Hating for a Living: American Psycho Fred Phelps

If you’ve ever been close to a speed freak or meth addict, you may have witnessed some terrifying paranoia, fury and hatred that came right out of nowhere. Too much at once makes a user jump at his own shadow, and think every noise is the CIA breaking down the door. Too much in general might damage the centres of the brain that process aggression and other important emotions. The addict may forever feel followed or persecuted- a drug induced paranoid schizophrenia. Sometimes he feels invincible at the same time, perceiving constant threats, yet feeling infinitely superior and godlike. The megalomaniac.

Sound familiar? Most people don’t know that Adolf Hitler was a methamphetamine addict, with numerous daily injections fuelling his rage, paranoia, hatred, and insomnia. Speed and superspeed do not always lead to such cataclysmic events in the macrocosm, of course, but families affected by them may recognize some of the above terrors in their microcosm. Too many are torn apart by the deleterious effects of speed, which can turn the gentlest of persons into unpredictable, tormented souls who believe they see demons everywhere they turn.

Most of you have heard of the Reverend Fred Phelps, the world’s most notorious hater- you know, the backwater Kansas hick of God Hates Fags fame. Not many people know that he was a speed addict. If too much speed or a very little bit of meth can turn a good man bad or dead in no time flat, what might it do to a man who is already unstable, angry, volatile, and paranoid?

This twisted old fuck who pickets funerals with his bitter blend of bible truly believes he is one of the only people ever born who will make it into heaven.

You all know the peripheral gist of the Fred Phelps story- some hick Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas filled with crackpots who really, really hate fags. The leader of this bastion of inbred lemmings is a crazy kook pastor named Fred, some idiot whose I.Q. borders on retardation.

You don’t pay him much mind, except for the occasional purpose of entertainment at how anyone can be such a pathetic loser. The spectacle entered your consciousness when gay teen Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence like a scarecrow and left to die, a decade or more past. The Phelps’s created a stink by picketing the funeral with their hostile signage and making the now famous website that marked count for each day poor Mattie was burning down under.

What you may not know is that American gays are still struggling for equal rights in the workplace, a basic human right that apparently curtails Christian freedom, while the Westboro Baptist Church is an untaxed nonprofit protected by the First Amendment. You may not know that the bizarre believers also hate blacks, Jews, Muslims, Americans, soldiers, and even Sweden. They hate everybody. You might not know that Fred is far from feeble-minded- he is a law graduate with a high IQ, and terrific fitness into his old age, ever since he gave up the drugs. Talk is cheap so few of us take this yokel seriously- but sticks and stones have broken bones, though names indeed can hurt me. This monstrous man has established his reign the old fashioned way- by beating his subjects into submission. It is his God-given right to batter his wife and thirteen children, who make up the population of the church- along with their children. Few of Fred’s offspring have gotten away. It has been ingrained from birth that if they leave, the pit of hell will open up and swallow them whole, for an eternity of burning torment.

“If you’re preaching the truth of God, people are going to hate you,” Fred said in Jon Michael Bell’s Addicted to Hate, several years before the death of Matthew Sheppard would make him a household name. Still, he and his kids had already been on talk shows, magazine covers, and radio spreading their feel-good brand of God. And that is this: nearly everyone is going to hell, everyone, that is, except Fred himself and hopefully the most loyal in his family.

The difference between Fred and most other evangelists is not the hate- many others hate. It’s that Fred doesn’t really care if you come to repentance. God either chose you to be saved or he didn’t. Nothing you can do about it now. It’s peculiar to preach without the ol’ soul solicit, the high emotion of devotion, the feeling of healing. But it’s nothing new in Christianity. The idea of predestination is as old as Calvin, the father of Protestantism.

Later Wesley announced that it is by grace you are saved (did you think that went back 2000 years? Nope. Just 500 or so, despite what Paul wrote in the Good Book…) Before Calvin, it was baptism, adherence to the Catholic church’s commandments, and confession. Calvin taught that God picked out in advance whom he wanted, and the rest he just made so he could torture them later through all of eternity. Rest assured that Calvin was on that heaven-bound list, funny that.

Predestination is still a cherished doctrine among many modern churches- ain’t nothing you can do, even if you accept Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal saviour, when the roll is called up yonder, your name won’t be on it.

But not even the New Calvinists have taken it to Phelps’s extreme, which sees anyone outside of his bloodline as the depraved “Adamic race.” Fewer still feel any need whatsoever to spend every spare moment of their life either beating their children or holding up signs that say Thank God for AIDS or Thank God For Dead Soldiers. Phelps and his cult of followers, mostly his family, vindictively picket sacred events like funerals, disrupting solemnity with their putrid spew. At the 9/11 for example, inexplicably they gathered to mock the victims, taunting them as they were pulled from the rubble, and shouting that those still living should be left to die. After all, this terrorist act was God’s punishment for homosexuals in America, who are of course, the only sinners doing the only kind of sin.

