title: Kazuchika Okada

text: On January 20, 2011, Okada turned into a fan favorite as he made his second appearance on "Impact!", when he was revealed as the camera man whom Samoa Joe had hired to follow D'Angelo Dinero in order to expose his lies about helping the needy. During the appearance, Okada debuted a new look inspired by Kato from "The Green Hornet" series. Okada, now renamed Okato, made his first TNA pay-per-view appearance at Against All Odds on February 13, preventing Dinero from leaving the ring during his match with Joe. After losing the match, Dinero attacked both Okato and Joe. Okato made his "Impact!" in-ring debut on March 24, when he defeated Dinero via disqualification. The match concluded Okato's participation in the feud between Joe and Dinero and he subsequently returned to performing under his real surname. On the June 21 "Xplosion", Okada was defeated by Alex Shelley in the first round of the Xplosion Championship Challenge. On October 13, his profile was removed from TNA's roster page.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: TNA's handling of Okada was reportedly one of the reasons NJPW ceased the relationship between the two promotions shortly afterwards. Despite not being used by TNA, Okada has stated that he felt that his time in the promotion was beneficial to him as he learned he needed more than just a good match"—"he needed a character. According to Okada, in Japanese professional wrestling "there is no character – it's fight, fight, fight", but TNA's agents kept telling him that he needed a character, which led to him creating the "Rainmaker" persona upon his return to NJPW. In October 2017, it was reported that while representatives of the American promotion, now known as Impact Wrestling, were visiting Japan, attempting to revive the relationship between their company and NJPW, they specifically apologized to Okada for his treatment.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: On December 14, 2010, NJPW announced that Okada would be returning to the promotion on January 4, 2011, at Wrestle Kingdom V in Tokyo Dome, where he would team with Hirooki Goto against Noah representatives Takashi Sugiura and Yoshihiro Takayama. On December 23, he made a surprise return to the promotion, performing a German suplex on Takayama, after a match where he and Minoru Suzuki had defeated Yuji Nagata and Wataru Inoue. At Wrestle Kingdom V in Tokyo Dome, Takayama pinned Okada to win the match. After the event, Okada returned to the United States and TNA. Okada returned to NJPW during the NJPW Invasion Tour 2011 (NJPW's first tour of the United States) on May 13 in Rahway, New Jersey, but was defeated by MVP in the first round of a tournament to determine the inaugural IWGP Intercontinental Champion. At the following day's event in New York City, Okada teamed with Ryusuke Taguchi and Togi Makabe in a six-man tag team match, where they were defeated by Davey Richards, Homicide and Rhino. On May 15, during the final day of the tour in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Okada teamed with Charlie Haas, Josh Daniels and Tiger Mask in an eight-man tag team match, where they were defeated by Chaos (Shinsuke Nakamura, Gedo, Jado and Yujiro Takahashi). On December 9, 2011, NJPW announced that Okada, having gained of muscle to increase his overall weight from to , would be returning to the promotion on January 4, 2012, at Wrestle Kingdom VI in Tokyo Dome, where he would face Yoshi-Hashi, also making his return after a learning excursion to Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL).


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: On January 4, 2012, Okada defeated Yoshi-Hashi in his return match and then challenged Hiroshi Tanahashi to a match for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship following the show's main event. At the following day's press conference, where the title match was made official, Okada revealed that he had joined Chaos, NJPW's top villainous stable, enlisting new stablemate Gedo as his manager and spokesperson. Adopting the new villainous persona of "Rainmaker", Okada changed the Japanese writing of his ring name from "岡田かずちか" to "オカダ・カズチカ". Okada described his new persona as a combination of the three professional wrestling styles he had learned, stating that he took his dropkick from Mexico, his "fighting spirit" from Japan and the "TV and the entertainment" from the United States.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: In the month leading to the title match, Okada went on a main event win streak, which included pinning Tanahashi in a tag team match on January 29. On February 12 at The New Beginning, Okada defeated Tanahashi to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for the first time. Okada made his first title defense on March 4, defeating Tetsuya Naito in the main event of NJPW's 40th anniversary event. On May 3 at Wrestling Dontaku 2012, Okada defeated 2012 New Japan Cup winner and reigning IWGP Intercontinental Champion Hirooki Goto to make his second successful title defense. On June 16 at Dominion 6.16, Okada lost the IWGP Heavyweight Championship back to Hiroshi Tanahashi, ending his reign at 125 days.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: On August 1, Okada entered his first G1 Climax tournament. In the tournament, Okada wrestled in the same block as Chaos leader Shinsuke Nakamura and, on August 5, was defeated by Nakamura, who effectively solidified his spot as the group's leader in the process. However, Okada bounced back from the loss, winning five of his eight round-robin stage matches and finished at the top of his block, advancing to the finals of the tournament. In the finals on August 12, Okada defeated Karl Anderson to win the 2012 G1 Climax. Breaking Masahiro Chono's record for the youngest G1 Climax winner in history, Okada announced that he wanted his shot at the IWGP Heavyweight Championship on January 4, 2013, at Wrestle Kingdom 7 in Tokyo Dome. Okada signed a contract for the Tokyo Dome match on September 6, making him the official number one contender to the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at NJPW's biggest event of the year. However, before January 4, Okada would have to defend his contract as if it were a championship. On October 8 at King of Pro-Wrestling, Okada made his first successful defense of the contract against Karl Anderson. On November 11 at Power Struggle, Okada made another successful defense against Hirooki Goto. Later in the event, after Hiroshi Tanahashi had successfully defended the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Yujiro Takahashi, the Tokyo Dome title match between him and Okada was made official. From November 20 to December 1, Okada took part in the round-robin portion of the 2012 World Tag League, alongside stablemate Yoshi-Hashi under the team name "Chaos Ride the Lightning". The team finished with a record of three wins and three losses, with a loss to Sword & Guns (Hirooki Goto and Karl Anderson) on the final day, costing them a spot in the semifinals of the tournament. On December 10, "Tokyo Sports" named Okada the 2012 MVP in all of "puroresu". His match with Hiroshi Tanahashi from June 16 was also named the Match of the Year. On January 4, 2013, at Wrestle Kingdom 7 in Tokyo Dome, Okada failed in his title challenge against Tanahashi. On January 15, Okada publicly dismissed rumors that he was going to be signing with WWE and instead announced that he had just signed a contract extension with NJPW.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: In February, Okada led Chaos to a war with NJPW's other heel stable, Suzuki-gun, which built to a match on February 10 at The New Beginning, where Okada, positioned as the face, was defeated by the stable's leader Minoru Suzuki, following interference from Taichi. In preparation for the 2013 New Japan Cup, Okada announced that he had created a new submission finishing maneuver, the "Red Ink", in order to win the tournament. On March 11, he used the "Red Ink" to defeat Suzuki-gun member and IWGP Tag Team Champion Lance Archer in his first round match. Six days later, Okada advanced to the semifinals of the tournament with a win over Karl Anderson. On March 23, Okada first defeated Chaos stablemate Toru Yano in the semifinals and then Hirooki Goto in the finals to win the 2013 New Japan Cup and once again become the number one contender to Tanahashi's IWGP Heavyweight Championship. On April 7 at Invasion Attack, Okada defeated Tanahashi to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for the second time. On May 3 at Wrestling Dontaku 2013, Okada made his first successful title defense against Minoru Suzuki. His second successful defense took place on June 22 at Dominion 6.22 against Togi Makabe. On July 20, Okada made his third successful title defense against IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Prince Devitt. From August 1 to 11, Okada took part in the 2013 G1 Climax, where he opened by losing three of his first four matches. After bouncing back to a three-match win streak and a time limit draw with Hiroshi Tanahashi, Okada finished his tournament with a loss against Satoshi Kojima, which meant that he was eliminated from the tournament. On August 18, Okada made a rare appearance outside of NJPW, when he took part in the DDT Pro-Wrestling promotion's annual "Ryōgoku Peter Pan" event, defeating Kota Ibushi in a special non-title match. On September 29 at Destruction, Okada avenged the loss from G1 Climax by defeating Satoshi Kojima for his fourth successful defense of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: On October 14 at King of Pro-Wrestling, Okada made his fifth successful title defense against Hiroshi Tanahashi in what Tanahashi claimed would be his final challenge for the title. With the win, NJPW claimed that Okada had taken over Tanahashi's spot as the "ace" of the promotion. On November 9 at Power Struggle, Okada defeated Karl Anderson in a rematch of the 2012 G1 Climax finals for his sixth successful title defense. Okada and his next challenger, 2013 G1 Climax winner Tetsuya Naito, faced off on November 23 during the first day of the 2013 World Tag League in a match, where Okada and Yoshi-Hashi were victorious over Naito and La Sombra. Okada and Yoshi-Hashi however managed to win only one of their five remaining matches in the tournament and finished second to last in their block, failing to advance to the semifinals. Following a disappointing fan reaction to a confrontation between Okada and Naito, NJPW announced that fans would get to vote whether they or Shinsuke Nakamura and Hiroshi Tanahashi for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship would be the true main event of the Tokyo Dome show. When the results were released on December 9, Okada and Naito had gotten only half the votes Nakamura and Tanahashi had gotten and, as a result, lost their main event spot for NJPW's biggest show of the year. That same day, Okada became the first wrestler in 25 years to win back-to-back MVP awards from "Tokyo Sports". On January 4, 2014, at Wrestle Kingdom 8 in Tokyo Dome, Okada defeated Naito for his seventh successful title defense. Okada's eighth successful title defense took place on February 11 at The New Beginning in Osaka, where he defeated Hirooki Goto. On April 6 at Invasion Attack 2014, Okada found himself a new challenger in Bullet Club's newest member, the debuting A.J. Styles, who claimed that Okada was still the same "young boy" (rookie) he had known in TNA. On May 3 at Wrestling Dontaku 2014, Okada's thirteen-month reign as the IWGP Heavyweight Champion came to an end, when he lost the title to Styles in his ninth defense, after Yujiro Takahashi turned on him and Chaos and joined Bullet Club.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: In May, Okada took part in NJPW's North American tour, during which he received a rematch for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. On May 17 at War of the Worlds in New York City, Okada unsuccessfully challenged Styles for the title in a three-way match, which also included Michael Elgin, whom Styles pinned for the win. Okada received another shot at the title on May 25 at Back to the Yokohama Arena, but was again defeated by Styles. From July 21 to August 8, Okada took part in the 2014 G1 Climax, where he won his block with a record of eight wins and two losses, which included a win over Styles, advancing to the finals. On August 10, Okada defeated Chaos stablemate Shinsuke Nakamura to win the 2014 G1 Climax. On September 21 at Destruction in Kobe, Okada teamed with Yoshi-Hashi to unsuccessfully challenge Bullet Club's Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson for the IWGP Tag Team Championship. Two days later at Destruction in Okayama, Okada successfully defended his IWGP Heavyweight Championship number one contender's contract against Karl Anderson. On October 13 at King of Pro-Wrestling, Okada made another successful defense of his contract against Tetsuya Naito. The following month, Okada once again teamed up with Yoshi-Hashi for the 2014 World Tag League. The team finished their block with a record of four wins and three losses, failing to advance to the finals. On January 4, 2015, at Wrestle Kingdom 9 in Tokyo Dome, Okada received his shot at the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, but was defeated by the defending champion, Hiroshi Tanahashi. Okada then started a stoyline, where the loss to Tanahashi had broken him both physically and mentally, causing him to enter a slump. This led to a rivalry between him and Bullet Club's Bad Luck Fale, who scored several pinfall wins over Okada, including in the first round of the 2015 New Japan Cup. Okada finally defeated Fale in a singles match on April 5 at Invasion Attack 2015, after which he announced his intention of regaining the IWGP Heavyweight Championship by attacking A.J. Styles at the conclusion of the event.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: On July 5 at Dominion 7.5 in Osaka-jo Hall, Okada defeated Styles to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for the third time. From July 23 to August 15, Okada took part in the 2015 G1 Climax. He entered the final day with a chance to advance from his block, but a loss against Chaos stablemate Shinsuke Nakamura cost him a spot in the finals, giving him a record of seven wins and two losses. On August 16, Okada had a staredown with Genichiro Tenryu, who chose him to be his opponent in his retirement match. On November 15 at Revolution Final, Okada defeated Tenryu in his retirement match. On December 7, Okada won his third MVP award from "Tokyo Sports", while his match with Tenryu was named the Match of the Year. With the win, Okada became only the fifth three-time MVP award winner. In December 2015, Okada signed a one-year contract extension with NJPW. However, following A.J. Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura's departures from the promotion the following month, NJPW owner Takaaki Kidani announced that the promotion was scrapping the one-year contract system and was looking to offer Okada, their top priority, a new five-year ¥200 million contract. On January 4, 2016, Okada defeated 2015 G1 Climax winner Hiroshi Tanahashi in the main event of Wrestle Kingdom 10 in Tokyo Dome to retain the IWGP Heavyweight Championship and become the new ace of the promotion, the match at that time was the longest in the history of the January 4 Dome Show .


