Long Religionmay Poems

The Westboro Baptist Church

The Westboro Baptist Church

By Elton Camp

(A note of explanation:  This is written of a church that 
makes a practice of picketing funerals of soldiers and 
gay people.  It is meant as a rebuke to the group (especially 
to its “pastor”) and as a call for basic human decency when 
one opposes practices held to be wrong.)

The way a church he could begin
Was to fill it mainly with his kin.
On the conscience of most it’d grate
To support a group so filled with hate.

Divine wisdom recorded from above 
Says true worshipers must show love.
If one follows the Prince of Peace,
Only then may the gospel increase.

If part of what he says could be true,
The way he acts is not the way to do.
From every type sin one may repent.
He says for gays, that is not meant.

That once they get out of line,
They’re condemned for all time.
And he just delights to tell
How they’ll writhe in hell.

Belief in such a hell is a bunch of rot,
But it sure seems about all he has got.
He never thinks it would be cruelty dire
To burn a sinner forever in such a fire.

The pastor paints God as a fiend
One who toward torture is leaned.
He will have to account some day
For all the vile things he does say.

It should be his main job to persuade.
That’s the way new converts are made.
“Teach them to observe what I command
If before me you have any hope to stand.”

To make it known that of a death he’s glad
To any standard of decency seems very bad.
What does he think gives him any right.
To picket a funeral and scream in spite?

And when the pastor finally passes away,
Would he want his family treated that way?
The words of Jesus are certainly true:
“Do to others as you want done to you.”