The cult distributed flyers after the Space Shuttle crash, explaining how the disaster was caused by the astronauts, who had not taken it upon themselves to speak out against queers. It just wasn’t at the top of their agenda, sort of like mechanical engineers or frozen yogurt salesmen aren’t always thinking of those awful homos when they’re just doing their jobs.

“Brethren, they can lock us up, but we’ll still do what the Bible tells us to do. Either our wives are going to obey, or we’re going to beat them!”

“Military funerals are pagan orgies of idolatrous blasphemy where they pray to the dunghill gods of Sodom and play taps to a fallen fool.”

“Mexicans worship a bloody fag rectum.”

“Catholic churches, seminaries and monasteries are nothing but sodomite whorehouses filled with unnatural brute beasts and devils. We warned that the very leprechauns of Ireland are likely to be fags!”

“The Catholic Church became the CHURCH OF THE HOLY PEDOPHILES and sodomite feces and semen replaced bread and wine.”

“It is a sin NOT to rejoice when God executes His wrath and vengeance upon America”….”Pray for more dead bodies floating on the fag-semen-rancid waters of New Orleans”….

“Shut up you Christ hating Jew, I wish Hitler had finished the job. You and your children had better watch your back when you get out of temple. This is not a threat but a promise.”

“Topeka is a city of whores.”

What in the world?

Phelps is not the only person in the world who feels this kind of hate. And he’s not the only person in the world who runs a cult. And he’s not the only person in the world who beats his wife and children. And he’s not the only one who is obsessed with the nether regions and ejaculations of men. He’s not the only delusional guy, or the only megalomaniac. But if he is not the one and only, he is a rare breed indeed- he who is all of the above.

As reported by Joe Taschler and Steve Fry in The Transformation of Fred Phelps, it all began in 1929, in the deepest south, the Mississippi. That Phelps family was widely respected: his dad worked in security for the railroad. Fred was only five when his mom died of cancer, and her pallbearers were the town police and judges. His neighbours and classmates recall a respected and smart kid who spent all his time studying. He was involved in all kinds of youth leadership in church, school, sports, and Junior State Guard. He won umpteen awards. He was an Eagle Scout and he played the cornet and base horn.

Intriguingly, everyone the reporters talked to said Fred had a normal southern upbringing. His father did not beat him. He was loved and cared for, and though any child would face difficulty losing a mother, millions have, without turning into a monster. Relatives and neighbours and classmates all said that whatever it was, it came from Fred himself.

In college, Fred “had a profound religious experience,” he says in his site bio. That experience was the delusion that he was plucked by God to be a rare survivor of the lake of fire. He veered direction from college into a fundie Bible seminary. The first time he made it into the news for hate was there- in 1951, Time reported that he preached zealously against the sinners who studied with him. The next year he married poor Margie, and today has 13 children, and to date, 54 grandkids. The whole damn tribe lives in a compound, right inside the Westboro Baptist Church.

Nate Phelps, one of the few escapees, said his dad’s drug abuse began when he decided to go to law school. (Nate’s first memory, he says, is watching Dad shoot the neighbour’s dog, in front of the child who loved it, for pooping in the yard.) The preacher already had work, a wife, and a bunch of kids, and yet he was insistent on reaching the top of his class. Soon he was taking speed, drinking himself into a stupor, and downing barbiturates so that he could get off the speed. Fred did graduate in the top tier of his class, but almost immediately, ethics skirmishes and suspensions began, and Fred believed “they” were trying to destroy his church. The battle against the enemies had begun full swing. His temper heated up and he became increasingly violent.

Margie tried to flee with the ten kids they had so far in the mid-60s. There wasn’t anywhere for 11 people with no resources to go to, and so they returned home. Brutality increased exponentially as Fred began teaching his wife her proper place in submission. In 1968, Fred attempted to shot himself, and failed, unfortunately. Later, he drugged himself into a coma, but upon his release from the hospital, Fred had another epiphany. He swore off drugs and alcohol and resumed his youthful interest in athletics. Later he ran triathlons, even in old age. But he did not swear off his violence. He was just getting started.

Margie couldn’t make it on her own financially, but with the cost of so many kids, legal school, and his recent expenditures on drugs and alcohol, Fred could barely feed them and sometimes didn’t. But he did send the kids out to sell candy, with kids as young as seven marching into seedy bars and strip clubs. The shifts often began at five in the morning, driving into nearby cities, and ended late at night. Many candy companies said they were scammed by the reverend who never paid for the orders. The man of God was also a con man.