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Okada made his third successful title defense on February 11 at The New Beginning in Osaka against Hirooki Goto. On April 10 at Invasion Attack 2016, Okada lost the IWGP Heavyweight Championship to 2016 New Japan Cup winner Tetsuya Naito, following outside interference from Naito's "Los Ingobernables de Japón" stablemates Bushi, Evil and the debuting Sanada. Okada gained revenge on Sanada by defeating him on May 3 at Wrestling Dontaku 2016. This led to a rematch with Naito on June 19 at Dominion 6.19 in Osaka-jo Hall, where Okada won the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for the fourth time. From July 18 to August 12, Okada took part in the 2016 G1 Climax, where he finished tied second in his block with a record of five wins, one draw and three losses. A 30-minute time limit draw against Hiroshi Tanahashi on the final day eliminated both men from advancing to the finals. During the G1 Climax, Okada was defeated by Pro Wrestling Noah representative Naomichi Marufuji, which led to his first title defense following the tournament on October 10 at King of Pro-Wrestling, where Okada retained the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Marufuji, thus setting up the main event of Wrestle Kingdom 11 in Tokyo Dome between Okada and the 2016 G1 Climax winner Kenny Omega. On December 14, Okada became the second wrestler to win three consecutive Match of the Year awards from "Tokyo Sports" for his 2016 G1 Climax opener against Naomichi Marufuji.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: On January 4, 2017, Okada successfully defended the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 11 in Tokyo Dome. At 46 minutes and 45 seconds, the match is the longest in the history of the January 4 Tokyo Dome Show. Wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer, in his "Wrestling Observer Newsletter", gave the match a six-star rating. He added that Okada and Omega "may have put on the greatest match in pro wrestling history" and that it was the best match he had ever seen. The match was also praised by the likes of Daniel Bryan, Mick Foley and Stone Cold Steve Austin. The day after Wrestle Kingdom 11, Okada and Chaos were attacked by the returning Minoru Suzuki and his Suzuki-gun stable, which led to his third title defense on February 5 at The New Beginning in Sapporo, where he defeated Suzuki. Okada's fourth defense took place on April 9 at Sakura Genesis 2017, where he defeated 2017 New Japan Cup winner Katsuyori Shibata. Okada's fifth defense took place on May 3 at Wrestling Dontaku 2017, where he defeated Bad Luck Fale. After the match, Okada nominated Omega as his next challenger for the championship. The rematch between Okada and Omega on June 11 at Dominion 6.11 in Osaka-jo Hall ended in NJPW's first 60-minute time limit draw in 12 years, meaning that Okada was successful in his sixth defense. Okada's seventh title defense took place during the first night of G1 Special in USA on July 1, where he defeated Cody. Okada then entered the 2017 G1 Climax, where he finished with a record of six wins, one draw and two losses, failing to advance to the finals due to losing to Kenny Omega in their third match against each other on August 12. On October 9 at King of Pro-Wrestling, Okada avenged a loss suffered during the 2017 G1 Climax by making his eighth successful title defense against Evil, setting him up against G1 Climax winner Tetsuya Naito in the main event of Wrestle Kingdom 12.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: On October 22, Okada became the longest-reigning IWGP Heavyweight Champion in history by breaking the previous record of 489 days, held by Shinya Hashimoto. On January 3, 2018, Okada also broke Hiroshi Tanahashi's record of 1,358 combined days as champion. The following day at Wrestle Kingdom 12, Okada defeated Tetsuya Naito to retain the title. On February 10 at The New Beginning in Osaka, Okada defeated Sanada to retain the championship for the tenth time. On March 21, Okada was challenged for the title by New Japan Cup winner Zack Sabre Jr. and at Sakura Genesis went on to defeat Sabre Jr. to tie Hiroshi Tanahashi's record for most successful title defenses in one reign at 11 defenses. After the match, Okada was confronted by Tanahashi, indicating a future match for the title. They met at Wrestling Dontaku 2018, where Okada defeated Tanahashi for his record-breaking 12th successful title defense, breaking Tanahashi's record of 11, and earning a 5 1/2 Star rating from Wrestling Observer Newsletter. His next challenger was then revealed to be Kenny Omega, having been chosen due to Okada's frustration with having one win, draw, and loss against him. In their fourth match, they competed in a two out of three falls match at Dominion 6.9 in Osaka-jo Hall (with no time limit to ensure there is no possibility of a draw as in their second singles match at Dominion 6.11), where Omega defeated Okada 2–1 to win the championship after a 65-minute match, ending Okada's record-breaking championship reign at 720 days.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Okada then entered the 2018 G1 Climax, where he finished with a record of six wins, one draw and two losses, exactly the same as the previous year's event, failing to advance to the finals. The event saw a change of image for Okada following the defeat by Omega, with his hair dyed red and portraying an indifferent attitude. This caused him to lose his first two matches against Jay White and Bad Luck Fale, although he would go on to the win the rest of the matches in his block, until the last one; another 30-minute time limit draw against Tanahashi. At the 2018 G1 Climax Finals, Okada parted ways with his longtime manager Gedo. Unsatisfied by their draw in the G1, Tanahashi opted to defend the contract for his Wrestle Kingdom 13 title shot against Okada. On September 23 at Destruction in Kobe, Okada was defeated by Tanahashi.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Afterwards, he was attacked by Jay White before Gedo, his former manager, came out seemingly to stop him, only to betray Okada by hitting him in the back with a chair. This led to a match between White and Okada at Wrestle Kingdom 13, where he was defeated. In March, Okada competed in the New Japan Cup. He defeated Michael Elgin in Round 1, and fellow Chaos members Mikey Nicholls, Will Ospreay, and Tomohiro Ishii in Round 2, the Quarterfinals, and Semi-Finals, respectively. He went on to defeat Sanada in the finals of the tournament and win his second New Japan Cup. In doing so, he won the opportunity to challenge Jay White at New Japan/Ring of Honor joint show, G1 Supercard, for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. At the event on April 6, Okada defeated White to win the title for the fifth time.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Okada then successfully defended his title against Sanada on the second night of the Wrestling Dontaku 2019 event. Then, Okada successfully defended his title against Chris Jericho at Dominion 6.9 for his second title defense. At Royal Quest, Okada defeated Minoru Suzuki for his third title defence, subsequently going on retain the title again at King of Pro Wrestling vs Sanada which would set up a title match with G1 Climax winner Kota Ibushi at Wrestle Kingdom 14. On the first night of the two-day event, Okada retained the Championship against Ibushi, enabling him to advance to the Double Gold Dash Title-For-Title Match on Night 2, where Okada's fifth reign was ended by IWGP Intercontinental Champion Tetsuya Naito.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Okada then entered a feud with Taichi, where at The New Beginning in Sapporo night 2, Okada defeated Taichi. Okada was then announced to be facing Jay White in the first round of the New Japan Cup 2020, however due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all New Japan Cup and further New Japan events were postponed. Okada defeated Gedo in the first round of the New Japan Cup, followed by subsequent victories over Yuji Nagata, Taiji Ishimori, and Hiromu Takahashi, before losing to Evil in the final.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: At Dominion in Osaka-jo Hall, Okada was on the losing side of a tag team match, teaming with Goto against Bullet Club's Yujiro Takahashi and Taiji Ishimori, when Takahashi pinned Goto. This began a small feud with Takahashi, culminating in Okada defeating him at Sengoku Lord in Nagoya on July 25. During a post-match interview, Okada teased a "controversial announcement". Three days later, during a press conference, NJPW chairman Naoki Sugabayashi alongside Okada announced the creation of the KOPW Championship; Okada then proceeded to introduce the title and its concept, also announcing KOPW 2021 for the following year. The tournament to crown the inaugural champion began on August 26 with four first round matches leading to a four-way final at Summer Struggle in Jingu. In the first round, Okada was paired off against Takahashi and the fans were allowed to vote for the stipulations online on the social networking service Twitter. Fans had the choice to vote for either a three-on-one handicap match including Gedo and Jado (Okada's choice) or a lumberjack with leather belts match (Takahashi's choice); fans voted for the former. On August 26, Okada soundly defeated his three opponents but would lose to stablemate Toru Yano three days later in the final which also included El Desperado and Sanada. From September 19 until October 16, Okada took part in G1 Climax 30 as part of block A, finishing the tournament with a record of six wins and three losses. Going into the final day of block A matches, Okada had a slim chance to qualify for the final needing a victory against Will Ospreay and for both Kota Ibushi and Jay White to lose their respective matches. However, Ospreay's girlfriend Bea Priestley and the returning Great O-Kharn interfered in the match, helping earn victory for Ospreay and ending Okada's tournament. Afterwards, Ospreay cemented his heel turn by attacking Okada and would officially leave Chaos to start a new faction named The Empire. Following the tournament, Okada was gunning for revenge against Ospreay for his actions. On November 7, at Power Struggle, Okada defeated O-Khan via referee's decision. Post match, he was confronted by Ospreay who challenged him to a match at Wrestle Kingdom 15, which Okada accepted. On January 4, 2021, at Wrestle Kingdom 15 Night 1, Okada defeated Ospreay.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Following Will Ospreay relinquishing the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship after Wrestling Dontaku, Okada faced Shingo Takagi at Dominion 6.6 in Osaka-jo Hall in a losing effort for the vacant title. In October 2021, Okada would win the G1 Climax for the third time in his career, finishing top of his block with 16 points (a joint record for ten-man G1 blocks) and defeating Kota Ibushi in the tournament finals, and earning himself another shot at Takagi and the championship. After winning the G1, Okada requested that instead of a briefcase for a shot at the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestle Kingdom, he be awarded the former IWGP Heavyweight Championship belt which Ibushi had retired earlier in 2021. Okada's request was approved and he appeared at Road to Power Struggle on October 25 with the belt, and he would defeat Tama Tonga at the event to retain the certificate. On November 13, Okada returned to the US to defeat Buddy Matthews at Battle in the Valley. On Night 1 of Wrestle Kingdom 16, Okada defeated Takagi to win the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship for the first time. He would also retain it against a returning Ospreay on Night 2. On Night 3, Okada teamed with Hiroshi Tanahashi to defeat Pro Wrestling Noah's Keiji Mutoh and Kaito Kiyomiya.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Okada's first title defence came on February 20, during the NJPW New Years Golden Series, where he defeated Tetsuya Naito. Okada once again teamed with Tanahashi alongside Tatsumi Fujinami to defeat Zack Sabre Jr, Minoru Suzuki and Yoshiaki Fujiwara, at the NJPW 50th Anniversary Show on March 1. On April 9, Okada defeated Sabre Jr, who had won the New Japan Cup, at Hyper Battle. On May 1, Okada once again defeated Naito at Wrestling Dontaku. After being attacked by the returning Jay White, Okada was scheduled to face White at Dominion 6.12 in Osaka-jo Hall. White defeated Okada for the World Championship at the event, ending Okada's reign at 159 days.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Also at Dominion, Okada was announced to be part of the G1 Climax 32 tournament in July, where he would compete in the A Block. He finished with 10 points, only losing once to Jonah, to advance to the semi-finals. In the semi-final round, Okada defeated B Block winner Tama Tonga. In the final, Okada defeated Will Ospreay, to win his second consecutive and fourth overall G1 Climax. The following day, during a press conference, instead of receiving a briefcase containing a contract for a title shot at Wrestle Kingdom, Okada proposed the winner of the G1 Climax should be automatically inserted into the main event at the Tokyo Dome, instead of defending his title shot. On October 10 at Declaration of Power, Okada avenged a loss suffered during the 2022 G1 Climax by defeating Jonah. Later that night, Okada confronted Jay White, after he successfully defended the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship, setting up the main event for Wrestle Kingdom 17. On December 15, 2022, Okada won his fifth MVP award from "Tokyo Sports", while his match with Will Ospreay was named the Match of the Year. With his fifth overall MVP award, he just one behind Antonio Inoki in most overall MVP Awards.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: On August 17, 2018, Okada, with Negro Casas and Último Guerrero, defeated Diamante Azul, Valiente and Místico in Arena México.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Okada made his All Elite Wrestling (AEW) debut on the June 22nd, 2022 edition of "AEW Dynamite", coming to the aid of Adam Page while he was being attacked by Jay White and Adam Cole. Shortly after the exchange, it was announced that there would be a four-way battle for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship between Okada, Page, Cole, and White at . At the event on June 26, White retained the title.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Along with fellow NJPW wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura, Okada is featured in the Japanese music video for Pharrell Williams' song "Happy", released in May 2014. In 2015, Okada voiced a character in the "World Trigger" anime series. The following year, he voiced a character in another anime, "Future Card Buddy Fight 100". Okada, along with fellow NJPW wrestlers Hiroshi Tanahashi, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima, Tetsuya Naito and Toru Yano, appears as a member of the gang Justis in the 2016 video game "". In January 2017, it was announced that the "" video game would feature Okada's in-ring costume as an alternate outfit for the character King. When equipped, King performs Okada's finishing maneuver, the "Rainmaker", as his "Rage Art" move. The Okada-geared King was featured on the September 12, 2017 episode of WWE's "205 Live" program. Okada also appears as a wrestler in the 2017 NJPW-licensed video game Fire Pro Wrestling World.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Okada played rhythm guitar on several tracks on The High Crusade's extended play "Main Statement", which was released on January 20, 2020.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Okada was engaged to TV Asahi presenter Yoko Mori, whom he had been in a relationship with from 2013 to 2017. In August 2014, after his uncle and cousin had both been diagnosed with cancer, Okada established the "Rainmaker Kikin" ("Rainmaker Fund") to battle children's cancer. For every match Okada won, he pledged to donate ¥30,000 (the equivalent of US$277.20).


