”How I escaped America’s most hated family”
megan phelps-roper, 33, was raised in america’s most notorious and despised religious group, which celebrates tragedies as god’s punishment – until the kindness of a stranger changed her forever
There were two parts to my childhood. One was going to school, listening to pop music and reading Stephen King novels, like all the other kids. The other was standing on a picket line with my family holding a sign that read, “God hates fags!”
I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church – America’s most notorious anti-gay group. It was founded by my grandfather Fred Phelps in the 1950s and made up of nearly all my family. We’d cross the country with our placards.
From the age of five, when I couldn’t even read the message on my sign, I joined the group on picket lines. We targeted businesses and churches we considered to be sympathetic to gay and Jewish people. We protested at military funerals with signs that read, “Soldiers Die, God Laughs” and stood at the funerals of AIDS victims with slogans reading, “Fags Go To Hell!”
We believed the tragedies that happened – the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan or of civilians in terrorist attacks and high school shootings – were God’s punishment for the sins of humanity. When people screamed abuse at us and threw stuff – rocks, eggs and bottles of urine – we laughed because their hatred was their shame and proof that we were right. We even mocked people who cried and begged us to leave them to mourn their loved ones in peace.
Just like the rest of my 10 brothers and sisters, I believed with all my heart that we were the good guys and they were the bad guys. We were bound for heaven and they were bound for hell.
There was no place outside of Westboro, our fenced-in community in Topeka, Kansas, that was safe. Either people would listen to our message and be saved, or it would harden their hearts and they’d go to hell. All we could do was take the message out there – how people responded to it was in God’s hands.
I grew up happy in a loving environment with my whole family around me. My mother
Shirley was everything to me – not only my mum but my best friend and my mentor. Together we’d tour TV and radio stations spreading Westboro’s message through Bible verses. Louis Theroux came to the church to make three documentaries.
spreading the message
In 2009, when I was 23, I joined Twitter to spread the message further – and that was when I changed. At first I made my usual points and got abuse, but I was used to that and batted it off easily with verses from the Bible backing up my beliefs. But I wasn’t prepared for a small and dedicated group of people who challenged me, not with understandable hostility, but with calm politeness.
They were trying to understand my ideology and they were also offering gentle challenges to what I believed. There was one guy in particular, CG, who really stood out.
I’d give him all the Bible verses and he would look them up and go, “OK, it says this in the Bible and yet I cannot imagine going to people in their moments of grief, when they are burying their children, and saying these things to them. Don’t you care what you are doing to them?”
For the first time I could see the way outsiders saw death and tragedy. For us, we responded with joy and exuberance when bad things happened. We celebrated and mocked people who were suffering because of these verses in the Bible.
I became ashamed of myself. I understood
‘We mocked people who were suffering’
that the feelings normal people had in response to tragedy had always been there in me, but they had been buried under the indoctrination I had experienced my entire life. It was on Twitter, when Westboro ceased to be my only community, that these feelings started to emerge.
not one of us
CG and I began to correspond while playing the online game Words With Friends. I learned his name was Chad Fjelland and he was a lawyer living in South Dakota. As we chatted, his questions about Westboro became bolder. Here was this person who was saying things that were reasonable. I kept thinking, “He is not one of us, but he doesn’t seem evil.”
Then, one night in September 2011, I dreamed a tall stranger turned up at the church and I ran to embrace him, not caring who saw. I woke, shaking. My secret friendship had to end. The dream left me with such a sense of yearning, I knew I had to stop talking to Chad or it would be the end of me.
But the seed of doubt was planted. I started to question people in the church. I couldn’t say, “I’ve met these people who think we are wrong.” I could only operate with gentle challenges on the Bible. So I would ask questions like, “I think this is wrong. Why are we doing this? What about this verse?” They would quote the verses that supported their beliefs, but they wouldn’t answer the contradictions I raised.
I spoke to my sister Grace, who’s seven years younger, and she felt the same as me. My family not only know the Bible inside out, they are all extremely smart. Most of them are lawyers – they’re confident and enjoy arguing their point. No way are they stupid people. But they are subject to the same kind of pressures as all human beings. When everything in your life is organised around one ideology, you conform so you can keep your family and their lives complete.
Grace knew we had to leave and we began secretly moving things out. But we were dragging it out as long as we could, hoping we could convince the others to change. By November 2012, we knew time had run out.
We knew what the consequences would be. Other church members had left, including two uncles and one of our brothers, and they were shunned. People behaved like they never existed. When we told our parents, Shirley and Brent, I was crying so much I could hardly get the words out.
My dad didn’t seem surprised – I think all my questions had given him a clue – but my mum reacted in shock and horror. There were tears and there was anger, too. But most of all there was sheer disbelief.
“What will you do, Meg?” Mum asked.
“You loved these doctrines.” Then her voice broke as she added, “You were so happy.”
And that was true. But I had come to reject the family ideology and the result of that was that I was going to lose everything, and my family was going to lose me.
When we moved out, we lived off our savings at first. I have a business degree and quickly found work, while Grace studied and worked part-time in child care.
back in touch
Around the time I left the church, I got back in touch with Chad online. Then, four months later, we met in person in Deadwood, South Dakota. I went with Grace and Chad came with his brother.
We went to a casino and sat down at adjacent slot machines and talked for two hours. We’ve been together ever since. In August 2016, we married in Norway, where Chad has roots. I invited my parents but they didn’t respond. I sent them my wedding album, and when my daughter, Solvi, was born in October 2018, I sent them pictures, but I was met with silence.
I have a new message now – to fight the hatred I grew up with. I lecture in schools and universities. I did a TED talk, I Grew Up In The Westboro Church – Here’s Why I Left, which has been viewed more than eight million times online, and I’ve written my memoir.
I often go back to Topeka, hoping to see my parents. I know if I do, it’s going to be emotional. I’ve seen other family members. They mostly ignore me but I passed one of my uncles and he waved and paused and quietly said, “Good to see you.”
Some people have found it hard to forgive me, but surprisingly few. I never expect forgiveness because at Westboro we hurt a lot of people and I can’t undo that.
I don’t believe in God any more. I think love is love and I support my LGBT friends. After we left the church, the first people who opened their homes and their lives to me and my sister were gay people and that was very healing for us.
I hope my mum is able to come to see that Westboro’s message is not the only way of seeing the world. I send her letters, with love and news, but also arguments to try to change the way she understands the Bible. She hasn’t responded directly, but I have seen evidence of changes. There are no more signs saying “Pray for more dead soldiers” or “Pray for more dead kids”.
I want my family to leave the church and I long to see my mum again. I will always love her and I know that, despite all this, she has always loved me and always will.
‘Westboro hurt a lot of people’
Megan’s book, Unfollow, is published by Riverrun, price £14.99