Throughout his legal profession, he was constantly running into reprimands, until he was disbarred in 1977 for perjury. He lied to the courts about gathering witnesses on his behalf, when none of the names he listed had even been contacted. The whole brouhaha that initially landed him in hot water started when a court reported dared to emasculate him by failing to complete a transcript at his whim. He called her a slut on the stand, cross-examined her for days, attempted to subpoena ex-boyfriends to testify to her wantonness, and accused her of any number of depraved sex acts, which of course had everything to do with her job in the courts. Incredibly, after this spectacle, he continued practicing law in federal courts! By 1989, he was permanently disbarred for further rabblerousing, making false accusations against judges.

But it wasn’t all talk and no action- though his tongue was like a viper, his sword was sharp, too. He regularly beat his sons with a mattock (sort of like a pick axe.) Once, Nate and Mark showed up at school covered in welts and blisters and in shock, but refused to talk about it. Fred was investigated by social services, but as adults both boys said they had been threatened with death if they talked.

Fred also threatened the school staff, social services, and the individual police officers dealing with the case. He filed a lawsuit charging the school staff with beating his children! Some attendees of Westboro Baptist have reported Fred hitting babies who cry during his sermons. Though most of his kids, those who remain within the church, loyally claim they were only spanked, they freely admit to beating their own children or wives. One son Jonathan spoke about it in the Topeka paper. They have publicly taunted the police, challenging them to do anything about it, stating their God-given right to discipline their subjects.

Though Fred denies child abuse beyond his rightful role in discipline, his escapee son Nate was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and both he and Mark have medically diagnosed injuries such as damage to muscle and tissue in their thighs and butt, scarring, bone chips, and Nate has severe muscle damage to his knees. Wife Margie has bone chips and muscle damage that the sons say happened when she was thrown down the stairs. She suffered (suffers?) continual abuse, emotional and physical.

Nate recalled recently in a speech at an atheism convention that Fred cut of all of Margie’s hair. He taunted her soul in eternal damnation, for a bible verse that said women should have long hair. He told her the verse actually meant hair that had never been cut, so growing it back was to no avail. Nate also recounted how Fred would rip Margie’s arm out of its socket, refusing to allow her to seek medical treatment. When he was angry, he would re-injure that same bad arm.

The kids had to run marathons of 15 to 20 miles even when they were very young. Sometimes they were barely fed a few scraps of cabbage. The children were whipped to no end, and when one instrument ran out, a new one was introduced to the children. Fred would shout bible verses in justification for the beatings.

Few have made it out from the cult, and none have left unscathed. Nate became a methamphetamine addict, before becoming a devout Christian- not his father’s kind-before becoming an atheist. Another sister, Kathy, left before she turned 18, and Fred hunted her down, forced her home, beat her and broke her.

Mark recalled for Jon Bell in Addicted to Hate that Dad would push the kids, kick them regularly, yelling and swearing all the time. “He threw and broke anything he could get his hands on,” Mark said. He would destroy all the dishes and throw everything in the fridge against the wall in rage. His tirades of screaming and violent psychosis could last for hours on end, literal marathons of rage that should land anyone in the mental ward as dangerous.

“Goddam you, you worthless piece of shit of Goddam fucking shit… God Damn You! How dare you, you asshole bastard prick turd. You turd. You lying, mother fucking stinking piece of fucking shit. Fuck you, you lying sack of shit, you. Get the fuck out of my face. Go to hell. I hate you, you bastard. I hate you, you asshole. You Goddam prick asshole bastard, dick, piece of fucking rank stinking fucking garbage that’s as full of shit as anyone could ever be…Didn’t I tell you to not make a fucking sound? You think you’re so Goddam smart thinking for yourself, when I told you what the fuck I wanted. Keep those Goddam kids quiet or I’m going to beat the hell out of all of you, you bitch. You bastard. You bitch. Fuck you. Fuck you, God damn it…You no account little bastard. In the old testament they used to take kids like you out and stone them to death. That’s what you deserve. You ought to be taken out and stoned. At least parents in that time had some Goddam solution to a problem like you. That’s what would cure you. You’ve been nothing but Goddam grief to your mother and I since the fucking day you were born. I wish you were dead. I hate you. Jesus Christ, I hate you. I can’t stand you. I can’t stand the sight of you. You’re sniffing after some whore, for Christ’s sake. You got your dick wet and now you’ve just gone crazy sniffing after that fucking whore. You hot blooded little bastard. Keep your Goddam pants on and keep your fucking dick inside. Horse piss, bullshit, balderdash, crap, lying bastard, son of belial, reprobate. ballamite… Fuck you. Go to hell. You’re going to hell…I can see it with every hit of this Goddam mattock…”

The abuse grew even worse from here, during the amphetamine addiction. Speed can add extra fuel to rage that is already present, giving fury marathon superpowers where it might sooner run out on exhaustion. The neighbours were afraid to intervene, though they witnessed Fred’s savage anger and tight control. He intimidated them to silence.

