Dear Sir or Madam,
My name is Stoyan, and I am a reporter from The Christian Post in New York. I wanted to reach out to you and see if anyone would like to send me some comments about the Today Show interview with Libby Phelps Alvarez, who says she is a former member of Westboro. Some of the things she says is that Westboro were praying for people to die and brainwashing their members – so any kind of response you could give me on that would be quite helpful. My deadline for this article is at around 2 PM EST. today: http://todaynews.today.com/_news/2013/02/06/16866995-former-westboro-baptist-member-we-prayed-for-people-to-die?lite
Thank you very much – I can gladly send you a link to the finished piece when it is up on our website.
Stoyan Zaimov, Reporter, The Christian Post
Hi Stoyan (cool name, btw) –
Westboro Baptist Church is a church of the Lord Jesus Christ – quite possibly the only one on earth in these last, dark days – and as such, the members are knit together by a shared fear and love of the Lord. That is the basis for our love and affection for each other. Libby, and others, have decided that they don’t love and fear the Lord, and are interested in serving themselves, rather than serving the Lord and ministering unto His people. This is a simple proposition: her parents did their duty to Libby – they raised her in the nurture and admonition of the Lord – they taught her a Bible standard. But the heart business is God’s business – if He doesn’t give you a heart to fear and love Him, then you simply won’t want to be around the people of WBC once you are a grown person. This is the verse that applies – and as a journalist writing for the Christian Post, I would hope that you’d have the integrity to include this in your story as the church’s response (in part) to her leaving:
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” -1John 2:19
That verse means that Libby HAD to leave, to manifest (show) that she doesn’t believe these things that we believe – the Words of God.
Moses, when he came to years, chose to suffer affliction with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Libby has decided to do the opposite of Moses.
As far as praying for people to die – Libby has no understanding of spiritual things – she is a woman of the world and, as such, she is ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word. The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is chock full of a type of prayer known as imprecatory – which means that people of God ask him to avenge them on their, or His, enemies. David, a man after the Lord’s heart, did this with regularity, as can be seen in Psalm 58:
1 Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? 2 Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. 3 The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. 4 Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; 5 Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. 6 ¶ Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD. 7 Let them melt away as waters which run continually: when he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces. 8 As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun. 9 Before your pots can feel the thorns, he shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in his wrath. 10 The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. 11 So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth.
Brainwashing? Sometimes your mind is so filthy, it could use a good washing. 
The Bible deals with this concept squarely:
If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. – Eph. 4:21-24
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. – Romans 12:2
And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. – Eph. 6:4 (which means you teach them God’s standard – all day, all night).
Thanks and best,
Westboro Baptist Church