22 Facts About Nathan Phelps

Nathan Phelps was born on November 22,1958 and is an American-born Canadian author, LGBT rights activist, and public speaker on the topics of religion and child abuse.

Nathan Phelps is the sixth-born of the 13 children of Fred Phelps, from whom he had been estranged since his 18th birthday in 1976 until his father's death in 2014.

Nathan Phelps was born in Topeka, Kansas on November 22,1958, to Fred and Margie Nathan Phelps.

Nathan Phelps describes his father as "deeply prejudiced", violent, and abusive, and gives accounts of receiving extended beatings with a leather strap and later with a mattock handle.

In great fear of having his escape interrupted by his abusive father, Nathan Phelps made a clandestine nighttime getaway in an old car he had bought specifically for this purpose, with little plan or preparation beyond this.

Nathan Phelps slept the first night in the men's room of a nearby gas station.

Nathan Phelps left WBC prior to the start of the Church's high-profile picketing activities, and has attributed the onset of Church picketing to his father's exclusion from the legal profession.

Nathan Phelps has been criticized by members of his family still active in the Westboro Baptist Church.

Nathan Phelps has responded to this position arguing that WBC's position was derived by his father from bona fide Biblical text and has written on the wider subject of mainstream Christianity's rejection of extremists.

Three years after leaving, Nathan Phelps contacted his family, and for a brief period left Mark and the firm to stay with them.

Nathan Phelps's father had offered to fund him through law school, a path which took 11 of his siblings into careers as lawyers, but which Phelps declined.

Nathan Phelps then left again, this time for good, permanently breaking contact with his father.

Nathan Phelps understood how one could feel persecuted and sincerely surprised when other people react quite strongly against ideas of what "the truth" was as he saw it:.

Nathan Phelps later moved to rural British Columbia, Canada, and currently lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Nathan Phelps is the executive director of the Centre for Inquiry Calgary, a secular organization that educates and advocates reason and science.

Nathan Phelps serves on the board of directors of Recovering from Religion, which offers education and practical support for people leaving religious communities.

Nathan Phelps is an active public speaker and appears at events designed to promote the ideas of atheism, skepticism, and secularism.

Nathan Phelps has spoken at numerous Gay Pride events and describes himself as an "LGBT activist".

Nathan Phelps is known for his criticism of the Westboro Baptist Church through literature, interviews, public speaking at atheist conventions, and his website.

Nathan Phelps' father died of natural causes shortly before midnight on March 19,2014.

The Recovering from Religion organization released a statement on behalf of Nathan Phelps, who is on their board of directors, about his father's death.

Nathan Phelps is currently an Emeritus Board Member of Recovering From Religion and executive director for the Center For Inquiry in Calgary.