I denna uppsats fördjupar jag mig i hur Westboro Baptist Church ser på människan och hur rörelsen övertygar omvärlden hur en människan ska leva. Uppsatsen är byggd på öppna brev ifrån Westboro Baptist Church som de har publicerat på deras hemsida. Breven behandlar vad Westboro Baptist Church anser vara mänsklighetens syndfulla levnadssätt och ger reprimander mot såväl stora som små aktörer i samhällets kretsar. Målet med uppsatsen är att ge förståelse för hur Westboro Baptist Church kan med hjälp av retoriken knyta samman sin gemenskap, och överleva när hela världen står emot dem. Genom Bergers teori om nomos och den klassiska retorikens tre grundpelare ämnar uppsatsen ge en bild av hur rörelser kan med hjälp av retorikkonsten hålla en rörelse levande trots att de står ensamma mot världen. / In this exam paper I seek a deeper understanding of how the Westboro Baptist Church views human life and how the Westboro Baptist Church tries to convince the world through their rhetoric. The paper is based on open letters by the church which have been published on their website. In the letters Westboro Baptist Church write about, what they think, are the most sinful parts of a human’s life, and they give guidelines as to how people should correct their habits and live a good Christian life. These letters of correction are sent out to people in the social arena, both big and small. The goal of the paper is to give a deeper understanding of how Westboro Baptist Church can keep their congregation alive through its rhetoric, and survive when the whole world is against them. With the help of Peter Berger’s theory of nomos and the three basic focal points of classical rhetorical analysis, this exam aims to give a better picture of how a closely knit group can remain functional when the whole world hates them.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Lisa Melander / This study examines the lived experiences of the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a small church based in Topeka, KS and known for engaging in extensive protesting, from the perspective of stigmatization and the subcultural identity theory of religious persistence. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the congregation, exploring issues of how they perceive themselves to exist in relation to broader American society. A qualitative analysis of the interviews revealed three main themes: religion as a guiding framework, members’ relationships with others, and stigma and stigma management. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church see the world through a core Biblical framework of understanding that influences both how they relate to and disengage from interactions with others and the ways in which they negotiate stigma in these interactions. This research contributes to the body of research on stigma and stigma management as well as adds theoretically to the subcultural identity theory of religion.

The social control of protest can be carried out by a number of agents; among them are the police, legislators, organized countermovements, and the news media. This research examines how the tactics and strategies of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) have been shaped and maintained through both internal and external elements of social control. In addition to data obtained through field observations of WBC pickets at the funerals of military personnel who have died in the ensuing military campaign in Iraq, this research utilizes individual and peer group interviews with three generations of WBC members, in addition to a number of WBC internal documents and artifacts. The data provide a background on the WBC as a church, its culture, and the various mechanisms of internal social control that have guided them through upwards of 20,000 street pickets over the last eighteen years. Further, I examine the Westboro Baptists' utilization and perceptions of the role of the police in their "love crusades," as well as the protest policing strategy of Negotiated Management and their uniform utilization of it. This research adds to our current understanding of the relationship between mobilization and social control, specifically the function of narrative as a form of internal social control that facilitates the development of collective identity and culture, intergenerational movement socialization, and shifts in tactics and framing strategies utilized by mobilized collectives. Moreover, this research contributes to our understanding of the impact of ideology and access to legal resources in determining group responses to attempts at the external social control of their mobilization.

Using participant observation, in-depth interviews, and legislative histories, we examine Westboro Baptist Church, a religious group infamous for homophobic rhetoric and funeral protests. Employing cultural and interactionist perspectives that focus on the semiotics of death, the sacred, and desecration, we outline how Westboro’s activities purposively violate deeply held signifiers of moral order through language, while simultaneously respecting extant laws of behavior. This strategy, in conjunction with the political profitability of opposing the group, explains why the group’s activism triggered extensive legal disputes and modifications at multiple levels of governance. Westboro’s actions and use of symbols—and those of others against the group—lay bare multiple threads in the sacred cultural fabric of American society.