The United States’ acceptance of homosexuality, fornication, and adultery (among other sins) meant that it was under God’s judgement, and needed to be told in the starkest of terms. The church’s ultra-Calvinistic doctrine and its unswerving conviction that its understanding of the Bible was absolutely true gave it the confidence to condemn and belittle anyone who thought otherwise.

Westboro is largely composed of the extended Phelps family: somewhere between a tribe and a cult. Unfollow is her absorbing, candid, self-penned story about what it was like growing up in this aggressively self-righteous community, and why she had to go. Megan Phelps-Roper is Fred Phelps’s granddaughter and was also - until she was 26 - a willing and active participant of this maverick independent church.īut then she left. The message that this book imparts – to practice empathy with people you may not see eye-to-eye with – is one of the most important messages of our time.Įllen Cregan is the marketing and events coordinator.WESTOBORO Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas - founded by “Gramps” Fred Phelps - is internationally notorious for its practice of picketing, displaying slogans such as “God hates fags”, “Thank God for 9/11”, and - after the Sandy Hook shooting - “Pray for more dead kids”. Online, Megan met people willing to challenge her beliefs but still treat her like an intelligent person, and without them she might never have left the church at all. Phelps-Roper’s life is the ultimate proof that living inside a bubble, never attempting to engage with ideas that challenge your worldview or make you uncomfortable, and avoiding people who are not the same as you, is a terrible idea. We demanded they repent, and then asked God to preserve them in their sin.

But she realised that their actions did not reflect the love they claimed to feel for those they picketed: ‘We mocked and delighted in their suffering. At the centre of all the pickets, all of the online hate, was the apparent belief that the church was doing the right thing by their ‘enemy’. In her twenties, Phelps-Roper’s faith started to come undone. Her grandad (and patriarch of the WBC), Fred Phelps, bolstered the already strong minds of the group, and crystalised their beliefs: ‘He was the one who had taught church members to have unshakable faith in their own perspective, to believe their judgment was as God’s judgment …’ Beloved by her family, Phelps-Roper would grow up to bring the group into the digital age via social media. Mostly made up of Phelps family members, the Westboro Baptist Church’s collective life is a testament to the extremes to which people can go based on the belief that they are right. Megan Phelps-Roper was born into the infamous fringe Christian sect, the Westboro Baptist Church, well-known for its intense homophobia and picketing protests at soldiers’ funerals.

Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper