London Thinks: Nate Phelps – Leaving Hate Behind

London Thinks – Nate Phelps: Leaving Hate Behind

Join us for a very special evening in which we hear from Nate Phelps, in an incredibly moving talk on the Westboro Baptist Church, the childhood he spent growing up in, and how he came to leave his family behind at the stroke of midnight on his 18th birthday.

Nate Phelps is son of the late Fred Phelps, founder and patriarch of the Westboro Baptist Church – “the most hated family in America”.

Nate is Executive Director of the Centre for Inquiry Calgary. A vocal LGBT advocate, he speaks out against the dangers of religion and child abuse, and serves on the board of directors for Recovering from Religion.

The lecture will be chaired by Samira Ahmed.

Samira is an award-winning journalist with 20 years’ experience in print and broadcast.
She began her career as a BBC News Trainee in the 90s and has worked as a News Correspondent and a reporter on the Today programme and Newsnight, where she was one of the first broadcast journalists to investigate the rise of Islamic radicalism on British university campuses in the early 1990s.

Samira won the Stonewall Broadcast of the Year Award in 2009 for her film on so-called “corrective” rape in South Africa, and made the acclaimed Channel 4 documentary series Islam Unveiled. Samira has also worked as a news anchor for BBC World and for Deutsche Welle TV in Berlin, and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, The Independent and The Big Issue. She is a Visiting Professor of Journalism at Kingston University.

Tickets: £15 Standard Advance. £5 Conway Hall Ethical Society Members. Please book your tickets using the Eventbrite booking link below.

Doors & Reception: 18:30. Start: 19:30. Ends: 21:30

London Thinks is Conway Hall Ethical Society’s monthly discourse on the big issues and problems of society in our age.