EXCLUSIVE: 'They see death as a judgment from God': Westboro founder Fred Phelps' son reveals the truth about his father's excommunication - and how the hate group Phelps founded is destined to fail

Fred Phelps' estranged son Nate calls his father a 'sociopath' and 'narcissist' in an exclusive interview just hours before church founder's death

He claims his father was addicted to speed and prescription drugs and filled with rage

He says Fred - who died last night in Kansas aged 84 - believed America was 'damned'

Westboro Baptist Church is doomed to failure and nearing the 'tipping point' as members flee, Nate claims



Nate had not seen his father since leaving the church 37 years ago - and tells of his shocking and abusive childhood



Today, Nate is a vocal atheist, champion of LGBT rights and campaigner against ALL extreme religion



The founder of notorious hate group, the Westboro Baptist Church was excommunicated on his deathbed because church members view his death as proof that the man who led them for six decades is NOT one of God’s chosen.

Now, according to Rev Fred Phelps Sr’s estranged son Nate, the patriarch of ‘the most hated family in America,’ has become the ultimate victim of the merciless God he espoused.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline in an explosive interview just hours before his father died last night aged 84 , in a hospice in Topeka, Kanas, Nate Phelps, 55 - who left the extreme sect 37 years ago - branded his father a ‘sociopath and narcissist'.

A man filled with rage and battling addictions, his son reveals, Fred Phelps convinced his followers that God’s ‘elect’ would go to heaven without dying.

Scroll down for video



Excommunicated: Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, who has died aged 84, was struck off from the church on his deathbed - because church members view death as proof you are not one of God's chosen people

Speaking out: In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, Nate Phelps - who fled Westboro Baptist Church 37 years ago - said: ¿From the beginning this was all about my father¿s rage'

Family affair: Margie Phelps, the daughter of Fred Phelps, holds a protest sign during the Westboro Baptist Church visit to the New York area on September 25th 2009

Responding to his father's death Nate told MailOnline today: 'My father is now the past. The future is for the living. 'And though he believes the church will ultimately doomed he admitted: 'My father's ideas did not die with him so the struggle for justice and equality continues.'



In a shocking insight into the violent workings of the church, Nate has described the dwindling sect as, ‘more isolated and extreme,’ than ever as remaining members desperately shore up their unraveling group.

He has admitted that he feared his abusive father to the end. And he has revealed that the pastor made infamous for picketing American soldiers’ funerals, brandishing ‘Thank God for Dead Soldiers’ and ‘God Hates Fags’ placards, will himself be buried or cremated without ceremony.

He explained: ‘They see death as a judgment from God so why would you celebrate or mark that?

‘All along he has played this line that he was special, that he was going to go to heaven without dying and that death is a judgment from God that shows you are not one of His elect.

‘They excommunicated him and they elected a board of eight, male, elders.’

According to Nate, ‘When he got kicked out of the church building they moved him into another home and he stopped eating and drinking.’

Two of Nate’s nieces who recently ‘got out’ of the sect managed to visit their grandfather in the hospice Nate said they described him as ‘in and out of lucidity’ and ‘very weak.’

He added: ‘The family found out that they had got in and they slammed the door, so nobody else could see him.’

Today the church, such as it is, has 20 or so members drawn from the Phelps family and two others.

They worship each Sunday and they spend much of the rest of their time picketing and protesting all over the country.

The younger members parody pop songs – most recently they wrote their own version of Lordes’s hit ‘Royals,’ replacing her lyrics about gold teeth, grey goose and tripping in the bathroom, with their own anticipating the return of a vengeful Christ.

They are virulently anti-Gay. According to Nate his father believed that, with the advance of gay rights God ‘took his hand off America.’



He explained: ‘To him America was damned and everything bad that happens now is the mark of that, it’s God’s judgment. It’s a weak argument I know but that’s what he believed.’

This is the man who responded to the brutal hate killing of Matthew Shephard – the young Wyoming man tortured and killed in 1998 because he was homosexual – by picketing his funeral. Church members carry ‘Matt in Hell’ placards to this day.

