What Has Westboro Baptist Church Been Up To For The Last Decade? 2015-2025

For many, Westboro Baptist Church is one of the most infamous and notorious churches in the country. Founded by Fred Phelps in Topeka, Kansas, in 1955, it rose to prominence in the early 1990s and 2000s for its showy, public protests.

Fred Phelps had thirteen children, nine of whom have been involved in running the organization in various ways at various points, but none so much as his daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper.

She oversaw the day-to-day operations of the church, the expansion of their protesting activities, a vocalist for their church parody videos, and also functioned as the face and spokesperson of the church.

These protests included holding up signs with their catchphrase “God Hates Fags” but also protesting the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and funerals for school shooting victims, including Sandy Hook.

In 2006, after five Amish schoolgirls were killed in the West Nickel Mines School shooting, Westboro announced their plans to picket their funerals. They relented, however, when they were granted an hour of uninterrupted time on syndicated talk-show host Mike Gallagher’s radio program in exchange for not picketing.

While faced with repeated lawsuits, Fred Phelps was a lawyer by trade, along with many of his children and grandchildren, including Shirley.

Most of them work at the family law firm, Phelps Chartered, which reportedly does work for the state of Kansas and the Department of Corrections.

This has not only provided resources but also served as a valuable profession when defending themselves and their protests in court, winning dozens of cases over the years, including a landmark case before the supreme court that ruled picketing at funerals was a valid expression of free speech. The case was argued by Margie Phelps, Fred’s daughter.

But what’s been happening in the last decade? In 2014, it was revealed that Phelps was allegedly advocating for greater kindness and grace between members and less quick to kick them out and shun them, given that nearly all the members were his relatives.

This resulted in a power struggle, which saw the church form a board of elders to wrest control from Phelps.

Successful in their endeavor, they excommunicated Fred Phelps. He was forced to leave the church, which was also his home and where he had been sleeping in an upper room for years, and move offsite.

He passed away less than a month later.

The elder board also sidelined Shirley Phelps-Roper, their longtime spokesperson, in exchange for another member, Steve Drain.

While many family members own houses around the church, some enterprising activists purchased property across from them, painting their houses in LGBTQ colors.

The new leadership intensified the church’s policies and perspectives, imposing a strict dress code on the women, making more top-down decisions, and allegedly dictating what jobs the teenagers could take and who they could talk to, warning that one wrong move would lead to their expulsion.

A few years prior to this, and a few years after, nearly half of Fred Phelps children abandoned the church. Similarly, five of Shirley Phelps-Roper’s daughters likewise departed.

Shirley has repeatedly called her daughters lost and gone to hell, and said in a podcast earlier this year that she would shred any letter from them or attempts at communication.

One of the new pastors at Westboro Baptist Church is Tim Phelps- one of Fred’s sons. Bivocational, he’s spent 35 years working at the Shawnee County corrections department, and got in a bit of water in 2016 when he used his phone to retweet a post about how ‘God H8S Fags’ from the church’s official Twitter account but instead inadvertently sent the message from the jail’s twitter handler, which he had access to.

The church has also continued to shrink. In a recent podcast, pastor Tim revealed there are between 60 and 70 congregants left, with up to 60% being family members.

Westboro stayed active during COVID, putting up signs and continuing to stage protests, albeit fewer of them.

They are not very active on social media- being deplatformed from multiple sites, though one of the Phelps’ clan, Betty, continues to operate on X, reposting right-wing news and memes, along with tweets like this:

They have 13 protests planned for this coming September, mostly at the local university and sporting events, and even a Linkin park concert.

They also have two planned protests against Christian comedian Nate Bargatze, with one of their justifications being: “He has just the one wife, and yet he mocks her, regularly! Colossians 3:19 Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.”

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