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

by Megan Phelps-Roper

Many years would pass before I felt the least bit unsettled by the striking correlation between her view of her father and her view of God. “You wanna sum up the whole Bible in just three words?” she would ask. “‘Obey, obey, obey!’” It was an approach of appeasement: if only you could work hard enough to placate the strict demands of an exacting taskmaster, his wrath would turn away from you. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil. Gramps was not God, but Westboro members were inclined to conflate the moral judgments of the two—in practice, if not in theory—because in spite of his faults, my grandfather had been chosen by God to lead us.