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: In April 2019, voice actress Suzuko Mimori announced her marriage to Okada. In May 2022, it was announced that the couple are expecting their first child. In August, they welcomed the birth of their baby boy.


title: Kazuchika Okada

text: Okada supports English football team, Manchester City. He stated that he supports Man City after watching 'All or Nothing' documentary of their success on Amazon Prime.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large number of language isolates), as well as a number of extinct languages that are unclassified because of a lack of data.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Many proposals have been made to relate some or all of these languages to each other, with varying degrees of success. The most notorious is Joseph Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, which however nearly all specialists reject because of severe methodological flaws; spurious data; and a failure to distinguish cognation, contact, and coincidence. Nonetheless, there are indications that some of the recognized families are related to each other, such as widespread similarities in pronouns (e.g., "n"/"m" is a common pattern for 'I'/'you' across western North America, and "ch"/"k"/"t" for 'I'/'you'/'we' is similarly found in a more limited region of South America).


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: According to UNESCO, most of the Indigenous languages of the Americas are critically endangered, and many are dormant (without native speakers but with a community of heritage-language users) or entirely extinct. The most widely spoken Indigenous languages are Southern Quechua (spoken primarily in southern Peru and Bolivia) and Guarani (centered in Paraguay, where it is the national language), with perhaps six or seven million speakers apiece (including many of European descent in the case of Guarani). Only half a dozen others have more than a million speakers; these are Aymara of Bolivia and Nahuatl of Mexico, with almost two million each; the Mayan languages Kekchi, Quiché, and Yucatec of Guatemala and Mexico, with about 1 million apiece; and perhaps one or two additional Quechuan languages in Peru and Ecuador. In the United States, 372,000 people reported speaking an Indigenous language at home in the 2010 census,


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: and similarly in Canada, 133,000 people reported speaking an Indigenous language at home in the 2011 census. In Greenland, about 90% of the population speaks Greenlandic, the most widely spoken Eskimo–Aleut language.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Over a thousand known languages were spoken by various peoples in North and South America prior to their first contact with Europeans. These encounters occurred between the beginning of the 11th century (with the Nordic settlement of Greenland and failed efforts in Newfoundland and Labrador) and the end of the 15th century (the voyages of Christopher Columbus). Several Indigenous cultures of the Americas had also developed their own writing systems, the best known being the Maya script. The Indigenous languages of the Americas had widely varying demographics, from the Quechuan languages, Aymara, Guarani, and Nahuatl, which had millions of active speakers, to many languages with only several hundred speakers. After pre-Columbian times, several Indigenous creole languages developed in the Americas, based on European, Indigenous and African languages.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: The European colonizers and their successor states had widely varying attitudes towards Native American languages. In Brazil, friars learned and promoted the Tupi language. In many Spanish colonies, Spanish missionaries often learned local languages and culture in order to preach to the natives in their own tongue and relate the Christian message to their Indigenous religions. In the British American colonies, John Eliot of the Massachusetts Bay Colony translated the Bible into the Massachusett language, also called Wampanoag, or Natick (1661–1663); he published the first Bible printed in North America, the "Eliot Indian Bible".


