Why Are My Winters So Long?: A Visit to Westboro
A minute before noon on a Sunday in early July 2011, a stocky, sweaty Chinese man sprints down 12th Street in Topeka, Kansas. The day is cloudless and hellishly hot. The weatherman warned the mercury would rise close to 100 by mid-afternoon. Add the oppressive blanket of humidity that often smothers the American Midwest in summertime and it seems closer to 120.
Jack Wu, a Taiwan-born computer scientist, passes a brick wall topped with a parade of American flags hung upside down. Bible in hand, he rounds a corner, passing a sign that reads “FAGS DOOM NATIONS,” and disappears behind a small door. Jack is late for church.
Inside, he plops himself into the next-to-last pew on the left side of Westboro Baptist Church’s sanctuary, and catches his breath as the service begins with a hymn written in 1779 by English theologian John Newton. Given the heat outside, the words of the fourth stanza seem particularly out of place: “Dear Lord, if indeed I am Thine, if Thou are my sun and my song,” the congregation sings, “Say, why do I languish and pine? And why are my winters so long?”
As I watch Wu sing and pray—the only non-white face in a room full of Midwesterners—a different question pops into my mind: what in the world is this guy doing here?
