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

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

LGBT rights Rights affecting lesbian, Gay men, gay, Bisexuality, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the Capital punishmen ...

activist, and public speaker on the topics of

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

and

child abuse Child abuse (also called child endangerment or child maltreatment) is physical abuse, physical, child sexual abuse, sexual, emotional and/or psychological abuse, psychological maltreatment or Child neglect, neglect of a child, especially by a p ...

. 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 (Christianity), minister and Disbarment, disbarred lawyer who served as the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, worked as a civil rights attorney, ...

, from whom he had been estranged since his 18th birthday in 1976 until his father's death in 2014. Phelps left his family home when he turned 18, and permanently left the

Westboro Baptist Church The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an American unaffiliated Primitive Baptists, Primitive Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, that was founded in 1955 by pastor Fred Phelps. It is widely considered a hate group and a cult, and is known for Prot ...

four years later in 1980. He 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 ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeastern Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2020 cen ...

on November 22, 1958, to

Fred Fred or 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), Fred ...

and Margie Phelps. 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 ...

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 ( Phelps; 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 conduc ...

, 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 t ...

. The company later relocated to

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...

. 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, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of th ...

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 Religious skepticism is a type of skepticism relating to religion. Religious skeptics question religious authority and are not necessarily antireligious/cle ...

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

9/11 The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

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 pseudoscientif ...

'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 is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Canada, and currently lives in

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

. 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 valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...

and

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

. 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 In the context of LGBTQ culture, pride (also known as LGBTQ pride, LGBTQIA pride, LGBT pride, queer pride, gay pride, or gay and lesbian pride) is the promotion of the rights, self-affirmation, dignity, Social equality, equality, and increas ...

events

Lawrence Tech Lawrence Technological University (Lawrence Tech, LTU) 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 moved ...

Pride Week 2012 and describes himself as an "

LGBT LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...

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." Nathan has been speaking out against the Westboro Baptist Church as early as 2006. 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