The pharmacist later denied supplying Phelps with anything except some skin cream, and then conceded he had been filling prescriptions for “Margie.” But not speed. Downers, allergy stuff. This was the same doctor who delivered all of the Phelps kids, according to Mark. He was later arrested for trading illegal prescriptions to patients for sexual favours.

Prescriptions for speed.

Was Fred whoring his wife for amphetamines- or himself? We’ll never know. Fred won’t ever tell, and the good doctor shot himself to death in a parking lot.

And then there is another story- the mysterious life and death of 17-year-old Debbie Valgos. Fred Sr. was enraged when Fred Jr. dated a girl named Debbie whom he had met on a candy drive. Fred preferred to arrange marriages for his kids, but Fred Jr. was smitten. He brought Debbie to church, where Fred made bizarre accusations about the kind of sex acts she apparently enjoyed. The couple took off after attempting their relationship for quite some time in the church with the family blessing. But Fred Sr. spewed perversion talk nonstop. He also assaulted her physically at a roller rink, causing her to have an epileptic seizure.

Fred Jr. reportedly eloped with Debbie, but whether they actually married or just ran away together is uncertain. Either way, Phelps tracked the pair down at gunpoint and kidnapped Fred Jr. back into the church against his will, threatening death to him and his new wife. Fred ran away again at the first opportunity.

Debbie was so traumatized by what she had lived through in those few months with the Phelps, and by losing Fred, that she began attempting suicide- a total of four times, twice by jumping out a window. She hung around a military base doing heroin and speed with soldiers, until she successfully overdosed on bad drugs. What we know for sure is terrible enough, but how else might the reverend have tortured her to lead to this?

She was only 17 when she died. Fred Jr. was never the same. He loved the girl, and they’d never had a chance. “I remember getting home from school the day it appeared in the papers,” says Mark in Addicted to Hate, “and my dad came dancing down the stairs, swaying from the knees and clapping his hands, singing: ‘The whore is dead! The whore is dead!’ “He paraded around the house, singing and laughing with that maniacal giggle he has, ‘the whore is dead!’”

Years later, Debbie’s mother told the press she was certain Phelps played an active role in the death of her daughter. Then she mysteriously disappeared.

How is a delusional and violent psycho who thinks he is God, beats his children and wife, brainwashes them, and spews obscenities in the name of the lord, who disturbs funerals for soldiers and other church services, allowed to go free?

We let him get away with talking like a monster, yet condemn our teenagers for saying “shit.” Clearly, he runs an incestuous cult where members are subjected to mind control due to physical abuse, battery, emotional abuse, brainwashing, the Fred Phelps Religion programming, starved, forced into exhaustion, and sent out to earn money for the only cause he has- to let other people know he is the only Saved- that he is God. A psychopath disrupts our most solemn occasions, interferes with human rights, and spreads hate and violence through his minions, and we allow it? Who is going to step in and force these worker ants away from him, deprogram them until the whole story comes out, and free the children? Who is going to put this bastard in jail?

Fred has been arrested over and over again for assault, battery, threats, trespassing, contempt, disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer. He has avoided prison every single time, often countersuing or winning through a technicality. For example, once he avoided charges because his right to a speedy trial was infringed upon, taking place more slowly than he defined “speedy.” And in 1996, the Topeka police chief had to resign after it was found that he held a ‘no arrest’ policy for the Westboro church family. Phelps could even drive a seasoned cop into intimidation.

Note that most of Fred’s children are also trained as lawyers. One almost wonders if Fred studied law simply to verse himself in legal loopholes and procedure in order to ‘license’ himself to carry out God’s orders to abuse and vindicate and beat. It’s amazing that the old coot is not locked up for life in prison, and I pray he will be, that he will spend his twilight years, his weakest time, facing his puny worth. Let him in old age finally be punished with a few restrictions, shitty food, and the violent sodomy he has so obsessively accused everyone else of. Those will be the only hours in which I utter, praise God for AIDS.

What do you get when you mix a messiah complex-ed delusional man with religion with power with amphetamine abuse with skillful understanding of laws and loopholes with a violent madman? A Molotov cocktail named Fred Phelps.