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: The Europeans also suppressed use of Indigenous languages, establishing their own languages for official communications, destroying texts in other languages, and insisting that Indigenous people learn European languages in schools. As a result, Indigenous languages suffered from cultural suppression and loss of speakers. By the 18th and 19th centuries, Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and Dutch, brought to the Americas by European settlers and administrators, had become the official or national languages of modern nation-states of the Americas.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Many Indigenous languages have become critically endangered, but others are vigorous and part of daily life for millions of people. Several Indigenous languages have been given official status in the countries where they occur, such as Guaraní in Paraguay. In other cases official status is limited to certain regions where the languages are most spoken. Although sometimes enshrined in constitutions as official, the languages may be used infrequently in "de facto" official use. Examples are Quechua in Peru and Aymara in Bolivia, where in practice, Spanish is dominant in all formal contexts.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: In the North American Arctic region, Greenland in 2009 adopted Kalaallisut as its sole official language. In the United States, the Navajo language is the most spoken Native American language, with more than 200,000 speakers in the Southwestern United States. The US Marine Corps recruited Navajo men, who were established as code talkers during World War II.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: In "American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America" (1997), Lyle Campbell lists several hypotheses for the historical origins of Amerindian languages.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Roger Blench (2008) has advocated the theory of multiple migrations along the Pacific coast of peoples from northeastern Asia, who already spoke diverse languages. These proliferated in the New World.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Countries like Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Guyana recognize all or most Indigenous languages native to their respective countries, with Bolivia and Venezuela elevating all Indigenous languages to official language status according to their constitutions. Colombia delegates local Indigenous language recognition to the department level according to the Colombian Constitution of 1991. Countries like Canada, Argentina, and the United States allow their respective provinces and states to determine their own language recognition policies. Indigenous language recognition in Brazil is limited to their localities.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: There are approximately 296 spoken (or formerly spoken) Indigenous languages north of Mexico, 269 of which are grouped into 29 families (the remaining 27 languages are either isolates or unclassified). The Na-Dené, Algic, and Uto-Aztecan families are the largest in terms of number of languages. Uto-Aztecan has the most speakers (1.95 million) if the languages in Mexico are considered (mostly due to 1.5 million speakers of Nahuatl); Na-Dené comes in second with approximately 200,000 speakers (nearly 180,000 of these are speakers of Navajo), and Algic in third with about 180,000 speakers (mainly Cree and Ojibwe). Na-Dené and Algic have the widest geographic distributions: Algic currently spans from northeastern Canada across much of the continent down to northeastern Mexico (due to later migrations of the Kickapoo) with two outliers in California (Yurok and Wiyot); Na-Dené spans from Alaska and western Canada through Washington, Oregon, and California to the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico (with one outlier in the Plains). Several families consist of only 2 or 3 languages. Demonstrating genetic relationships has proved difficult due to the great linguistic diversity present in North America. Two large (super-) family proposals, Penutian and Hokan, look particularly promising. However, even after decades of research, a large number of families remain.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: North America is notable for its linguistic diversity, especially in California. This area has 18 language families comprising 74 languages (compared to four families in Europe: Indo-European, Uralic, Turkic, and Afroasiatic and one isolate, Basque).


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Another area of considerable diversity appears to have been the Southeastern Woodlands; however, many of these languages became extinct from European contact and as a result they are, for the most part, absent from the historical record. This diversity has influenced the development of linguistic theories and practice in the US.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Due to the diversity of languages in North America, it is difficult to make generalizations for the region. Most North American languages have a relatively small number of vowels (i.e. three to five vowels). Languages of the western half of North America often have relatively large consonant inventories. The languages of the Pacific Northwest are notable for their complex phonotactics (for example, some languages have words that lack vowels entirely). The languages of the Plateau area have relatively rare pharyngeals and epiglottals (they are otherwise restricted to Afroasiatic languages and the languages of the Caucasus). Ejective consonants are also common in western North America, although they are rare elsewhere (except, again, for the Caucasus region, parts of Africa, and the Mayan family).


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Head-marking is found in many languages of North America (as well as in Central and South America), but outside of the Americas it is rare. Many languages throughout North America are polysynthetic (Eskimo–Aleut languages are extreme examples), although this is not characteristic of all North American languages (contrary to what was believed by 19th-century linguists). Several families have unique traits, such as the inverse number marking of the Tanoan languages, the lexical affixes of the Wakashan, Salishan and Chimakuan languages, and the unusual verb structure of Na-Dené.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: In Central America the Mayan languages are among those used today. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million Indigenous Maya, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight more. The Mayan language family is one of the best documented and most studied in the Americas. Modern Mayan languages descend from Proto-Mayan, a language thought to have been spoken at least 4,000 years ago; it has been partially reconstructed using the comparative method.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Although both North and Central America are very diverse areas, South America has a linguistic diversity rivalled by only a few other places in the world with approximately 350 languages still spoken and several hundred more spoken at first contact but now extinct. The situation of language documentation and classification into genetic families is not as advanced as in North America (which is relatively well studied in many areas). Kaufman (1994: 46) gives the following appraisal:


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Since the mid 1950s, the amount of published material on SA [South America] has been gradually growing, but even so, the number of researchers is far smaller than the growing number of linguistic communities whose speech should be documented. Given the current employment opportunities, it is not likely that the number of specialists in SA Indian languages will increase fast enough to document most of the surviving SA languages before they go out of use, as most of them unavoidably will. More work languishes in personal files than is published, but this is a standard problem.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: It is fair to say that SA and New Guinea are linguistically the poorest documented parts of the world. However, in the early 1960s fairly systematic efforts were launched in Papua New Guinea, and that areamuch smaller than SA, to be sureis in general much better documented than any part of Indigenous SA of comparable size.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: As a result, many relationships between languages and language families have not been determined and some of those relationships that have been proposed are on somewhat shaky ground.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: The list of language families, isolates, and unclassified languages below is a rather conservative one based on Campbell (1997). Many of the proposed (and often speculative) groupings of families can be seen in Campbell (1997), Gordon (2005), Kaufman (1990, 1994), Key (1979), Loukotka (1968), and in the Language stock proposals section below.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Hypothetical language-family proposals of American languages are often cited as uncontroversial in popular writing. However, many of these proposals have not been fully demonstrated, or even demonstrated at all. Some proposals are viewed by specialists in a favorable light, believing that genetic relationships are very likely to be established in the future (for example, the Penutian stock). Other proposals are more controversial with many linguists believing that some genetic relationships of a proposal may be demonstrated but much of it undemonstrated (for example, Hokan–Siouan, which, incidentally, Edward Sapir called his "wastepaper basket stock"). Still other proposals are almost unanimously rejected by specialists (for example, Amerind). Below is a (partial) list of some such proposals:


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Amerindian linguist Lyle Campbell also assigned different percentage values of probability and confidence for various proposals of macro-families and language relationships, depending on his views of the proposals' strengths. For example, the Germanic language family would receive probability and confidence percentage values of +100% and 100%, respectively. However, if Turkish and Quechua were compared, the probability value might be −95%, while the confidence value might be 95%. 0% probability or confidence would mean complete uncertainty.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: It has long been observed that a remarkable number of Native American languages have a pronominal pattern with first-person singular forms in "n" and second-person singular forms in "m". (Compare first-person singular "m" and second-person singular "t" across much of northern Eurasia, as in English "me" and "thee", Spanish "me" and "te", and Hungarian "-m" and "-d".) This pattern was first noted by Alfredo Trombetti in 1905. It caused Sapir to suggest that ultimately all Native American languages would turn out to be related. In a personal letter to A. L. Kroeber he wrote (Sapir 1918):


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: The supposed "n/m – I/you" pattern has attracted attention even from those linguists who are normally critical of such long-distance proposals. Johanna Nichols investigated the distribution of the languages that have an n/m pattern and found that they are mostly confined to the western coast of the Americas, and that similarly they exist in East Asia and northern New Guinea. She suggested that they had spread through diffusion. This notion was rejected by Lyle Campbell, who argued that the frequency of the n/m pattern was not statistically elevated in either area compared to the rest of the world. Campbell also showed that several of the languages that have the contrast today did not have it historically and stated that the pattern was largely consistent with chance resemblance, especially when taking into consideration the statistic prevalence of nasal consonants in all the pronominal systems of the world. Zamponi found that Nichols's findings were distorted by her small sample size, and that some "n–m" languages were recent developments (though also that some languages had lost an ancestral "n–m" pattern), but he did find a statistical excess of the "n–m" pattern in western North America only. Looking at families rather than individual languages, he found a rate of 30% of families/protolanguages in North America, all on the western flank, compared to 5% in South America and 7% of non-American languages – though the percentage in North America, and especially the even higher number in the Pacific Northwest, drops considerably if Hokan and Penutian, or parts of them, are accepted as language families. If all the proposed Penutian and Hokan languages in the table below are related, then the frequency drops to 9% of North American families, statistically indistinguishable from the world average.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Below is a list of families with both 1sg "n" and 2sg "m", though in some cases the evidence for one of the forms is weak.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Besides Proto-Eskaleut and Proto-Na–Dene, the families in North America with neither 1sg "n" or 2sg "m" are Atakapan, Chitimacha, Cuitlatec, Haida, Kutenai, Proto-Caddoan, Proto-Chimakuan, Proto-Comecrudan, Proto-Iroquoian, Proto-Muskogean, Proto-Siouan-Catawba, Tonkawa, Waikuri, Yana, Yuchi, Zuni.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: There are also a number of neighboring families in South America that have a "tʃ–k" pattern (the Duho proposal, plus possibly Arutani–Sape), or an "i–a" pattern (the Macro-Jê proposal, including Fulnio and Chiquitano, plus Matacoan, Zamucoan and Payaguá).


