Elizabeth Eschler
Megan Phelps-Roper was once one of the loudest members of the Westboro Baptist Church. Granddaughter of the founder, Fred Phelps, Megan was only 5 years old when they began picketing. Although it’s an incredibly small church, with less than 100 members overall, they quickly became infamous as they picketed at events ranging from soldiers’ funerals to pride parades with offensive chants and signs.
As she got older, she took on more and more responsibility in the church, including helping her mother organize their pickets and running the church’s Twitter account up until she left in 2012.
So, why did she leave?
Megan credits several people as having an influence on her leaving, including people of many different faiths and walks of life. Some she met on the picket line, some she met on Twitter, but they all had one thing in common: they approached her with curiosity and humor, not hatred.
After all, Megan was no stranger to scorn from outsiders. Picketing at 5 and engaging with outsiders in the chatroom of the church’s website at 13 had taught her quickly to have a thick skin to those kinds of things. She saw them the same way most of the world saw her: ignorant, angry, hateful.
When people approached her with genuine questions, though, it brought down her guard. Gradually, her concerns mounted as the elders took over for her grandfather and she continued hearing questions about the church’s beliefs that she just couldn’t answer. It seemed like she was constantly realizing new contradictions in the church’s beliefs and practices — for one, that threats and finger-pointing were not effective ways to inform people about salvation — and that the church did more harm than good in the world.
In 2012, it all came to an intensely painful but inevitable ultimatum, and she left.
What She’s Been Up To:
Since then, she’s been unlearning the beliefs she was raised with, and learning about how the outside world wasn’t as hateful or irredeemable as she had been taught to believe. After some time figuring out life on the outside, she re-entered the media, sharing about her experience and the inner workings of the Westboro Baptist Church.
She has done interviews, podcasts, and even a TED talk regarding her past, but her main message stays the same through it all: that we are all human, and deserve to be treated as such.
When she first left the church, she had many fears about how she would be received. After all, how could she be accepted by the people who watched with horror as the media revealed their protests, their use of slurs, their treatment of grieving families?
The answer: far better than she expected. The people she previously hated became her new family, including her now-husband, Chad Fjelland. She now lives with him and their young daughter, and has become an author, speaker, and activist.
Her Mission: To Spread Awareness
Even though she’s been published and has given so many speeches, Megan is by no means done with her mission. She states that as someone who had caused so much harm, it is her duty to try and amend what she’s done.
Blown away by the amount of love and forgiveness coming from communities she used to protest against, Megan looks to the future with optimism, and continues to share about her journey. She speaks publicly about the value of empathy when speaking with others, as well as working with law enforcement through anti-extremism workshops.
As she continues to spread her message, Megan focuses on not just the message itself, but how she says it. She emphasizes the importance of saying that you were wrong; that “if you’re not examining and taking in new evidence constantly… sometimes saying ‘I don’t know’, you won’t be able to grow and understand and do better.” As her journey continues, we hope to see the world grow and change for the better like she has.
