God would choose out of the entire planet was a place where you would not want proper folk to even have to come much less bring their young children.

Lying was a key strategy for survival with my father. Though it is a dreadful habit to get into, and an incredibly difficult habit to break, it was a central part of how I survived . . . lying! I would hide, fabricate, exaggerate or do anything else I could think of to avoid my father knowing the truth. I even lied when it wasn’t necessary. But eventually some imperfection or mistake of mine would leak out and all hell would break loose again. And with that, always, always, beatings, being belittled and screamed at, frightened and shamed and treated like some kind of animal; never as a precious son.

One very important teaching my father had to make careful repetition of was if we left ‘The Place’ we were bound for hell. Think about his dilemma as he was molding young people who would grow to hate and fear him and want to do anything in their power to leave his home and never come back . . . to avoid the beatings and torture forever. He must’ve started to wonder how he could keep us there once we started exercising thinking and reasoning powers that would lead us to question the abuse. My brother Nate was always ahead of the rest of us in using his reasoning powers to challenge my father on his horrible behaviors. And for his efforts Nate would get routinely left behind from family activities with my father who would beat him even more mercilessly. I believe my father had concluded he would have to step up his rhetoric and fear tactics or he might find himself in a church of 5 or 6 and not 20 or 30. And step it up he did.

It became widely understood at ‘The Place’ that the reason a person left ‘The Place’ was because the person was never saved to begin with. This is a convenient argument and admits of no genuine disagreement that would be allowed in any normal church of good willed people. Of course, because the Bible says: ‘They went out from us because they were not of us, for doubtless had they been of us they would have remained with us’ my father felt completely justified in condemning any who left his fold, even if it was for physical abuse and other things unrelated to our relationship with God. But, can you imagine how that verse terrorized those of us who had been conditioned by it for decades? When I left the church at the age of 19 that verse terrorized me for several years and to withstand its power against my heart and soul took active, long-term counseling and much help from the Lord.

And I was the object lesson of much preaching following my leaving the church. Week after week family members had to listen to the wrong I had done by leaving and the evils to them if they decided to follow my example. In Shakespeare’s inimitable line “methinks thou dost protest too much.”

Please understand that the Bible was never used in our lives to give us hope or comfort or truth. It was used as a method of terror and made it difficult for many of my siblings to ever pick it up to read again. Oh, how God must weep over this. My dad essentially inoculated us with his treachery against the most beautiful, life giving truths we could have learned from God’s Book.

Another teaching of my father was the concept of “Eagle Saints” – Within ‘The Place’ there would be special people referred to as ‘Eagle Saints’. My father never defined what this meant exactly but we guessed they were the elders of ‘The Place’, which at the time I attended included my father and the other two adult men. My father was, of course, one of these ‘Eagle Saints’! Whether there was other ‘Eagle Saints’ on the earth, contemporaries with my father, was unclear. But one thing was very clear; my father was an ‘Eagle Saint’ and simply because he said it was so.

Furthermore, we were taught that my father and the other two elders in ‘The Place’ would one day make up 3 of the 24 elders the Bible speaks about in the book of Revelation who would be around the throne of God. This was done by personal fiat, mind you. It was true simply because they said it was so. The 24 elders that sit around the throne of God, spoken of in The Revelation, are to be made up of all the elders in all the churches on the earth, since the time of Christ. My father’s church apparently was to have the privilege of supplying 3 of those 24 elders. My father’s place was really something special, huh!

My father’s main preaching for his lifetime was that God is hateful – He hates me; he hates you, he hates most everybody, except fifty or so special chosen ones commended by themselves for this honor. To further this central teaching of my father’s church, taught by no other churches anywhere; my father chose to begin to take this news to his culture. Here are some of the signs my father’s church currently displays, expressing their beliefs about the hatefulness of God, for the benefit of the public, in present day:

God Hates Fags! God Hates The United States! God Hates Jews! God Hates You! God Is Your Enemy! Thank God For Dead Soldiers! You’re Going To Hell! Fags Die God Laughs! Planes Crash God Laughs! Too Late To Pray! God Hates Your Tears! Thank God for 9/11! The World Is Doomed! God Hates Your Feelings! Thank God For IED’s! God Is America’s Terrorist! God Sent The Killer! God Hates You! Pray For More Dead Soldiers! God Killed Your Son! God Hates Crippled Soldiers! God Hates Israel! See, I told you . . . my father taught us all that God Hates!

The Bible says “God is love.” He doesn’t just show love, He is love. God embodies love in His being and can only act in a loving manner. So for my father’s church to communicate the exact opposite of this foundational truth about God is almost beyond the comprehension of those who know the reality of God and His love for mankind.

I want to pause for a moment to say: The present day behavior of my family, including the behavior of Westboro Baptist attenders as they use their public signs and websites, as despicable as they are, is just an outgrowth of the hateful, ferocious, remorseless, heartless, merciless, sadistic, monstrous, never ending abuse my father heaped upon his family for many years! When my father no longer had his own children to beat on and terrorize he must’ve felt the need to take his message of hate to the larger society. There were days my father would start out his day FAXing public officials to tell them what horrible people they were and ways that God hated them. It seems that these hateful methods were not sufficient and my father began to devise new ways to take his hatred on the road. To society at large!

Think about the impact on the minds and hearts and souls of 13 children who heard day after day that God is mean and vindictive! That he takes delight in causing pain and destruction and that if you do not toe the line and stay completely in line with all of his demands, you can expect severely painful consequences, and there is no hope or life beyond this ‘reality’. We in my family are severely broken people who have lives in various states of ruin because of the impact of that preaching.

What I am now learning from you, my dear blog readers, is of some of the terrible damage that was inflicted on you by my father’s teachings, that some of you have suffered with for years. My heart breaks for you! Just as my heart breaks for all of us who were recipients of that teaching all of our lives, it breaks for each of you. Individually! My father’s teachings are wrong and could not be further from the truth!

As you wait to read part 2 of this blog next week know that all of the wretched lies we children heard, painful and destructive as they were, would one day be challenged by mighty words of truth! Truth spoken into my life by loving people in churches I would one day attend, wonderful therapists, and by people God seemed to be sending my way. And one day there would come a time that I would be actually able to reconnect with God myself. And to hear truths from the Bible, God’s word itself. This would not be easy for me. And for those of you who have been abused in similar ways I know it will not be easy for you. But this kind of healing in the soul and spirit truly is possible. With effort, with conviction that there is hope, and with the help of loving people who stick with you no matter what, there truly is hope. I want this kind of healing for you more than anything. Because I know it is what will truly set your soul free. Please write to me if you need encouragement for this!

Mark Phelps