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Several languages are only known by mention in historical documents or from only a few names or words. It cannot be determined that these languages actually existed or that the few recorded words are actually of known or unknown languages. Some may simply be from a historian's errors. Others are of known people with no linguistic record (sometimes due to lost records). A short list is below.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Loukotka (1968) reports the names of hundreds of South American languages which do not have any linguistic documentation.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: Various miscellaneous languages such as pidgins, mixed languages, trade languages, and sign languages are given below in alphabetical order.


title: Indigenous languages of the Americas

text: While most Indigenous languages have adopted the Latin script as the written form of their languages, a few languages have their own unique writing systems after encountering the Latin script (often through missionaries) that are still in use. All pre-Columbian Indigenous writing systems are no longer used.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: , also called Doll's Day or Girls' Day, is a religious (Shinto) holiday in Japan, celebrated on 3March of each year. Platforms covered with a red carpet–material are used to display a set of representing the Emperor, Empress, attendants, and musicians in traditional court dress of the Heian period.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: is one of the that are held on auspicious dates of the Chinese calendar: the first day of the first month, the third day of the third month, and so on. After the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, these were fixed on 1January, 3March, 5May, 7July, and 9September. The festival was traditionally known as the , as peach trees typically began to flower around this time. Although this is no longer true since the shift to Gregorian dates, the name remains and peaches are still symbolic of the festival.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: The primary aspect of is the display of seated male and female dolls (the and ), which represent a Heian period wedding, but are usually described as the Emperor and Empress of Japan. The dolls are usually seated on red cloth, and may be as simple as pictures or folded paper dolls, or as intricate as carved three-dimensional dolls. More elaborate displays will include a multi-tiered of dolls that represent ladies of the court, musicians, and other attendants, with all sorts of accoutrements. The entire set of dolls and accessories is called the . The number of tiers and dolls a family may have depends on their budget.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: Families normally ensure that girls have a set of the two main dolls before their first Hinamatsuri. The dolls are usually fairly expensive ($1,500 to $2,500 for a five-tier set, depending on quality) and may be handed down from older generations as heirlooms. The spends most of the year in storage, and girls and their mothers begin setting up the display a few days before 3March (boys normally do not participate, as 5May, now Children's Day, was historically called "Boys' Day"). Traditionally, the dolls were supposed to be put away by the day after , the superstition being that leaving the dolls any longer will result in a late marriage for the daughter, but some families may leave them up for the entire month of March. Practically speaking, the encouragement to put everything away quickly is to avoid the rainy season and humidity that typically follows .


title: Hinamatsuri

text: Historically, the dolls were used as toys, but in modern times they are intended for display only. The display of dolls is usually discontinued when the girls reach ten years old.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: During and the preceding days, girls hold parties with their friends. Typical foods include , , , , and . The customary drink is , also called , a non-alcoholic sake.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: , traditional decoration for "Hinamatsuri", are lengths of coloured cords (usually in red), usually featuring decorations of miniature baby-dolls, which were originally made from leftover kimono silk (so the idea of repurposing fabric scraps is central to this craft; it is a great activity for using up leftover materials). "Tsurushi-Bina" are not limited to featuring miniature baby-dolls, but also flowers (i.e., camellia flower, etc.), shells, "Temari" balls, colourful triangles to represent mountains (such as Mount Fuji, etc.), etc., and with tassels at the bottom.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: An old tradition now forgotten is that during the "Chōyō no Sekku" the dolls are brought out again to air, making it a "Hinamatsuri" for adults.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: The actual placement order of the dolls from left to right varies according to family tradition and location, but the order of dolls per level is the same. The layer of covering is called or simply , a red carpet with rainbow stripes at the bottom. The description that follows is for a complete set.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: The top tier holds two dolls, known as . The words "dairi" means "imperial palace". These are the "obina" holding a and "mebina" holding a fan. The pair are also known as and (lord and princess) or and (honored palace official and honored doll). Although they are sometimes referred to as the Emperor and Empress, they only represent the positions and not the actual individuals themselves (with the exception of some dolls from the Meiji period that actually depict Emperor Meiji and Empress Shōken). The two are usually placed in front of a gold folding screen and placed beside green Japanese garden trees.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: Optional are the two lampstands, called , and the paper or silk lanterns that are known as , which are usually decorated with cherry or plum blossom patterns.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: Complete sets would include accessories placed between the two figures, known as , composing of two vases of artificial .


title: Hinamatsuri

text: Generally speaking, the Kansai style arrangement has the male on the right, while Kantō style arrangements have him on the left (from the viewer's perspective).


title: Hinamatsuri

text: The second tier holds three court ladies who serve sake to the male and female dolls. Two of them are standing with serving utensils, one with a and the other with a . The , placed in the middle, holds a small table and maybe standing or sitting/kneeling.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: Accessories placed between the ladies are , stands with round table-tops for seasonal sweets, excluding "hishi mochi".


title: Hinamatsuri

text: The third tier holds five male musicians . Each holds a musical instrument except the singer, who holds a fan:


title: Hinamatsuri

text: Two may be displayed on the fourth tier. These may be the emperor's bodyguards or administrators in Kyoto: the and the . Both are sometimes equipped with bows and arrows. When representing the ministers, the Minister of the Right is depicted as a young person, while the Minister of the Left is older because that position was the more senior of the two. Also, because the dolls are placed in positions relative to each other, the Minister of the Right will be on "stage right" (the viewer's left) and the Minister of the Left will be on the other side.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: Between the two figures are covered , also referred to as , as well as bearing diamond-shaped "hishi mochi".


title: Hinamatsuri

text: The earliest record of displaying the dolls as part of the Peach Festival comes from 1625, for Emperor Go-Mizunoo's daughter Oki-ko. Imperial court ladies set up equipment for her to engage in . After Oki-ko succeeded her father as the Empress Meishō, Hinamatsuri legally became the holiday's name in 1687. Doll-makers began making elaborate dolls for the festival (some growing as tall as 3 feet (1 meter) high before laws were passed restricting their size). Over time, the "hinazakari" evolved to include fifteen dolls and accessories. As dolls became more expensive, tiers were added to the "hinadan" so that the expensive ones could be placed out of the reach of young children.


