Westboro Baptist Church uses iPhone to announce protest at Steve Jobs’s funeral

[John Dibble]

Just for the record, and I wish all Americans would get this in their mind, Westboro Baptist Church members are NOT real Christians and they are in no way representative of the vast majority of Southern Baptists or any other Christian denomination.  They do not share the views of my God, like they claim.

I'm pretty sure that most Americans already realize that the WBC are a fringe group. Also, while you call them false Christians they would say the same of you. To say someone isn't a 'real' Christian is usually just saying that you disagree with their particular interpretation, and has no real value since there isn't anything close to a universally accepted definition of what it is to be a Christian.

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I'm pretty sure a just and loving God would not punish the entire congregation - most of them were raised in that environment and suffered heavy indoctrination and brainwashing that is to such an extent that I think by reasonable standards it could be called child abuse. The WBC is a cult and like all cults it does everything it can to damage its members until they feel that the only people they can depend on are their fellow cult members. Most of the members need understanding and psychological help, not judgement.

[John Dibble]

Actually contrary to the cult belief there is a financial motive behind what the WBC is doing. As you'll see most of the "Church" members are lawyers who use the negative attention gained form their actions to launch various lawsuits.

Cults are one of the things I'll often study in my spare time so I'm well aware of all that as I've done the research.

Being a cult and making money off of your activities are not mutually exclusive. Also, litigation is quite a common tactic for cults that have . Just look at Scientology - out to make money, has a cabal of lawyers at their beck and call to sue anyone and everyone who dares criticize them, and is recognized as a cult by pretty much everyone.

The International Cultic Studies Association has a cult characteristics checklist, and one of the items is "The group is preoccupied with making money." Having gone over the checklist, the only one I can say for sure doesn't apply to the WBC is "The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members." because they don't seem to proactively recruit.

[John Dibble]

Jobs had a private Funeral on the 7th. Did WBC make it there somehow?

Haven't heard any news on it. It's not unusual for them to say they're gonna protest something but not actually follow through - I think they like making the counter-protesters scramble. It could also have been too short of notice for them to make the arrangements in this case.