Nathan Phelps (born November 22, 1958) is an American-born Canadian

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

LGBT rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Notably, , 33 ...

activist, and public speaker on the topics of

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

and

child abuse Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical, sexual, and/or psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child or children, especially by a parent or a caregiver. Child abuse may include any act or failure to a ...

. He is the sixth-born of the 13 children of

Fred Phelps Fred Waldron Phelps Sr. (November 13, 1929 – March 19, 2014) was an American minister who served as the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, worked as a civil rights attorney, and ran for statewide election in Kansas. He gained nation ...

, from whom he – along with three of his siblings – had been estranged since his 18th birthday in 1976 until his father's death in 2014. Phelps permanently left

Westboro Baptist Church The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is a small American, unaffiliated Primitive Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, founded in 1955 by pastor Fred Phelps. Labeled a hate group, WBC is known for engaging in homophobic and anti-American pickets, as ...

in 1980 and has since publicly censured the group.Kendall, Justin
"The New Fred: Shirley Phelps-Roper is just like her notorious father – except in one crucial way,"
Pitch.com, November 2, 2006. Retrieved December 21, 2012.

Early life

Phelps was born in

Topeka, Kansas Topeka ( ; Kansa language, Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the Capital (political), capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the County seat, seat of Shawnee County, Kansas, Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the ...

on November 22, 1958. From birth until age 18, Phelps lived with his parents

Fred Fred may refer to: People * Fred (name), including a list of people and characters with the name Mononym * Fred (cartoonist) (1931–2013), pen name of Fred Othon Aristidès, French * Fred (footballer, born 1949) (1949–2022), Frederico Ro ...

and Margie in his hometown. Although he attended a local public school, beyond that his life revolved around his father's Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), which adjoined their family home inside a walled compound. Attendance at scheduled sermons was strictly enforced, and after-school time was largely committed to raising money for the Church through selling candy. Later this was eclipsed by participation in his father's intensive exercise program, which would routinely involve Phelps and his siblings running 5 or 10 miles (8–16 km) after school, accompanied by participation in a fad diet. Phelps describes his father as "deeply prejudiced", violent, and abusive, and gives accounts of receiving extended beatings with a leather strap and later with a

mattock A mattock is a hand tool used for digging, prying, and chopping. Similar to the pickaxe, it has a long handle and a stout head which combines either a vertical axe blade with a horizontal adze (cutter mattock), or a pick and an adze (pick matt ...

handle. Nathan's brother Mark and sister Dortha have corroborated his claims of physical abuse by their father.

Leaving Westboro

On his 18th birthday, Phelps left his family home. Still in internal conflict, he abandoned his family and the WBC, despite his then deeply-held belief that this meant he would go immediately to hell. In great fear of having his escape interrupted by his abusive father, Phelps made a clandestine nighttime getaway in an old car he had bought specifically for this purpose, with little plan or preparation beyond this. He slept the first night in the men's room of a nearby gas station. Phelps left WBC prior to the start of the Church's high-profile picketing activities, and has attributed the onset of Church picketing to his father's exclusion from the legal profession. Phelps has been criticized by members of his family still active in the Westboro Baptist Church. His sister

Shirley Phelps-Roper Shirley Lynn Phelps-Roper (born October 31, 1957) is an American lawyer and political activist. She was the lead spokesperson of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, an organization that protests against homosexuality conducted under ...

, a prominent spokesperson for the Church, said "Nathan Phelps is a rebel against God. He has nothing to look forward to except sorrow, misery, death, and hell", and stated that he "left when he was a raging disobedient rebel with selective memory". His only encounter with his father since 1980 was on a radio talk program, on which Fred Phelps was highly critical of his son. Westboro Baptist Church has itself been widely criticized, and has been described as "roundly derided" and "widely rebuked and criticized" by Christian groups which distance WBC's views from their own, and in other cases WBC is accused of "misreading" and "misrepresenting" the Bible. Phelps has responded to this position arguing that WBC's position was derived by his father from bona fide Biblical text and has written on the wider subject of mainstream Christianity's rejection of extremists.

Kansas and California: From faith to atheism

After leaving WBC, Phelps undertook various jobs before reuniting with his older brother Mark, and in 1978 they established a printing company together in Prairie Village, near

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...

. The company later relocated to

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

. Phelps worked for 25 years in the print business. Three years after leaving, Phelps contacted his family, and for a brief period left Mark and the firm to stay with them. His father had offered to fund him through law school, a path which took 11 of his siblings into careers as lawyers, but which Phelps declined. Fred never accepted him back, eventually denouncing him. Phelps then left again, this time for good, permanently breaking contact with his father. During an interview while at QEDcon in April 2014, Phelps explained how the lingering effects of his indoctrination as a youth were so entrenched. He understood how one could feel persecuted and sincerely surprised when other people react quite strongly against ideas of what "the truth" was as he saw it: In the 20 years following his departure, Phelps tried to find a milder form of Christianity, and raised his own children in an

Evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide Interdenominationalism, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being "bor ...

church, but his doubts only grew as he continued studying religion. At the

Reason Rally The first Reason Rally was a public gathering for secularism and religious skepticism held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on March 24, 2012. The rally was sponsored by major atheistic and secular organizations of the United States and wa ...

in Washington on March 24, 2012, he told that the events of

9/11 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

finally brought him to disbelief: In addition to this, Phelps identifies both his experience reading

Michael Shermer Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of ''Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific ...

's book '' The Science of Good and Evil'' and the birth of his first child as turning points in his worldview. Phelps now describes himself as an atheist.

Career as activist, speaker, and author

Phelps later moved to rural

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, Canada, and currently lives in

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

. He is the executive director of the Centre for Inquiry Calgary, a secular organization that educates and advocates

reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...

and

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

. He also serves on the board of directors of

Recovering from Religion Recovering from Religion (RfR) is an international non-profit organization that helps people who have left religion, are in process of leaving, or are dealing with problems arising out of theistic doubt or non-belief. RfR provides support group ...

, which offers education and practical support for people leaving religious communities. Phelps is an active public speaker and appears at events designed to promote the ideas of atheism, skepticism, and secularism. He has spoken at numerous

Gay Pride LGBT pride (also known as gay pride or simply pride) is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to sham ...

events

Lawrence Tech Lawrence Technological University (LTU) (Lawrence Tech) is a private university in Southfield, Michigan. It was founded in 1932 in Highland Park, Michigan, as the Lawrence Institute of Technology (LIT) by Russell E. Lawrence. The university move ...

Pride Week 2012 and describes himself as an "

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

activist". He emphasises his work raising awareness of child abuse related to religion and its legal status and has published articles on this topic. Phelps is known for his criticism of the Westboro Baptist Church through literature, interviews, public speaking at atheist conventions, and his website. He states that his father physically abused him and the other Phelps children, and he believes that the church was an organization for his father to "vent his rage and anger." As of 2014, Phelps was working on a book called ''Leaving Westboro: Escaping America's Most Hated Church & Family''. In the same year, he made a widely reported announcement that his father was terminally ill, and also that Phelps had been "excommunicated" from his own church during 2013. Phelps' father died of natural causes shortly before midnight on March 19, 2014. The

organization released a statement on behalf of Phelps, who is on their board of directors, about his father's death. He is currently an Emeritus Board Member of Recovering From Religion and executive director for the Center For Inquiry in Calgary.

References

External links