It is a practice that cemented the group’s infamy and the family’s reputation as the ‘most hated family in America’ – a label that, Nate said, is ‘fair.’

No ceremony: Nate Phelps reveals his father Fred Phelps -pictured here with members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Washington D.C. in December 1998 - will have no funeral service. He said: 'They see death as a judgment from God so why would you celebrate or mark that?'

He said: ‘From the beginning this was all about my father’s rage. I don’t know where it came from but first came his rage, then there was religion and he combined the two.

‘We grew up hearing stories, not much but some, about his past. His mother past when he was five years old, some have speculated that was part of it. I don’t know.

‘I do know that people in his home town of Meridian, Mississippi who had known him said that Fred liked to annoy people and piss them off and then watch them clinically, observer their response like he was looking at an ant farm. I think that’s kind of telling.



‘I’m not a psychologist but as far as I’ve read he has the characteristics of a sociopath and of narcissistic personality disorder.’

'As far as I've read, my father had the characteristics of a sociopath and a narcissistic personality disorder' Nate Phelps

Nate was the sixth of Fred and Margie Phelps’s 13 children. His was a childhood of violent physical and mental abuse.

By the age of six he could rattle off all 66 books of the bible in 19 seconds – knowledge that was drummed into him under fear of damnation and hammered home with his father’s fists.

When he was older – about eight or nine - his father took to beating him and his siblings with a mattock handle.

He said: ‘It’s a farming tool, with an axe head on one end and a hoe on the other and a handle about 13 inches in diameter and a bit bigger than a baseball bat. He used to swing that thing like a baseball bat and then he would stop to catch his breath and he’d tell you how wicked you were in your heart, and the skin would swell and he’d start hitting again and it would break and bleed.’

Phelps was a man who prescribed to the view that it was ‘God’s will’ that a man should discipline his wife and children physically.

Nate recalled one horrific occasion when, returning from school, he saw his mother sitting on the porch wearing a cloth cap and weeping as his older brother, Mark, tried to comfort her.

Hated: Nate Phelps says that to his father Fred Phelps: 'America was damned and everything bad that happens now is the mark of that, it¿s God¿s judgment. It's a weak argument I know but that's what he believed'

Terror at home: Nate Phelps says He recalled: 'Once I was old enough to understand it, my life consisted of trying to make joyful moments but always knowing that I was going to pay the price for it'

Raising his own family: Nate Phelps has three biological children of his own - from left: Hunter, Hayley and Tyler Family affair: Nate Phelps, his girlfriend Cindi and her granddaughter smile for the camera 'Sociopath and narcissist': Nate Phelps has told how he was forced to was forced to flee his father and the church the former lawyer and civil rights attorney had founded

'Sociopath and narcissist': Nate Phelps has told how he was forced to was forced to flee his father and the church the former lawyer and civil rights attorney had founded

He said: ‘She took the cap off and her hair had all been shorn, in some patches it was just gone altogether. He had done that to her. And I remember thinking about the passage in the bible where it says that a woman should keep her hair long and I knew that he had done that to show that he had power not only over her physically but over her salvation.’

The household, the religion, that Nate described was one filled with anger, fear and violence.

He recalled: ‘Once I was old enough to understand it, my life consisted of trying to make joyful moments but always knowing that I was going to pay the price for it.

‘As soon as I got out of those painful moments there was elation and a determination to enjoy the hell out of life until that payment comes again. Then you’re stuck in that cycle.

‘In the midst of the good stuff you’re waiting for the bullet to hit you in the back of the neck. That’s how it was for years – always waiting for the bad to come and it coloured the good.’

Phelps founded his church in 1955. He was a lawyer by education and a successful civil rights attorney at first – though according to Nate he was motivated purely by money and a love of winning and never a belief in the cause.

But in 1979 he was disbarred from the Kansas Supreme Court and in 1989 lost his license to practice law in Federal courts too.

Nate said: ‘The first time he was suspended on an ethics violation of some sort the second time he got into a fight with the court reporter and he wouldn’t let it go. Somewhere in that he got disbarred from the State court.