title: Hinamatsuri

text: During the Meiji period as Japan began to modernize and the emperor was restored to power, Hinamatsuri was deprecated in favor of new holidays that focused on the emperor's supposed to bond with the nation, but it was revived. By focusing on marriage and families, it represented Japanese hopes and values. The dolls were said to represent the emperor and empress; they also fostered respect for the throne. The holiday then spread to other countries via the Japanese diaspora, although it remains confined to Japanese immigrant communities and descendants.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Fred Waldron Phelps Sr. (November 13, 1929 – March 19, 2014) was an American minister who served as the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, worked as a civil rights attorney, and ran for statewide election in Kansas. He gained national attention for his homophobic views and protests near the funerals of gay people, military veterans, and disaster victims who he believed were killed as a result of God punishing the U.S. for having "bankrupt values" and tolerating homosexuality.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 1955, Phelps founded the Westboro Baptist Church, a Topeka, Kansas-based independent Primitive Baptist congregation. It has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America". Its signature slogan, "God Hates Fags", remains the name of the group's principal website.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In addition to funerals, Phelps and his followers—mostly his own immediate family members—picketed gay pride gatherings, high-profile political events, university commencement ceremonies, live performances of "The Laramie Project", and functions sponsored by mainstream Christian groups with which he had no affiliation, arguing it was their sacred duty to warn others of God's anger. He continued doing so in the face of numerous legal challenges—some of which reached the U.S. Supreme Court—and near-universal opposition and contempt from other religious groups and the general public. Laws enacted at both the federal and state levels for the specific purpose of curtailing his disruptive activities were limited in their effectiveness due to the Constitutional protections afforded to Phelps under the First Amendment. Gay rights supporters denounced him as a producer of anti-gay propaganda and violence-inspiring hate speech, and even Christians from fundamentalist denominations distanced themselves from him.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Although Phelps died in 2014, the Westboro Baptist Church remains in operation. It continues to conduct regular demonstrations outside movie theaters, universities, government buildings, and other facilities in Topeka and elsewhere, and is still characterized as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Fred Waldron Phelps was born on November 13, 1929, in Meridian, Mississippi, the elder of two children of Catherine Idalette (née Johnston) and Fred Wade Phelps. His father was a railroad policeman for the Columbus and Greenville Railway and a devout Methodist; his mother was a homemaker. In 1935, Catherine Phelps died of esophageal cancer at the age of 28. Her aunt, Irene Jordan, helped care for Fred and his younger sister Martha Jean until December 1944, when the elder Phelps married Olive Briggs, a 39-year-old divorcee.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Fred distinguished himself scholastically and was an Eagle Scout. He also was a member of Phi Kappa, a high school social fraternity, president of the Young Peoples Department of Central United Methodist Church and was honored as the best drilled member of the Mississippi Junior State Guard, a unit similar to the Reserve Officer Training Corps. He graduated high school at 16 years old, ranking sixth in his graduating class of 213 students, and was the class orator at his commencement. After graduating from high school he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point; but after attending a tent revival meeting, decided to pursue a religious calling instead.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In September 1947, at the age of 17, he was ordained a Southern Baptist minister and moved to Cleveland, Tennessee, to attend Bob Jones College (now Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina). A combination of Phelps's refusal of the West Point appointment (which his father had worked hard to obtain), his abandonment of his father's beloved Methodist faith, and his father's remarriage to a divorcee (Phelps would later become an outspoken critic of divorcees) precipitated a lifelong estrangement from his father and stepmother—and by some accounts, from his sister as well. Phelps apparently never spoke to his family members again, and returned all of their letters, birthday cards, and Christmas gifts for his children, unopened.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps dropped out of Bob Jones College in 1948. He moved to California and became a street preacher while attending John Muir College in Pasadena. The June 11, 1951 issue of "Time" magazine included a story on Phelps, who lectured fellow students about "sins committed on campus by students and teachers", including "promiscuous petting, evil language, profanity, cheating, teachers' filthy jokes in classrooms, and pandering to the lusts of the flesh." When the college ordered him to stop, citing a California law that forbade the teaching of religion on any public school campus, he moved his sermons across the street. In October 1951, Phelps met Margie Marie Simms and married her in May 1952.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 1954, Phelps, his pregnant wife, and their newborn son moved to Topeka, Kansas, where he was hired by the East Side Baptist Church as an associate pastor. The following year, the church's leadership opened Westboro Baptist Church on the other side of town, and Phelps became its pastor.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Although the new church was ostensibly Independent Baptist, Phelps preached a doctrine very similar to that of the Primitive Baptists, who believe in scriptural literalism — that Christian biblical scripture is literally true — and that only a predetermined number of people selected for redemption before the world was created will be saved on Judgment Day. His vitriolic preaching alienated church leaders and most of the original congregation, who either returned to East Side Baptist or joined other congregations, leaving him with a small following consisting almost entirely of his own relatives and close friends.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps was forced to support himself selling vacuum cleaners, baby strollers, and insurance; later, some of his 13 children were reportedly compelled to sell candy door-to-door for several hours each day. In 1972, two companies sued Westboro Baptist for failing to pay for the candy being peddled by the children.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps earned a law degree from Washburn University in 1964, and founded the Phelps Chartered law firm. However, in 1969, upon a finding of professional misconduct, authorities suspended him from practicing as a lawyer for two years.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps' first notable cases were related to civil rights, and his involvement in civil rights cases in and around Kansas gained him praise from local African-American leaders.


title: Fred Phelps

text: "I systematically brought down the Jim Crow laws of this town", he claimed. Phelps' daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper was quoted as saying, "We took on the Jim Crow establishment, and Kansas did not take that sitting down. They used to shoot our car windows out, screaming we were nigger lovers." She added that the Phelps law firm made up one-third of the state's federal docket of civil rights cases.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps took cases on behalf of African-American clients alleging racial discrimination by school systems, and a predominantly black American Legion post which had been raided by police, alleging racially based police abuse. Phelps' law firm obtained settlements for some clients.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps' national notoriety first came from a 1973 lawsuit (settled in 1978) on behalf of a 10-year-old African-American plaintiff, Evelyn Renee Johnson (some sources say Evelyn "Rene" Johnson), against the Topeka Board of Education (which had, in 1954, famously lost the pivotal racial discrimination case of "Brown vs. Board of Education," ending legal racial segregation in U.S. public schools), and against related local, state and federal officials. In the 1973 case, Phelps argued that the Topeka Board of Education, in violation of the 1954 ruling, had not yet made its schools equal, and by attending Topeka's east-side, predominantly minority schools, the black plaintiff had received an inferior education.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Initially, Phelps attempted to file the case as a class action, in the U.S. District Court for Kansas. Asking the court to order an end to the alleged discrimination and suggesting that busing might be at least one remedy, Phelps also sought $100 million in actual damages, plus another $100 million in punitive damages—or, alternatively, $20,000 for each of the 10,000 students he claimed were in the aggrieved class of victims. Nevertheless, the federal district and appellate courts denied the class action filing, limiting the case to Phelps's initial plaintiff, Evelyn Johnson, alone.


title: Fred Phelps

text: The case fueled a national debate about racial integration of schools, and prompted the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, by 1974, to order the Topeka board to develop corrective remedies.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Topeka's school board did not contest the charges. On the guidance of its insurance provider, it settled the litigation (with no admission of wrongdoing) for $19,500—$12,400 of which went to Phelps. While the settlement drew some praise, controversy arose when the judge ordered the settlement amount sealed at the request of the insurer—apparently with Phelps's approval. (Details leaked out to the media anyway.) Phelps announced he would file more such cases, as class actions, but the insurance company stated it would not pay for any more of them.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 1986, Phelps sued President Ronald Reagan over Reagan's appointment of a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, alleging this violated separation of church and state. The case was dismissed by the U.S. district court.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps' law firm, staffed by himself and family members, also represented non-white Kansans in discrimination actions against Kansas City Power and Light, Southwestern Bell, and the Topeka City Attorney, and represented two female professors alleging discrimination at Kansas universities.


title: Fred Phelps

text: A defeat in his civil rights suit against the City of Wichita and others, on behalf of Jesse O. Rice (the fired executive director of the Wichita Civil Rights Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), among other causes, would lead to further legal actions ending in Phelps' disbarment and censure.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In the 1980s, Phelps received awards from the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Blacks in Government and the Bonner Springs branch of the NAACP, for his work on behalf of black clients.


title: Fred Phelps

text: A self-published 1994 book by Jon Michael Bell averred that, although Phelps worked on behalf of many black clients, he allegedly expressed racist views. One of his sons, Nate, stated that Phelps largely took civil rights cases for money rather than principle. Nate said that his father "held racist attitudes" and he would use slurs against black clients: "They would come into his office and after they left, he would talk about how stupid they were and call them dumb niggers." His sister, Shirley, denies Nate Phelps' account and claims he never used racist language.


title: Fred Phelps

text: A formal complaint was filed against Phelps on November 8, 1977, by the Kansas State Board of Law Examiners, due to his conduct during a lawsuit, against a court reporter named Carolene Brady, who had failed to have a court transcript ready for Phelps on the day he asked for it. Although it did not affect the outcome of the case, Phelps sued her for $22,000.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In the ensuing trial, Phelps called Brady to the stand, declared her a hostile witness, and then cross-examined her for nearly a week, during which he accused her of being a "slut", tried to introduce testimony from former boyfriends whom Phelps wanted to subpoena, and accused her of a variety of perverse sexual acts, ultimately reducing her to tears on the stand.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In an appeal, Phelps prepared affidavits swearing to the court that he had eight witnesses whose testimony would convince the court to rule in his favor. Brady obtained sworn, signed affidavits from those eight people in question, all of whom said that Phelps had never contacted them and that they had no reason to testify against Brady.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps was found to have made "false statements in violation of DR 7–102(A)(5)". On July 20, 1979, Phelps was permanently disbarred from practicing law in the state of Kansas, although he continued to practice in federal courts.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 1985, nine Federal judges filed a disciplinary complaint against Phelps and five of his children, alleging false accusations against the judges. In 1989, the complaint was settled; Phelps agreed to stop practicing law in Federal court permanently, and two of his children were suspended for a period of six months and one year, respectively.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps married Margie M. Simms in May 1952, a year after the couple met at the Arizona Bible Institute. They had 13 children, 54 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Nathan Phelps, Fred Phelps' estranged son, claims that the elder Phelps was an abusive father, that he (Nate) never had a relationship with him when he was growing up, and that the Westboro Baptist Church is an organization for his father to "vent his rage and anger." He alleges that, in addition to hurting others, his father used to physically abuse his wife and children by beating them with his fists and with the handle of a mattock to the point of bleeding. Phelps' brother, Mark, has supported and repeated Nathan's claims of physical abuse by their father. Since 2004, over 20 members of the church, mostly family members, have left the church and his family.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps described himself as an Old School Baptist, and stated that he held to all five points of Calvinism. Phelps particularly highlighted John Calvin's doctrine of unconditional election, the belief that God has elected certain people for salvation before birth, and limited atonement, the belief that Christ only died for the elect, and condemns those who believe otherwise. Despite claiming to be an Old School Baptist, he was ordained by a Southern Baptist church, and was rejected and generally condemned by Old School (or Primitive) Baptists.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps viewed Arminianism (particularly the views of the Methodist theologian William Elbert Munsey) as a "worse blasphemy and heresy than that heard in all filthy Saturday night fag bars in the aggregate in the world".


title: Fred Phelps

text: In addition to John Calvin, Phelps admired Martin Luther and Bob Jones Sr., and approvingly quoted a statement by Jones that "what this country needs is 50 Jonathan Edwardses turned loose in it." Phelps particularly held to equal ultimacy, believing that "God Almighty makes some willing and he leads others into sin", a view he said is Calvinist.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps opposed such common Baptist practices as Sunday school meetings, Bible colleges and seminaries, and multi-denominational crusades. Although he attended Bob Jones University, and worked with Billy Graham in his Los Angeles Crusade before Graham changed his views on a literal Hell and salvation, Phelps considered Graham the greatest false prophet since Balaam. He also condemned large church leaders, such as Robert Schuller and Jerry Falwell, as well as all Catholics.


