Free eBooks God Hates: Westboro Baptist Church, American Nationalism, And The Religious Right Available To Downloads

                
              
Free eBooks 
God Hates: Westboro Baptist Church, American Nationalism, And The Religious Right Available To Downloads
The congregants thanked God that they weren’t like all those hopeless people outside the church, bound for hell. So the Westboro Baptist Church’s Sunday service began, and Rebecca Barrett-Fox, a curious observer, wondered why anyone would seek spiritual sustenance through other people’s damnation. It is a question that piques many a witness to Westboro’s more visible activity—the “GOD HATES FAGS” picketing of funerals. In God Hates, sociologist Barrett-Fox takes us behind the scenes of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church. The first full ethnography of this infamous presence on America’s Religious Right, her book situates the church’s story in the context of American religious history—and reveals as much about the uneasy state of Christian practice in our day as it does about the workings of the Westboro Church and Fred Phelps, its founder.God Hates traces WBC’s theological beliefs to a brand of hyper-Calvinist thought reaching back to the Puritans—an extreme Calvinism, emphasizing predestination, that has proven as off-putting as Westboro’s actions, even for other Baptists. And yet, in examining Westboro’s role in conservative politics and its contentious relationship with other fundamentalist activist groups, Barrett-Fox reveals how the church’s message of national doom in fact reflects beliefs at the core of much of the Religious Right’s rhetoric. Westboro’s aggressively offensive public activities actually serve to soften the anti-gay theology of more mainstream conservative religious activism. With an eye to the church’s protest at military funerals, she also considers why the public has responded so differently to these than to Westboro's anti-LGBT picketing.With its history of Westboro Baptist Church and its founder, and its profiles of defectors, this book offers a complex, close-up view of a phenomenon on the fringes of American Christianity—and a broader, disturbing view of the mainstream theology it at once masks and reflects.
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: University Press of Kansas (June 10, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0700622659
ISBN-13: 978-0700622658
Product Dimensions:  6.3 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:  5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #752,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)   #214 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Religious Intolerance & Persecution   #425 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Nationalism   #1149 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Sociology
Rebecca Barrett-Fox tackles a tough topic in an easy-to-read way. She doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable and, indeed, realizing that mainstream American Christianity shares roots with Westboro Baptist Church is more than uncomfortable...it's downright thought-provoking and scary. This book is a great read for student, scholar, and laymen alike.
1. It is nuanced . Even Fred Phelps, whom Barrett-Fox seem not to have interviewed (and why would you want to interview someone who wishes God would kill his son and tells him so?) is credited with a streak of decency given his time in the ‘50s as a civil rights supporter.2. I loved how It made Calvinism clear, with its nightmarish vision of God.3. Its vigorous defense of free speech.4. The way it led me to understand why Fred’s folk began to picket the funerals of dead military men.5. And how its author achieved all this within the constraints of an academic book, which, it seems to me, is destined to be a hit for a wider audience.It blew me away.
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