They are a hate filled church……Just google them and you will see.
Can anybody become a Baptist church? I would be ashamed to be associated with them if I were Baptist.
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Why Does The Baptist Religion Allow Westboro To Be A Baptist Church?
Posted on December 20, 2012.
Short answer?
They don’t.
Longer answer?
In order to prevent Westboro from referring to itself as a Baptist church, one of the mainstream churches would have to essentially sue Westboro over some type of copyright or trademark infringement. You can’t really copyright a common term like baptist or trademark your religion. Being comprised mostly of attorneys (Fred Phelps, the man who founded the “church” is himself a disbarred civil rights attorney), the members of the Westboro Baptist Church are aware of this and are almost as famous for their litigiousness and manipulation of the law as they are for their hateful doctrine.
There is more than one organization that refers to itself as a Baptist church and has been for quite some time, and there’s a rule of law in America when it comes to copyright and trademark that even if a term started out belonging to you– even if you had it copyrighted or trademarked– if you have failed to protect your intellectual property when others have infringed upon it to the point where your initially copyrighted or trademarked term has now become a common term for the product, you lose the right to enforce your copyright/trademark.
A really good example of this principle would be Corn Flakes. Corn Flakes was originally a protected term. Only Kellogg’s made Corn Flakes, but over the years, they failed to protect their trademark from infringement by competitors like Post, until everyone began to think of that type of cereal as “corn flakes.” Once they finally got around to suing Post over referring to their Toasties cereal as corn flakes, it was too late. The court found they no longer had any right to the term because it had become common.
Same thing here.
If you want another example, it would be like John Carl Buechler and Ed Naha trying to sue J.K. Rowling over Harry Potter because the protagonist in the movie Troll (which they wrote) is named Harry Potter. It might make their movie famous again for five minutes, but all it would boil down to other than that is an exercise in pissing into the legal wind because Harry Potter is just a name, it’s one that many people use, and the use of the name is distinct enough in each case that one is not likely to confuse the Harry Potter in Troll with the Harry Potter in J.K. Rowling’s series. There’s just no real basis for a lawsuit there.
Once again, same thing with the Westboro Baptist Church. They have distinguished themselves by placing the Westboro in their name, and they do not attempt to pass themselves off as a mainstream Baptist church or purport to affiliate themselves with any mainstream Baptist church, so there’s no real basis for a lawsuit.
That being said, the mainstream Baptist churches have publicly disavowed the Westboro Baptist Church, stating uncategorically that the church is not part of the larger Baptist church, and its “minister” has not received any certification from their organization (or any other, for that matter… Fred Phelps just likes to refer to himself as a pastor).
So they don’t allow Westboro to be a Baptist church. Quite the opposite, it generally bothers them a great deal Westboro uses the word Baptist in its title, but there’s not a lot they can do about the fact that’s what Westboro calls itself.
They are not baptist in the sense that they are a member of a recognized Baptist union or convention.
The term baptist is used in their context as a reference to their theology (or claimed theology). i.e. because they claim to be a reformed church which believes in the core principles of baptist/anabaptist doctrine.
As a Christian I would argue that they seriously miss the point of Christian theology let alone that of the baptist denomination(s). As much as I’m sure most Americans would like to ban them or lock them up, they are the price on pays for freedom of speech,
On a personal level I am fairly certain they are in for some serious trouble when/if they do make it to heaven.
Anyone can open a church, if I got ordained I could do it.
They call themselves baptist; however they are disowned from the Southern Baptist Convention so they are a baptist in name only.
The church I sometimes go to, is Anglican but is not connected to the CofE which means that they are free of all the politics going on at the moment. They have even said on record that once it gets through government, they will opt-in to the gay marriage bill.
I guess. No other person has an authority on who can be a christian.
Yes they’re terrible people, but they’re not doing anything remotely as bad as what god commanded in the bible. That says a lot about the religion.
Thats like asking why do you allow white people to exist, dont you know white Americans owned slaves. How can you continue to allow white people to exist?
I read they are not officially endorsed or recognized by the Baptist Church.
I think you’re confused.