title: Fred Phelps

text: All of Phelps' demonstrations and other activities during the last 50 years of his life were conducted in conjunction with the congregation of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), an American unaffiliated Baptist church known for its extreme ideologies, especially those against gay people. The church is widely described as a hate group and is monitored as such by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center. It was headed by Phelps until his later years when he took a reduced role in the activities of the church and his family. In March 2014, church representatives said that the church had not had a defined leader in "a very long time," and church members consist primarily of his large family; in 2011, the church stated that it had about 40 members. The church is headquartered in a residential neighborhood on the west side of Topeka about three miles (5 km) west of the Kansas State Capitol. Its first public service was held on the afternoon of November 27, 1955.


title: Fred Phelps

text: The church has been involved in actions against gay people since at least 1991, when it sought a crackdown on homosexual activity at Gage Park six blocks northwest of the church. In 2001, Phelps estimated that the WBC had held 40 pickets a week for the previous 10 years. In addition to conducting anti-gay protests at military funerals, the organization pickets other celebrity funerals and public events that are likely to gain media attention. Protests have also been held against Jews, and some protests have included WBC members stomping on the American flag.


title: Fred Phelps

text: On March 10, 2006, WBC picketed the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder, who died in combat in Iraq on March 3, 2006. The Snyder family sued Fred Phelps for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.


title: Fred Phelps

text: On October 31, 2007, WBC, Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebekah Phelps-Davis, were found liable for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. A federal jury awarded Snyder's father $2.9 million in compensatory damages, then later added a decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and an additional $2 million for causing emotional distress (a total of $10.9 million).


title: Fred Phelps

text: The lawsuit named Albert Snyder, father of Matthew Snyder, as the plaintiff, and Fred W. Phelps Sr., Westboro Baptist Church, Inc., Rebekah Phelps-Davis, and Shirley Phelps-Roper as defendants, alleging that they were responsible for publishing defamatory information about the Snyder family on the Internet, including statements that Albert and his wife had "raised [Matthew] for the devil" and taught him "to defy his Creator, to divorce, and to commit adultery". Other statements denounced them for raising their son Catholic. Snyder further complained the defendants had intruded upon and staged protests at his son's funeral. The claims of invasion of privacy and defamation arising from comments posted about Snyder on the Westboro website were dismissed on First Amendment grounds, but the case proceeded to trial on the remaining three counts.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In his instructions to the jury, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett stated that the First Amendment protection of free speech has limits, including vulgar, offensive and shocking statements, and that the jury must decide "whether the defendant's actions would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme and outrageous and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection". (see also "Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire", a case in which certain personal slurs and obscene utterances by an individual were found unworthy of First Amendment protection, due to the potential for violence resulting from their utterance). WBC sought a mistrial based on alleged prejudicial statements made by the judge and violations of the gag order by the plaintiff's attorney. An appeal was also sought by the WBC. On February 4, 2008, Bennett upheld the ruling but reduced the punitive damages from $8 million to $2.1 million. The total judgment then stood at $5 million. Court liens were ordered on church buildings and Phelps' law office in an attempt to ensure that the damages were paid.


title: Fred Phelps

text: An appeal by WBC was heard on September 24, 2009. The federal appeals court ruled in favor of Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church, stating that their picket near the funeral of LCpl Matthew A. Snyder is protected speech and did not violate the privacy of the service member's family, reversing the lower court's $5 million judgment. On March 30, 2010, the federal appeals court ordered Albert Snyder to pay the court costs for the Westboro Baptist Church, an amount totaling $16,510. Political commentator Bill O'Reilly agreed on March 30 to cover the costs, pending appeal.


title: Fred Phelps

text: A writ of certiorari was granted on an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the oral argument for the case took place on October 6, 2010. Margie Phelps, one of Fred Phelps' children, represented the Westboro Baptist Church.


title: Fred Phelps

text: The Court ruled in favor of Phelps in an 8–1 decision, holding that the protesters' speech related to a public issue, and was disseminated on a public sidewalk. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, for the majority, "As a nation we have chosen ... to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate." Justice Samuel Alito, the lone dissenter, wrote, "Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case."


title: Fred Phelps

text: On May 24, 2006, the United States House and Senate passed the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act, which President George W. Bush signed five days later. The act bans protests within of national cemeteries – which numbered 122 when the bill was signed – from an hour before a funeral to an hour after it. Violators face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.


title: Fred Phelps

text: On August 6, 2012, President Obama signed , the Honoring America's Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012 which, among other things, requires a and 2-hour buffer zone around military funerals.


title: Fred Phelps

text: , nine states had passed laws regarding protests near funeral sites immediately before and after ceremonies:


title: Fred Phelps

text: Florida increased the penalty for disturbing military funerals, amending a previous ban on the disruption of lawful assembly.


title: Fred Phelps

text: On January 11, 2011, Arizona passed an emergency measure which prohibits protests within of any funeral services, in response to an announcement by the WBC that it planned to protest at 2011 Tucson shooting victim Christina Green's funeral.


title: Fred Phelps

text: These bans have been contested. Bart McQueary, having protested with Phelps on at least three occasions, filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of Kentucky's funeral protest ban. On September 26, 2006, a district court agreed and entered an injunction prohibiting the ban from being enforced. In the opinion, the judge wrote:


title: Fred Phelps

text: The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Missouri on behalf of Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church to overturn the ban on the picketing of soldier's funerals. The ACLU of Ohio also filed a similar lawsuit.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In the case of "Snyder v. Phelps", the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that "distasteful and repugnant" protests surrounding funerals of service members were protected by the First Amendment. But attorneys for the service member's family appealed the decision on the grounds that such speech should not be allowed to inflict emotional distress on private parties exercising their freedom of religion during a funeral service. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case on October 6, 2010, and ruled 8–1 in favor of Phelps in an opinion released on March 2, 2011. The court held that "any distress occasioned by Westboro's picketing turned on the content and viewpoint of the message conveyed, rather than any interference with the funeral itself" and thus could not be restricted.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Beginning in the early 1990s, Phelps targeted numerous individuals and groups in the public eye for criticism by the Westboro Baptist Church.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Prominent examples include President Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, National Football League star Reggie White, Sonny Bono, comedian George Carlin, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, atheists, Muslims, murdered college student Matthew Shepard, children's television host Fred Rogers, Australian actor Heath Ledger, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, political commentator Bill O'Reilly, filmmaker Richard Rossi, film critic Roger Ebert, Catholics, Australians, Swedes, the Irish, and US soldiers killed in Iraq. He also targeted the Joseph Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts, center of the David Parker controversy.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps also picketed memorials to victims of different mass shootings, including the spreading of unfounded theories, such as saying that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, were gay, saying that "Two filthy fags slaughtered 13 people at Columbine High."


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 2006, in the aftermath of the West Nickel Mines School shooting, where five Amish girls were murdered, Phelps mocked the shooting, saying that it had been caused by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's criticism of Westboro. Phelps further planned a protest at the funeral for the five girls murdered, but called it off, opting to spread their messages on a local radio station instead.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps continued picketing funerals and memorials for victims of mass shootings during the late 2000s, including the plan to picket the memorial for two victims of the Northern Illinois University shooting in 2008, which was countered by a preacher who hosted a seminar against Phelps' views. After Phelps announced plans, as aforementioned, to picket the funeral of the youngest victim of the 2011 Tucson shooting on Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Phelps responded to the emergency legislation which banned him from doing so, by praising the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, saying: "Thank God for the violent shooter", and labeled Loughner as a "hero". In 2007, he stated that he would target Jerry Falwell's funeral.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps' daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, has appeared on Fox News Channel, defending the WBC and attacking homosexuality. She and her children have also appeared on the Howard Stern radio show attempting to promote their agenda and church. Phelps' followers have repeatedly protested the University of Kansas School of Law's graduation ceremonies.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In August 2007, in the wake of the Minneapolis I-35W bridge collapse, Phelps and his congregation stated that they would protest at the funerals of the victims. In a statement, the church said that Minneapolis is the "land of the Sodomite damned".


title: Fred Phelps

text: In the movie "Hatemongers", members of the Westboro Baptist Church state their children were being "accosted" by homosexuals in Gage Park, about from the Phelps' home (and a mile (1.6 km) northwest of the Westboro Church). Shirley Phelps-Roper says that, in the late 1980s, Fred Phelps claimed to have witnessed a homosexual attempting to lure her then five-year-old son Joshua into some shrubbery. After several complaints to the local government about the large amount of homosexual sex occurring in the park, with no resulting action, the Phelpses put up signs warning of homosexual activity. This resulted in much negative attention for the family. When the Phelpses called on local churches to speak against the activity in Gage Park, the churches also lashed out against the Phelps family, leading to the family protesting homosexuality on a regular basis.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 2005, Phelps and his family, along with several other local congregations, held a signature drive to bring about a vote to repeal two city ordinances that added sexual orientation to a definition of hate crimes and banned the city itself from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. Enough signatures were collected to bring the measure to a vote. Topeka voters defeated the repeal measure on March 1, 2005, by a 53–47% margin. In the same election, Phelps' granddaughter Jael was an unsuccessful candidate for the Topeka City Council, seeking to replace Tiffany Muller, the first openly gay member of the council.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps ran in Kansas Democratic Party primaries five times, but never won. These included races for governor in 1990, 1994, and 1998, receiving about 15 percent of the vote in 1998. In the 1992 Democratic Party primary for U.S. Senate, Phelps received 31 percent of the vote. Phelps ran for mayor of Topeka in 1993 and 1997.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps supported Al Gore in the 1988 Democratic Party presidential primary election. In his 1984 Senate race, Gore had opposed a "gay bill of rights" and stated that homosexuality was not something that "society should affirm", a position Gore had publicly changed by 2000 as his official position. Phelps stated that he supported Gore because of these earlier comments.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 1996 Phelps opposed Clinton's (and Gore's) re-election because of the administration's support for gay rights; the Westboro congregation picketed a 1997 inaugural ball.