When will we stop finding this man’s tyranny entertaining? When will the law do their job and intervene? Is it because we don’t care much about ‘fags’ either and think its funny? Or have we also fallen under the spell of a very intelligent and dangerous man who plays the jester to elude our deepest suspicions? After all, he’s not killing anybody. After all, his absurd name-calling makes his family into a laughing stock, and we turn up the news when they are on it, shaking our head at the antics of this Kansas kook.

And then we turn away.

“We basically grew up in this and we came of an age and realized this is exactly where we want to be, serving God. And so we stay, serving God. I”d rather the whole world go to hell. It’s just as fine with me. Whatever God’s will is fine by me. Soldiers dying, hurricane Katrina, this is just God’s wrath. This is an outpouring of wrath, and we love it. Mini foretaste, appetizer of what’s to come. It’s our duty to love it. Dying time is truth time. These people make an idolatrous worship out of dead (soldiers). They’re in hell already. All that person wants is to see his family again and a drop of water on his tongue. You’re going to hell. Then end.”
-two of Phelps’ granddaughters

http://natephelps.com/10801.html

If you like art, literature, madness and interesting people, you’ll love Lorette C. Luzajic’s books. Her first book is “The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos.” Her second is “Weird Monologues for a Rainy Life (Irreverent Ramblings from the End of the World.)” Her poetry and her collected blogs, musings, reviews, memoirs, notes, eulogies, requiems, interviews, profiles and more are both devastating and hilarious romps through one woman’s wild mood swings. Lorette proves that there’s life after death, even for manic-depressives. “Think Courtney Love meets Margaret Atwood,” says Donnarama, Toronto’s premiere performance artist.

Visit the author’s link at Amazon to order your copies today!

A Tremendous Blasphemy: the life of John Calvin, 1509-1564

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

Fittingly, it was Madonna who revived Christ’s teachings, 2000 years later during her Confessions concert tour, the quote emblazoned in lights above her stage.

Few churches, if any, have seemingly even heard or read the words of their King, or they have dismissed them outright. While some individual Christians have tried to adhere to Jesus’ commands of love and peace, the institutions and the men who run them have more blood on their hands then Pontius Pilate.

Indeed, we vastly understate the atrocities of both the Roman Catholic churches and the Protestant Reforms. The history of the faith’s penchant for headhunting, rape, torture, murder, and superstition should be core curriculum in all Sunday Schools and remembered from every pulpit.

I wanted to write about John Calvin, the great theologian for whom my brother is named. My entire childhood faith and family life is constructed from his interpretations of the Bible. I understood he brought remarkable reforms to the church, influencing the eventuality of the personal Bible, removing some of the power of the Pope or priest and giving it back to God, and giving priests the right to marry and uphold family life. Vaguely, I thought there was also something about abolishing slavery. I knew from the enthusiastic lessons in Sunday School that Calvin was so inspired to do the work of God that he desired no money for his work- he hungered and thirsted after righteousness, not gold. When he was sick, he did not stop his work, but was carried to the pulpit.

Eager to learn more about the Godly reformer, I read The Godly Life of John Calvin by Rev. Dr. Francis Nigel Lee. I learned how this 16th century figure preached 200 sermons a year, 200 additional Bible studies, and left us with 59 volumes of theology. Fascinated by how fearlessly Calvin spoke against the tenets of the Catholic church he disagreed with, and by his stunning humility, asking to be buried in an unmarked grave, I read on.

Oh.

I’m ashamed at how little I knew of this influential historical personage. For all of my voracious readings in psychology, feminism, theology, and history, the facts about this hate spewing mass murderer had eluded me.

Jean Cauvin was a prodigy scholar born in France to a deeply Catholic family in 1509, and his mother died a few years after his birth. His father, Gerard, was left with three sons, and he wanted all three to be priests. Jean, or John, had tremendous aptitude for academics early on, and began to study theology before he reached his teens. He began attending college by age 14, supported by an influential family friend who saw his potential. He studied Latin and philosophy, among other things. Then, at his father’s change of heart, John switched to law and studied some Greek as well. He earned the highest law degree possible.

In his late teens, he saw holes in the Roman Catholic faith and was reformed. “God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period of life,” he said.

In the early 1530s, Calvin had an opportunity to share some of his theological opinions, and a dear friend gave a speech that suggested the need for reform and renewal of the church. This friend, named Cop, was called a heretic and forced to flee Paris. Somehow, Calvin was implicated also, and went into hiding. Both ended up in Basel, where the fledgling reform movement was underway.

Calvin served as secretary for a princess, but in 1536, with all the wisdom of 27 years, he published Institutes of the Christian Religion, expressing his interpretations of Biblical doctrine and of the reform movement at large. The book had tremendous influence then, as it still does today, a bulwark of the faith. Not everyone thought so, however, and heretics were given a timeline in which to reconcile with Catholicism.

