Atheist Nate Phelps on his father: I mourn ‘the man he could have been’

c. 2014 Religion News Service

(RNS) Nathan Phelps, the estranged atheist son of anti-gay Kansas pastor Fred Phelps who died Wednesday (March 19), is asking people to look beyond his father’s legacy of hate.

“I ask this of everyone,” the younger Phelps said in a statement issued Thursday about his father’s death at age 84. “Let his death mean something. Let every mention of his name and of his church be a constant reminder of the tremendous good we are all capable of doing in our communities.”