Unfollow by Megan Phelps Roper

Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) in Topeka, Kansas is best known for its picketing of LGBTQ+ events and soldiers' funerals.  They hold signs that say things like "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers."  It's a cult of personality, originally formed by patriarch Fred Phelps and members of his family. After Phelps died, the church changed its message to be slightly less confrontational and more positive in tone with signs like "Thank God for Everything" and "Christ Our Salvation," but they're still out there protesting events and spreading hate.  The Southern Poverty Law Center designates WBC as a hate group.

 

Megan Phelps - Roper is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps. Her memoir, Unfollow, tells the tale of her growing up in the cult church, her slow path to disillusionment, and her eventual parting from the church, which also meant estrangement from much of her family.  One of my book club partners recommended this book to me and I was suspicious because I'm of the opinion that most people shouldn't write memoirs, but I found Phelps-Roper to be a compelling writer.  Her story is interesting and, for all the faults of the Phelphs family, they do emphasize education, so her writing is flawless.

I'm on record here as saying I'm essentially areligious. I don't really think about religion in any real substantive way and when people cite God or the Bible as reasons for something, I'm sometimes jolted into a reality where religion matters.  So it's interesting to read about someone whose experience is exactly the opposite - where religion comes first and secular influences are the things that jolt you out of that religious mindset.

I was absolutely fascinated by reading about how brainwashed Phelps-Roper was from her earliest memories. But it was even more interesting to read about how she dealt with her teenage rebellions and pushback against the church. She was able to really talk herself out of some important questions and her parents, particularly her mother, were smart to acknowledge the importance of those questions while having rebuttals.  It's a real-life example of groupthink and a strange sort of linguistic hermeneutics, wherein the members of the WBC think their interpretation of the Bible is the only correct interpretation.

A big strength of the book was the development of the relationships.  Phelps-Roper had a complicated relationship with her parents, particularly her mother.  Her mother was pretty abusive, but also was a mentor.  It's rare that you're able to see a well-written narrative account of how abusers can also be people we love. The relationships among the eleven children in the family was also interesting to read about.  I mean, the relationship between siblings closest in age to you and those farthest away must be quite different and Phelps-Roper does write about how she was resentful of having to be a babsitter as one of the oldest children, especially as a teenager, but how she grew to really enjoy time with her siblings as she got older.

I thought the book lost a lot of luster in the last third. The first six chapters are absolutely riveting. But once you hit chapter seven and Phelps-Roper and her sister have left their family home and church, it's sort of boring.  I was a bit surprised by this because I would have thought that the reintegration story would have been a powerful story, sort of like stories of released convicts who are trying to get their lives back (another shoutout to the amazing podcast Supervision).  

Instead, it was basically just Phelps-Roper attempting to come to understanding about what form of religion she was going to follow and a really boring love story.  I wish the last three chapters had been condensed into one, but hey, when was the last time I didn't think a book should be shorter?  I'd recommend the book for sure, but would warn people that it doesn't exactly stick the landing.