Some unrepentant Reformed, Calvin among them, fled to Strasbourg. A detour in his travel landed him in Geneva, Switzerland. A fellow reformed begged him to stay there and deliver Biblical lectures. By 1937, Calvin was officially a pastor.

Calvin distributed theological treatises that dictated how churches should be, with detailed instruction on the frequency of the Lord’s Supper, formerly ‘mass’, liturgy, marriage laws, and the reasons and need for excommunication. Over a major dispute concerning whether communion should be served with leavened or unleavened bread, Calvin was exiled from Geneva. Penniless, he traveled on, until he was taken as a minister in Strasbourg, where he attained a citizenship, expecting to stay for life. During the next several years, he wrote many more books of doctrine.

His colleagues urged him to marry, and he became engaged to the daughter of a noble family. He backed out of that arrangement to marry a widow named Idelette. All the while, he wrote, and his work garnered the attention of the council in Geneva, who realized they needed him back to continue their reforms. He felt the Lord’s call and was officially escorted into the city in a wagon.

Idelette gave birth to three children, all of who died in infancy, and she followed in 1542, leaving Calvin heartbroken. However, during this time, his treatises were increasingly influential on the Geneva church, council, and government. Though Calvin’s popularity and authority went up and down, both celebrated by reformers and contested by his adversaries, Calvin became widely recognized then and still today as the great defender of the faith. When he died in 1564, at his request he was buried in an unmarked grave. Just as Calvin had learned from the great Luther, Calvin’s friend and disciple John Knox carried his work throughout Europe and beyond: Calvinism was born.

Add or subtract some dense details on ‘reform’- the revolutionary ideas Calvin had to improve the church and demand accountability for its excesses, and that’s the story we learned in Sunday School, repeated anywhere Protestant sects proudly worship.

Except the story left out a few things: Calvin’s malicious hatred of women, his bloodthirsty violence, his vandalism, his culpability in thousands of murders, his absurd superstitions, his self-imposed holiness, and his sick obsessions. Many biographers tactfully gloss over the facts, mentioning them in an understated way, careful not to draw too much attention. Many omit them entirely, and still others, like my childhood churches, blame the atrocities on the Catholics.

Where to begin? The ocean of abomination is so vast I nearly drowned in it while researching what I thought was going to be an inspiring story about faith. Instead, I discovered a vicious dictator who wielded his authority to commit endless torture and murder.

Calvin established a theocracy in Geneva, in which he acted as dictator, wielding tremendous authority with various councils and committees. Under his instruction, said committees banished rosaries and other Catholic trinketry, exiled Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and nonbelievers, forbade dancing, card games, theatre, luxurious clothing, anything he considered to be witchcraft, and even dictated the names allowed to be given to children (no saint’s names, nothing not in the Bible.) The press was censored, and no one was allowed to speak ill or question Calvin’s doctrines. Taverns and all entertainments were forbidden. Church attendance was mandatory. Punishments for these offenses included fines, torture, exile, and death. Children who were disobedient were sometimes hung from the gallows by their armpits or feet as warnings. Some children were also executed. Sometimes the decapitated heads of those Calvin had condemned were paraded victoriously through the streets to warn others.

While apologists of Calvin state that his influence was ‘minimal,’ let’s note that Calvin himself had a law voted that anyone who questioned his reforms be executed. Those who breached his doctrine were indeed punished or condemned. Most famously was his personal friend, Servetus, who questioned the trinity. “For if he [Michael Servetus] came, as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive,” Calvin expressed. And lo and behold, Servetus was sentenced to death. Reportedly, he asked that the execution be by sword, so merciful was he, but he reportedly build the pyre himself and watched gleefully as Servetus screamed and begged God for mercy, enjoying the spectacle for several hours.

In addition to damning the living, one of Calvin’s reforms damns also their souls to eternal hellfire. The predestination theory which he espoused so fervently, and which contradicts Christ’s invitation that all may follow, declares: “God preordained…a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.”

And then there was Calvin’s favourite scripture, which he took it upon himself not only to interpret literally, but to carry out personally: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Of note is the fact that the early church condemned witch hysteria. Synod famously said, “A Christian who believes that there is a vampire in the world, that is to say, a witch, is to be anathematized; whoever lays that reputation upon a living being shall not be received into the Church until he revokes with his own voice the crime that he has committed.”

Embarrassingly, I bought the Calvinist rhetoric about the massacre hook, line and sinker: that the near genocide of women over centuries was a crime of the Roman Catholic church alone, something Protestants moved to reform. But upon delving into the issue, was horrified to discover that Calvinists were responsible for half of the numbers.

