It is disturbing because it refuses to distance this church movement from more mainstream segments of the political and religious right.
With its history of Westboro Baptist Church and its founder, and its profiles of defectors, this book offers a complex, close-up view of a phenomenon on the fringes of American Christianity—and a broader, disturbing view of the mainstream theology it at once masks and reflects. Toggle navigation Books. Outside of funerals—that was primarily for attention. How can I use this for my own purposes?
A lot of us think of Twitter as a very antisocial place, a place where people are very mean and aggressive and snarky in order to get attention. And yet, as you describe in the book, Twitter also became a place of life-changing connection for you. MPR: Yeah. There are some things that I think Twitter as a platform could improve to improve conversation there, but I also think that even in the absence of action from Twitter, we get to decide how we use this tool, and it seems to me that the reason Twitter gets such a bad rap is that people want them to just fix it.
We talk about information silos and echo chambers. Well, instead of only following people who confirm our beliefs—which is a very common human cognitive bias, confirmation bias—we try to find people we can recognize as smart, intelligent, well-intentioned people who genuinely believe differently than we do, and so expose ourselves to different ways of viewing the world.
One of the great things about Twitter was that there was this buffer of time and space between me and other people, so when things did start to get heated, we could just pause and come back to it later. The idea is that we as human beings are wired toward complementary behavior, so if somebody comes at you aggressively, we respond defensively generally, and if people are nice to you, you want to be nice back.
So, even though I had been taught by my family that, as the Bible says, Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful —even though I had been taught every day to be wary of the kindness of outsiders—I still found myself compelled by that, and moved by their kindness.
That tells you how deeply engrained complementary behavior is. MPR: Growing up at Westboro, you understand that if somebody leaves, you are completely cut off. You have no interaction with them whatsoever. You have, completely, demonized them.
So, you understand, I still dearly loved these people, and had this sense that I would be betraying them, and that I would be fulfilling this Bible passage that they would reference: Oh, that mine enemy had written a book. People who were among them, who had been a part of them, who leave, they are the worst of all groups. More than people in the LGBT community, or Jewish people, more than other Christians, the most demonized are ex-members who talk about it.
Getting over that feeling was really difficult. The thing that got me over that was that I initially started writing, and I wrote an essay for my husband.
Because the destructive things that I had learned were becoming an issue in our relationship. That was the beginning of the book, actually.
That was one of the first things that I wrote. JAS: So, the book began as an act of empathy—to try to be understood. You were part of an in-group that was very, very insular, that had very internally consistent, extremist beliefs. Then you had contact with the outside world, and you had an experience that no one outside of that in-group could understand.
And you wanted to be understood, starting with your husband. MPR: Yeah, exactly. Fred Phelps and his small congregation provide WBC's funding; the group neither solicits nor accepts outside donations. In addition to this income, the church makes money by winning or settling civil lawsuits involving the church. During the s, the group sued Topeka multiple times for failing to provide sufficient protection during its protests.
Because the Phelps family represents WBC in court, they can put the fees they win towards supporting the church. As of , several WBC members worked for the state , providing an additional income stream.
Margie Phelps was even awarded "Kansas Correctional Association Employee of the Quarter" in late — this despite her arrest at a protest at a dedication ceremony for the Brown v.
Board of Education Historical Site in Topeka. Abigail Phelps, another Westboro activist, worked in the staff development office for Kansas' Juvenile Justice Authority. In February , Prison Legal News , which monitors human-rights abuses within America's prison system, filed an ethics complaint with Kansas legal officials against Shirley Phelps-Roper.
The complaint alleged that Phelps violated legal ethical canons because of the extreme vitriol she directed toward gays and lesbians on a radio show. The state's Office of the Disciplinary Administrator declined to pursue it, citing the First Amendment.
On Oct. They even claimed that God had chosen to use improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, to kill American soldiers because of an August attack on the WBC compound with a small explosive device. On March 8, , the U.
Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal. Snyder described the Fourth Circuit's order as "a slap in the face. The WBC announced plans to picket their funerals, but agreed to abstain in exchange for one hour of airtime on talk-show host Mike Gallagher's radio program. Shirley had allowed her son to stand on an American flag, while she wore a flag around her waist, allowing it to drag along the ground as she walked.
Shirley was charged under a Nebraska flag desecration law. She was also charged with negligent child abuse, disturbing the peace, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor because she allowed her son to violate the flag law.
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