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 1997, Phelps wrote a letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, praising his regime for being "the only Muslim state that allows the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to be freely and openly preached on the streets".


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 1994, Phelps was convicted of disorderly conduct for verbal harassment, and received two suspended 30-day jail sentences.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps' 1995 conviction for assault and battery carried a five-year prison sentence, with a mandatory 18 months to be served before he became eligible for parole. Phelps fought to be allowed to remain free until his appeals process went through. Days away from being arrested and sent to prison, a judge ruled that Phelps had been denied a speedy trial and that he was not required to serve any time.


title: Fred Phelps

text: On February 18, 2009, two days before the Westboro Baptist Church's first UK picket, the United Kingdom Home Office announced that Fred Phelps and Shirley Phelps-Roper would be refused entry and that "other church members could also be flagged and stopped if they tried to enter Britain". In May 2009, he and his daughter Shirley were placed on the Home Office's "name and shame" list of people barred from entering the UK for "fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence".


title: Fred Phelps

text: In 1993, Phelps appeared on a first-season episode of the talk show "Ricki Lake", alleging that homosexuals and "anyone who carries the AIDS virus" deserved to die. When Phelps and his son-in-law Charles Hockenbarger (married to Phelps’ daughter Rachel) became increasingly belligerent, Lake ordered the Phelps family to leave the studio. During a commercial break, the two were forced off the set and escorted out of the building by security. After Phelps died, Lake tweeted that when he had been on the show, he had told her that she worshipped her own rectum — a remark that led her to take action off-stage to have Phelps removed from the set.


title: Fred Phelps

text: The Phelps family was the subject of the 2007 TV program "The Most Hated Family in America", presented on the BBC by Louis Theroux. Four years after his original documentary, Theroux produced a follow-up program "America's Most Hated Family in Crisis", which was prompted by news of family members leaving the church. Phelps' son Nate has broken ranks with the family and in an interview with Peter W. Klein on the Canadian program "The Standard", he characterized his father as abusive and warned the Phelps family could turn violent. Writing in response to Phelps' death in 2014, Theroux described Phelps as "an angry bigot who thrived on conflict", and expressed the view that his death would not lead to any "huge changes" in the church, as he saw it as operating with the dynamics of a large family rather than a cult. Theroux returned for a third documentary in 2019, titled "Surviving America's Most Hated Family".


title: Fred Phelps

text: Kevin Smith produced a horror film titled "Red State" featuring a religious fundamentalist villain inspired by Phelps.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps appeared in "A Union in Wait", a 2001 Sundance Channel documentary film about same-sex marriage, directed by Ryan Butler after Phelps picketed Wake Forest Baptist Church at Wake Forest University over a proposed same-sex union ceremony.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Fred Phelps preached his final Sunday sermon on September 1, 2013. Five weeks later, sermons resumed from various members.


title: Fred Phelps

text: On March 15, 2014, Nathan Phelps, Phelps' estranged son, reported that Phelps was in very poor health and was receiving hospice care. He said that Phelps had been excommunicated from the church in August 2013, and then moved into a house where he "basically stopped eating and drinking". His statements were supported by his brother, Mark. Church spokesman Steve Drain declined to answer questions about Phelps' excommunication, and denied that the church had a single leader. The church's official website said that membership status is private and did not confirm nor deny the excommunication.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps died of natural causes shortly before midnight on March 19, 2014, at the age of 84. His daughter, Shirley, stated that a funeral for her father would not be held because the church does not "worship the dead". According to Nathan Phelps, Fred Phelps' body was immediately cremated, and according to his granddaughter Megan Phelps-Roper, Phelps' cremated remains were buried in an unmarked grave in Kansas.


title: Fred Phelps

text: Phelps had been reportedly suffering from some form of dementia in his final year, and started behaving


title: Fred Phelps

text: irrationally. This led to church members believing that God had condemned him. It has been claimed that Phelps "had a softening of heart at the end of his life," according to accounts published in a memoir written by Phelps' granddaughter Megan Phelps-Roper, and reporting from "The New Yorker" citing former members of the church. This includes an incident in 2013, in which Phelps is said to have stepped outside the church and called over to members of Planting Peace, a nonprofit that bought a house on the other street and painted it with an LGBT rainbow, saying: "You're good people!" In an interview with "NPR", Megan Phelps-Roper said this outburst was "the proximate cause" of Phelps being excommunicated, a claim that the church has denied. According to Phelps' grandson and former church member Zach Phelps-Roper, Phelps' actions were regarded as "rank blasphemy" by the church members.


title: Tawhid

text: Tawhid (, ', meaning "unification of God in Islam (Allāh)"; also romanized as "Tawheed", "Tawhid", "Tauheed" or "Tevhid") is the indivisible oneness concept of monotheism in Islam. Tawhid is the religion's central and single most important concept, upon which a Muslim's entire religious adherence rests. It unequivocally holds that God in Islam (Arabic: الله Allāh) is One (') and Single ("").


title: Tawhid

text: Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession of submission. The first part of the shahada (the Islamic declaration of faith) is the declaration of belief in the oneness of God. To attribute divinity to anything or anyone else, is "shirk" – an unpardonable sin according to the Qur'an, unless repented afterwards. Muslims believe that the entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of Tawhid.


title: Tawhid

text: From an Islamic standpoint, there is an uncompromising nondualism at the heart of the Islamic beliefs (aqidah) which is seen as distinguishing Islam from other major religions. Moreover, Tawhid requires Muslims not only to avoid worshiping multiple gods, but also to relinquish striving for money, social status or egoism.


title: Tawhid

text: The Qur'an asserts the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world; a unique, independent and indivisible being, who is independent of the entire creation. God, according to Islam, is a universal God, rather than a local, tribal, or parochial one—God is an absolute, who integrates all affirmative values and brooks no evil.


title: Tawhid

text: Islamic intellectual history can be understood as a gradual unfolding of the manner in which successive generations of believers have understood the meaning and implications of professing God's Unity. Islamic scholars have different approaches toward understanding it. Islamic theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, Sufism, even to some degree the Islamic understanding of natural sciences, all seek to explain at some level the principle of tawhid.


title: Tawhid

text: The classical definition of "tawhid" was limited to declaring or preferring belief in one God and the unity of God. Although the monotheistic definition has persisted into modern Arabic, it is now more generally used to connote "unification, union, combination, fusion; standardization, regularization; consolidation, amalgamation, merger".


title: Tawhid

text: According to Edward Lane's Lexicon on classical Arabic, "tawhid" is an infinite noun that means "He asserted, or declared, God to be one; he asserted, declared, or preferred belief in the unity of God" and is derived from the Arabic verb "wahhada", which means "He made it one; or called it one". In modern Arabic, the verbs "wahhada" or "yuwahhidu" mean "to unite" or "bring together" something which was not one before. This reflects the struggle of monotheism against polytheism.


title: Tawhid

text: In order to explain the complexity of the unity of God and of the divine nature, the Qur'an uses 99 terms referred to as "Excellent Names of God" (Sura 7:180).The divine names project divine attributes, which, in turn, project all the levels of the creation down to the physical plane. Aside from the supreme name "Allah" and the neologism "ar-Rahman" (referring to the divine beneficence that creates and maintains the universe) and a few other specific names like "al-Maalik al-Mulook" ("King of Kings") in an authentic narration of Muhammad, other names may be shared by both God and human beings. According to the Islamic teachings, the latter is meant to serve as a reminder of God's immanence rather than being a sign of one's divinity or alternatively imposing a limitation on God's transcendent nature. Attribution of divinity to a created entity, "shirk", is considered a denial of the truth of God and thus a major sin.


title: Tawhid

text: Associating others with God is known as "shirk" and is the antithesis of Tawhid. It is usually but not always in the form of idolatry and supplicating to others than Allah, or believing that they hold the same attributes as him in an equal or lesser degree. It is divided into two categories"."


title: Tawhid

text: Greater Shirk consists of the above-mentioned deeds. A person commits lesser shirk (Shirk-al-Asghar) or hidden polytheism when he claims to believe in God but his thoughts and actions do not reflect his belief. There are also minor forms of Shirk, they must be avoided as well; these include committing a good deed to show off, making an oath in the name of anyone except God. Within Islam, shirk is an unforgivable crime; God may forgive any sin if one dies in that state except for committing shirk, repentance is required for its forgiveness.


title: Tawhid

text: According to Hossein Nasr, Ali, the first imam (Shia view) and fourth Rashid Caliph (Sunni view), is credited with having established Islamic theology. His quotations contain the first rational proofs among Muslims of the Unity of God.


title: Tawhid

text: Ali states that "God is One" means that God is away from likeness and numeration and he is not divisible even in imagination.


title: Tawhid

text: Theologians usually use reason and deduction to prove the existence, unity and oneness of God. They use a teleological argument for the existence of God as a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, design, or direction—or some combination of these—in nature. Teleology is the supposition that there is a purpose or directive principle in the works and processes of nature.


title: Tawhid

text: Another argument which is used frequently by theologians is Reductio ad absurdum. They use it instead of positive arguments as a more efficient way to reject the ideas of opponents.