Indeed, every member of that unholy trinity of Protestant reform- Luther, Calvin, and Knox- were full advocates of the witch hunt. They believed that anyone who didn’t believe in witchcraft went directly against God’s word. Calvin believed the stories of his sick predecessors- that women made pacts with the devil, had sex with him and bore his children, and that they were shape shifters who could turn into animals. These women, and a few men, were ruled by lust for Satan and his demons. Proof of their sorcery was a bad crop, a storm, a disease, an implied adultery, a difficult birth, an easy birth, knowledge of herbal medicine, financially independent women, whores, the elderly, women with pets, those who reversed Biblical symbols, or any implication of insistence at equality with men. The last legal execution of a witch took place in 1722- an elderly woman who had cleverly managed to turn her daughter into a pony. As many as a quarter of sorcerers burned were men, many homosexuals. The Puritans took their blasphemous legacy to the New World, where the sad saga of Salem began.

The Good Book

There’s no need to diminish Calvin’s responsibility for the thousands of murders carried out at his bequest, or in his name: he was not at all ashamed and said, “The Bible teaches us that there are witches and they must be slain. This law of God is a universal law.”

Most witch burnings took place in France, Germany, and Switzerland. Countries where the Catholic Church was strongest- Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal tally very few of the victims of this gendercide. Interesting.

On a lesser scale than his thousands of murders, he publicly humiliated his brother’s wife for suspected adultery, insisting she apologize to him for making him look bad, and excommunicating her. He called menstruation a ‘foul disease’ and a ‘shameful thing.’ He abhorred the “pretend” chastity of nuns, claiming their sacrifice is “nothing before God, in comparison of that that he hath appointed, that is to say, that albeit it seem but a vile thing, and a matter of none account, for a woman to take pains about housewifery, to make clean her children when they be arrayed, to kill fleas, and other such like, although this be a thing despised, yea and such, that many will not vouchsafe to look upon it, yet are they sacrifices which GOD accepteth & receiveth, as if they were things of great price and honourable.” In this sermon, he condemned the few women who made a choice against man or children, the only choice women could make in that day to avoid their lot.

His view on wife battering was equally sick. In a letter to an abused woman who sought his advice, he wrote, “We have a special sympathy for poor women who are evilly and roughly treated by their husbands, because of the roughness and cruelty of the tyranny and captivity which is their lot. We do not find ourselves permitted by the Word of God, however, to advise a woman to leave her husband, except by force of necessity; and we do not understand this force to be operative when a husband behaves roughly and uses threats to his wife, nor even when he beats her, but when there is imminent peril to her life . We exhort her to bear with patience the cross which God has seen fit to place upon her; and meanwhile not to deviate from the duty which she has before God to please her husband, but to be faithful whatever happens.”

Though Protestants gloat over their very progressive difference over Catholics, their acceptance of contraception, Calvin himself was vehemently opposed to it. He believed that the popular withdrawal method, along with masturbation, were crimes akin to murder. A woman who protects herself from pregnancy cannot be forgiven.

“It is a horrible thing to pour out seed besides the intercourse of man and woman. Deliberately avoiding the intercourse, so that the seed drops on the ground, is doubly horrible. For this means that one quenches the hope of his family, and kills the son, which could be expected, before he is born. Moreover Onan thus has, as much as was in his power, tried to destroy a part of the human race. When a woman in some way drives away the seed out the womb, through aids, then this is rightly seen as an unforgivable crime,” Calvin explains in his Genesis commentary.

Calvin’s abject hatred of women is a tradition still celebrated, cloaked or straight up, in today’s churches. Thinking men like the Rev. William Einwechter are writing sermons today in this vein: “The task of reconstructing the family according to God’s Word will also require the church to faithfully teach what the Bible says concerning the family, and, in many cases, to alter the structure of their church and ministry (which has also been feminized) to support the family rather than to undermine it. It will require pastors and elders who respect the covenantal institution of the family, and who will stop lording it over the family and persecuting the man who seeks to de-feminize his own family. It will demand pastors and elders who are an example to the flock by de-feminizing their own homes. And it will take teachers and preachers with the courage and conviction of John Knox and John Calvin to expose the poisonous lies of feminist dogma and to declare and defend the biblical pattern for the family from the pulpit.”

He conveniently forgets to mention what the biblical pattern for family life is like- widely varied, including all kinds of incest, slave girl abuse, polygamy, concubines, and more. If he wishes to have the conviction of his heroes, the two deadly Johns, he’d better forget all of Christ’s teachings about love and tenderness and start building the pyre.

