Can Anti-Gay Westboro Church Survive Fred Phelps’ Death?
Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told USA Today that the Westboro Baptist Church today appears to have fewer than “a few dozen” members.
The group is believed to have descended into infighting prior to Phelps’s death. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Phelps’s estranged son Nathan said that the church’s founder had in fact been excommunicated from the group on his deathbed for having become too moderate.
In his view, the group is unlikely to survive its founder’s death. He said: “More members have left - three in recent weeks. There will be a tipping point where they cannot lose any more of their children.”
“It won’t be my father’s death that ends (the church). Ultimately it will fail with the death of his idea”, Nathan Phelps said.
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