Having participated in interviews with the Westboro Baptist Church last summer, I am familiar with the type of rhetoric used by the church. As such, I don’t believe that I will have trouble managing my feelings or responsive while on site. Even though I don’t believe in the values of the church, such as their feelings on LGBTQ+ rights, I am willing to listen and consider their perspective on the issue. I believe that there is something valuable in listening to those with which we disagree.<\/p>\n
Additionally, I am looking forward to interacting with church members on a more personal basis, as we were able to accomplish last summer. For instance, I had a personal connection with one member of the church, Jonathan Phelps. Jonathan shared a moving story with me about a young girl whom he helped to defend in juvenile court. This girl inspired strong feelings in Jonathan, to the point where he was tearing up. It was a special moment to witness this man feel such a connection to a girl outside of his church community, though the stated values of the church may discourage this type of interaction.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, I am excited to learn more about the church members through interviews, especially considering that I am creating my own research project for our visit this summer. I hope to learn more about the interactions between church members and their young children, looking at how children grow and learn within the church. While I understand that this line of research may be greeted with scrutiny or even hostility, especially considering the touchy subject of children leaving the church, I am interested in seeing the type of responses that church members are willing to share with me. Overall, I am very excited to be going back and having the opportunity to work with these individuals again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having participated in interviews with the Westboro Baptist Church last summer, I am familiar with the type of rhetoric used by the church. As such, I don’t believe that I will have trouble managing my feelings or responsive while on site. Even though I don’t believe in the values of the church, such as their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/critical-distance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/critical-distance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/critical-distance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/critical-distance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/critical-distance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/critical-distance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/critical-distance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/critical-distance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/critical-distance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}