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

by Megan Phelps-Roper

In this environment, there is a growing insistence that opposing views must be silenced, whether by the powers of government, the self-regulation of social media companies, or the self-censorship of individuals. At the heart of this insistence lie several false assumptions, including a sentiment that Westboro members would readily recognize: We have nothing to learn from these people. This sentiment was troubling to witness even among our tiny fringe movement, and I was relieved to abandon it when I left the church—but watching it spread among a vast and growing populace has been altogether more alarming, filling me with a growing sense of unease.

Especially in the age of the Internet, it seems clear that we cannot reasonably expect to permanently halt the spread of an idea, whether good or bad. What we can do, however, is foster a culture in which we have the language to articulate and defend sound arguments as to why certain ideas are harmful, the precise ways in which they’re flawed, and the suffering they have caused in the past.

To my mind, this is the essence of epistemological humility—not a lack of belief or principle or faith, not the refusal to take a position or the abdication of responsibility to stand against injustice, but a constant examination of one’s worldview, a commitment to honestly grappling with criticisms of it.

But it was too late. He had spent decades inculcating us with an ideology that valued fear and control over mercy and grace. 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, with de facto status as infallible. Not even my grandfather could stop the course he had set in motion. Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. Gramps was the heretic now. His illness was proof not of his age, but that God had condemned him. To church members, dementia was the result of my grandfather’s strange behavior, rather than its cause. If he were a man of God, the argument went, then he wouldn’t have this illness.