Let it also be mentioned that there is considerable speculation that the reason for Calvin’s excommunication from the Catholic church was something other than the mysterious association he had with the university friend’s speech: the crime of sodomy. Reportedly in 1551 the archives of Noyon, Calvin’s birthplace, recorded that he was condemned on that ground. He begged for clemency from death which the law demanded and received an order for exile. The records weren’t the only ones to show this long-forgotten tidbit: a rival and ‘heretic’, the Catholic Bolsec, wrote about the incident, claiming that Calvin’s alleged walk on the wild side was not a thing of the past. Bolsec claimed that in addition to throwing himself forcefully on any woman who walked by, he also engaged frequently in homosexual liaisons. To be fair, Bolsec’s words, though interesting, cannot in and of themselves be taken as proof of this possibility, for rivals often wrote about their colleagues in a defamatory way. Nonetheless, neither is that reason to completely dismiss Bolsec’s observations. Bolsec also wrote that Calvin was tedious and malicious and hung up on his own words.

Perhaps vandalism and thievery pale in comparison to the grave offense of murder. Nonetheless, I was devastated to learn that Calvin was behind the mass destruction of endless priceless art and artifacts. I don’t give a flying fuck if he thought paintings of saints were the spawn of the devil- would Christ have gone in to nunneries smashing stained glass windows, burning musical instruments and churches? (And don’t tell me it’s wrong to use the f word but it’s not wrong to destroy priceless historic artifacts, sacred objects, and lives.)

The Calvinists plundered and pillaged anywhere they saw Catholic rituals, burning statues and paintings they deemed ‘idolatry,’ desecrating pictures of even Christ with spit and worse, and destroying them. They danced around their bonfires- the deadly offense of dancing did not apply here. In Montauban, they dragged the Poor Clare nuns out into the mob and exposed them, partially naked, hurling insults and yelling at them to find a husband. That they were serving God instead of men was something these savages could not tolerate. Priests and nuns were scourged with whips. Graveyards were desecrated.

Shame on all of us.

All people capable of moral thinking will be horrified that our churches are built on the blood of witches instead of the blood of Christ. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is obvious, and not open to interpretation. That said, apologists for Calvin defend him on two key points- note that neither defense was for the man’s innocence! One, that he was not the actual hangman, and hence not responsible for the torment and murder, even though he ordered many of them. Two, that we have to understand the larger historical context. Point A is utter rubbish: far too transparent to flatter with a retort.

Point number two does deserve some consideration, because yes, we must look at historical context of any situation. That does not, however, alter absolute morality. Yes, witches were burned left and right, and bloodthirsty chaos ruled all of Europe. One could say death was in vogue, and the whole of Europe was a sordid cesspool, an absolute bloodbath. But does collective guilt exonerate an individual of personal culpability? Considering Protestant Christianity’s debt in doctrine to Calvin, it’s too easy to ignore or reject his thirst for blood as a sign of the times.

Bullshit. The obvious sorrow here is that no church leader has ever actually been sent by God, but that the flocks, still fighting one another, and still fighting against other religions, have all been deluded by the deception of those who run our churches, complicit in covering up these crimes of history.

“Everybody’s doing it” isn’t going to fly here. Today the church is still obsessed with demonic abominations- such horrific offenses as a man loving a man, or a woman expecting equal air time at the pulpit. Far lesser sins do not qualify for the ‘everyone else is’ get- out- of -jail -free card. Everybody’s cheating on his wife. Everybody’s taking drugs. Everybody’s stealing from work. Everybody’s experimenting with orgies. I doubt the preacher would accept this statement from a parishioner, but yet he excuses the bloody legacy of John Calvin on the same ground.

It was a capital crime to dance or to masturbate under John Calvin’s veritable autocracy. Birth control was unpardonable. Yet the harrowing crimes he committed go uncontested, and he is heralded as a great leader and a godly man who lived his life for the Lord alone. Perhaps if he had repented of his sins, we could at least deem him human instead of demon. But he gloated gleefully over the torture and murder of people guilty of absolutely nothing.

John Calvin said himself, “There is little difference between manslaughter and the conduct of one who is not concerned about relief for another person in distress.” Let him be judged by God according to his own words.

Two thousand years ago there was a man who spoke for the poor, the sick, the lonely, the whores, the children, the duped, the frightened, the hopeless. He spoke against judgement, lying, violence, abuse, war, greed, power, torture, hypocrisy, corruption, and murder.

He said “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” No one was listening.

Lorette C. Luzajic writes about people, food, spices, pets, poetry and much more, but her favourite task of all is writing about interesting people. Visit her spin-off column, Fascinating Writers, at Bookslut.com.

Please order her amazing poetry collection, The Astronaut’s Wife.

Available at:

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