‘My father was so ligitious. He was like a pit bull. He would never back down. He filed a brief that basically said that all the judges had a vendetta against the Phelps name and that turned into him relinquishing his license and two of my siblings who were also lawyers being publicly censured.’

Addict: Nate Phelps revealed: 'My father had a very addictive personality. He got hooked on speed. He got hooked on prescription medication'

Sister: Nate's sister Shirley Phelps-Roper - pictured in December 2010 - now acts as the Wesboro Baptist church's spokeswoman

According to Nate, his father’s anger over his perceived victimization professionally manifested violently in Phelp’s increasingly bizarre behavior in the home.

He said: ‘He would get into a mood when suddenly anything you did would lead to violence. And he was all the time trying new stuff – new diets, new foods, dealing with his own “stuff” I guess.’

Nate has spent much of his adult life trying to make sense of his father, his own reaction to him and the damage done by all that has gone before.

He said: ‘My father had a very addictive personality. He got hooked on speed. He got hooked on prescription medication.



‘We knew it, from the time I was old enough to understand the world, things were always on tenterhooks in the house.

'My father had a very addictive personality. He got hooked on speed. He got hooked on prescription medication ' Nate Phelps

‘We’d get up in the morning and we’d have to be real quiet. Rather than having us go out the door my mom would roll up a window and we had to climb out the window so there wasn’t any danger of a door slamming because he was upstairs in some drug induced state and he would just fly off the handle if something roused him.’

Nate’s sister Shirely Phelps-Ropert who, until recently, was seen as a potential successor to her father and church spokesperson has dismissed these allegations as ‘fantasy.’

But Nate insisted, ‘I witnessed it. He kicked it but he went from that to other addictions or obsessions. He read diet books and he announced we would be chugging down two raw eggs at every meal.

‘I remember one day coming home and there’s a pile of Brewers’ yeast tablets and a pile of bonemeal tablets and half a head of steamed cabbage on a plate and a cup with two raw eggs in it and that was our meal.

‘Thankfully he read a book saying eggs weren’t good for you. Then we started the running. I was 11 when that started. Suddenly he’s got 10, 11, 12 years olds out running ten miles a night.’

Anger: Shirley Phelps-Roger, seen in February 2014, is one of Fred and Margie Phelps' 13 children

Supporter: Shirley Phelps- Roger stands with placards during when Westboro Baptist Church came to Manhattan to picket on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 in September 2011

It is hard to comprehend how such treatment passed unchecked by authorities. The Phelps children attended public school locally but were so brow-beaten and so profoundly convinced of the truth of their father’s theology that they never once spoke up.

On the only occasion where authorities did step in, in January 1971, Nate recalled, the system ‘failed us completely.’

He and his younger brother John had been badly beaten after bringing home their report cards.

They had refused to get changed for gym and when teachers pressed the issue the police ended up being called.

Nate said: ‘They took photos of the bruises and cuts all down our sides and they filed charges. Then they sent us home with no attempt to make sure we were safe. Of course we were beaten for letting it happen.

‘They appointed us an attorney but my father coached us what to say with threats of violence and he was in the room when we were interviews.’

Charges were ultimately dropped.

‘You have to understand,’ Nate said. ‘He didn’t need to stop us from coming in contact with other ideas. He had such control with the tools that he had, the rhetoric and the violence, that we saw everything through the filter of how it meant we stood with God. He sent us out into the world fully armored. ‘

Nate left long before the picketing began but, today, when he sees the children of his siblings out waving placards and spouting hate-filled rants, Nate knows that, had he ever been in the same position, he would have done the same.

Nate’s own escape was inspired, in part, by his older brother Mark’s defection. Nate was 16 when Mark left following his girlfriend’s ultimatum. She had witnessed Phelps beating one of his daughters and told Mark that she would not stay and raise children in that environment.

Nate said: ‘When he left I realized it was an option.’

Hitting back: Nate Phelps admitted his upbringing had left him turning to drink and drugs - and his own addictions led to the breakdown of his 23-year marriage to wife Tammy

Girlfriend: Nate Phelps is now happily dating girlfriend Cindi and living in Canada

He planned his escape meticulously. He bought an old car for $300 and hid it until the night of his 18th birthday. When the household was asleep he backed the car into the drive, loaded it with his stuff, waited for the clock to strike midnight and fled.

