Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

by Megan Phelps-Roper

And with that, the most powerful partition in my mind—the one that had kept me from seeing the most grievous contradiction of all—dissolved. We had been claiming to love thy neighbor all my life. We claimed we were the only ones who truly cared about anyone else. “We’re the only ones that love these fags!” Gramps would say in his Mississippi drawl. But at the same time, we had been wholly dedicated to antagonizing the world. We mocked and delighted in their suffering. We demanded they repent, and then asked God to preserve them in their sin. We prayed for Him to destroy them. Two diametrically opposed positions, held strongly and sincerely by the same mind at the same time—just never in the same moment. A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? I felt deranged. I numbly moved the brush up and down the wall, hot tears still sliding down my cheeks. My mind was finally settling on its inevitable conclusion: There was something terribly wrong at Westboro. God was not in this place. We were not special. Not hand-selected by the Lord to do His divine work. We were a deluded people.