Genuinely curious question for the Christians among us...

[theUrbanDryad]

as Christians, how do you deal with people like Ted Phelps and this person? do you embrace them as fellow believers or distance yourself from people who are clearly more than a little disturbed?

Can't open the link, UrbanDryad - blocked by firewall at work!

it is a lady from Trading Spouses (American Wife Swap) claiming to be a God Warrior, freaking out and ordering the cameras out of her house while her young daughters look on horrified.

eek! disturbing!

don't know who phelps is?

this god warrior is a nutter. she'd be a nutter about something else if religion wasn't an option. i am a god botherer, but i am liberal too, and i certainly don't think others who are not christian are bad!!!! most of my pals are nor christian yet are a lot more moral than me! jesus taught about loving each other -that's the main point of any moral code as far as i'm concerned!

Imho, the woman needs psychiatric help urgently! or failing that an exorsist. Jesus wept.

also, the folk on "raised by the hand of god" last night???
i want to bring up my kid to be well behaved and be a good person, but hitting him with sticks will certainly not be part of it!

i beg your pardon, it's fred phelps, and the person i'm actually referring to is Shirley Phelps-Roper

she is a charming woman who helps to organise pickets at military funerals, and dances on the graves of gay people.

Jesus was essentially the first hippy imo. Love & Peace.

anything else is masquerading as Christianity

well I don't know what to say!

This is from some kind of US wife swap.

ah, yes, the phelps, of louis theroux fame.
they are not acting like christians imo.

these kinds of people stand out cos they are nuts.most of us christians just quietly get on with things like everyone else

eman, i couldn't agree more!

The Phelps lady was on Louis Theroux a few weeks ago.

IMO these extremists have some form of mental illness.

Those poor girls in the God warrior clip - the saddest bit was the MOM banner hanging across the kitchen doorway. She seemed to be having some kind of breakdown.

That poor little girl. She shouldn't have to be near such a dangerous loon.

i just felt really sorry for the God Warrior's kids.

so...you don't consider people like to be Christian? is there some kind of Christian opposition to it, or do most Christians sort of shuffle sideways and look embarassed and go "They're not in my gang...."

I'm not Christian but I would say it's not necessarily her Christianity which is making this woman such a loon. She's obviously very unstable and happens to spout on about Jesus. She could equally be spouting about Railways and still be a horrifying mad woman.

I feel so sorry for those lovely girls.

Well tbh as a Christian, I don't think I have a right to say who is less of a Christian or more of one iyswim but common sense just tells you when someone is unhinged regardless of their faith.

There are bigots in every walk of life; some of them will call themselves Christian.

I am not a Christian now but was for quite a long time, and I wouldn't have embraced people like that. The Christians I knew then, and now, would say that God is meant to be about love, not hatred, and a Christian should love the sinner, hate the sin. So while it's OK to believe that something is sinful in the eyes of God, it's not OK to extend that to hatred of people for doing whatever it is they don't agree with - unlike the the woman in the clip and the woman who dances on the graves of homosexuals.

The "God warrior" seems to me to be disturbed and probably in need of mental help. And if she carries on behaving that way, her children will end up needing help too.

that's an interesting queston, urban.
i've never really come in to contact with fundamentalists like this, except for a friend who got into a group who were quite, er, full on? she was encouraged not to have anything to do with us, so we didn't have to distance ourselves from her!
i don't know if there is any organised activity against this. i guess the church would take the view that living in a good way might help others to see christianity as a force for good not bad?
personally, the phelps, etc have as much in common with me as any other religios fundamentalists.

actually, this is quite cool....

The Phelps people are cultic, really. Based on what some of them were saying on Louis Theroux about going to hell if you die in a car crash, I wouldn't really accept that they had a basic understanding of Christian belief, quite apart from the disgraceful funeral picket business. So yep, distance myself there.

The God warrior lady seemed ridiculously highly-strung. Well, yeah, those people you just swapped with are not like you, that's the point of the programme. I wonder how she copes doing the shopping and going outside where there are lots and lots of people who don't share her beliefs? She seemed hugely misguided and superstitious, but I've known some genuine christians like that. Being loopy doesn't preclude you from the faith (in fact some would say it's a neccessity )