He spent the next three nights sleeping on the floor in a gas station bathroom before a friend’s mother took him in until he got himself sorted.

In the movies that escape would be Nate’s happy end. In reality it was the beginning of years of doubt and guilt.

He said: ‘You see hun, I left truly believing that I was going to go to hell for doing so. But that, to me, was better than staying. That gives you some sense of the ugliness of the idea of staying to me.

‘I truly thought I could not survive any longer in that place.’

‘When I think of it, I’m still that 18 year old who was scared to death of him and nothing has intervened to require me to feel differently in my adult life '

Nate Phelps

Nate was cut off entirely from his family who remained in the church. He and brother Mark moved to South California and set up a printing firm.



Nate married Tammy in 1986 and raised her daughter, then three, as his own as well as going on to have a son, Tyler, now 26, and twins, now 24, together.

Becoming a father himself played a huge part in Nate reassessing his own father’s behavior – and the role that he felt he played in it.

He explained: ‘I felt, how is it possible for me to feel the way I feel toward these little humans? What the hell was he doing? What was wrong in that equation?

‘I used to think it was me – that was the way I was raised. But not I’ve come to accept that the adults were the most responsible in that situation.’

Whenever anybody asked Nate if he was affected by his past he used to tell them, no, everything was fine.

But now, he admits, that just wasn’t true. He struggled with drugs and alcohol. He struggled with guilt and he struggled with faith.

Hatred: Members of the Westboro Baptist Church hold anti-gay signs at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Veterans Day, November 11, 2010

No hate: Nate Phelps - speaking at the Imagine No Religion conference in Kamloops British Columbia, in May 2011, told MailOnline: 'I went through a process of mourning for my father as part of my counseling'

It played a part in the end of his 23 year marriage, he said.



Today he has built a new life for himself in Calgary, Canada. His move to California had been motivated by a desire to distance himself from his family. His move to Canada was in pursuit of a romance that ultimately ended after six years.



Now he is engaged to fiancée Cindi, 45. He works at a transport company and is Executive Director of the Canada Centre for Inquiry, an atheist, humanist organization. After years of searching and years in more mainstream Christian religions he concluded he doesn’t believe in any divine power.

He said ‘It was a big leap for me to come out as atheist. I’ve gone from the most hated family in America to the category of the least trusted – atheism is a four letter work in America.’

But this is a life that works for Nate. It has taken him two decades but, he said, ‘I’ve finally found a way to live.’

Picket: Fred Phelps responded to the brutal hate killing of Matthew Shephard - the young Wyoming man tortured and killed in 1998 because he was homosexual - by picketing his funeral. Church members carry 'Matt in Hell' placards to this day. He's pictured here protesting homosexuality outside the Albany County Courthouse in Wyoming in April 1999, where one of the defendants in the murder case was set to stand trial

It is why his reaction to news of his father’s illness and subsequent death has rocked him so profoundly.

He had not, he admitted, expected to feel anything at all: ‘I went through a process of mourning as part of my counseling.



‘I guess I deluded myself. I don’t even know what this emotion is, sadness? I’m puzzled. I thought I had let go of all that.

‘I have equated it in the past to a sadness at the loss of an idea, of what might have been but maybe it’s more visceral than that.

‘When I think of it, I’m still that 18 year old who was scared to death of him and nothing has intervened to require me to feel differently in my adult life.’

One of Nate’s fantasies, he admitted, was that his father would die first and his mother welcome her ‘wayward’ children back with loving arms.

Apology: Nate Phelps admitted if he had seen his father one more time before his death: 'I would probably apolgise for the part I played in it all. It takes two you know¿

If he had seen him again, Nate said ‘I would probably apolgise for the part I played in it all. It takes two you know.’

And he admitted it would have changed everything if his father had apologized to him.

The truth, according to Nate, is that Westboro Baptist Church will not and cannot survive.



He said: ‘More members have left, three in recent weeks. There will be a tipping point where they cannot lose any more of their children.