Megan Phelps-Roper


Megan Phelps-Roper is a former member of and spokesperson for the Westboro Baptist Church, a group noted for the extreme nature of the homophobia and antisemitism which are propounded in its doctrines and campaigns.
Her mother is WBC spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper, and her grandfather was the church's founder Fred Phelps.
Upon a change in her beliefs, Phelps-Roper left the church in November 2012. Following her departure, she became a prominent critic of the church and its philosophy and practices, and now lobbies to overcome divisions and hatred between religious and political divides, and combats extremism.

Early life

Phelps-Roper was born in Topeka, Kansas, and raised in the Westboro Baptist Church. Her mother is Shirley Phelps-Roper and her father is Brent Roper. She is the eldest of eleven siblings. She lived near the church in south-west Topeka in a compound surrounded by a tall fence, but with adjoining backyards that housed a trampoline, running track, playground and swimming pool. Every Sunday, her family would attend Westboro Baptist Church and listen to her grandfather preach the church’s interpretation of Calvinist doctrine
Phelps-Roper and other children in the Westboro Baptist Church were taught potential arguments that people outside of their religion would make against them and tasked with memorising bible verses to counter these arguments. Even though members were exposed to pop culture and contradictory ideas, they would feel reinforced in their beliefs by the church elders. Phelps-Roper and other children were introduced to contradictory viewpoints while attending local public schools and during their protests. She later reported that the church's strict and intolerant beliefs and values were driven deep into her mind because "as a child, it is physically beaten into you." She reports that she was regularly spanked as a child and a teenager. Phelps-Roper made friends that were not part of the group and participated in extracurricular activities including running track, volleyball and musical theatre.
As a child, Phelps-Roper felt happy being close to her extended family members, both in her relationship with them and in their physical proximity. She felt a sense of purpose and comfort in her religion having a solution to every problem that was supposedly scripturally supported. She also describes herself as an obedient child who worked hard to win the approval of her parents. Her parents forbid her from having romantic relationships with people who were not members of the church. When interviewed about future romantic prospects, she stated she did not believe she would get married because of the low amount of men in the group that were not members of her family.
At 13, Phelps-Roper was baptised into the Westboro Baptist Church by her grandfather. The ceremony included making a profession of faith and becoming a full member of the church.

Activism within Westboro Baptist Church

She began participating in the church's extreme and controversial protests against homosexuality, with her family and their congregation, when she was 5 years old, before she could read the signs she carried. Early pickets took place in Gage Park, Topeka against her grandfather’s drive to stop alleged homosexuals from engaging in sexual intercourse at the park. She also protested other major historical events such as the funeral of Matthew Sheppard, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the AIDS pandemic. In 2005 the group started picketing the funerals of deceased soldiers from the War in Afghanistan or the War in Iraq. Before picketing a soldier’s funeral, the members of the church would read their obituary and study pictures of the deceased. She would also picket her public school during lunchtime and sporting events.
Phelps-Roper gave her first live interview at age 11 to radio DJs who called her house, wanting an interview with her mother. When interviewers wanted the perspective of a younger member of the church, her mother would often have them interview Phelps-Roper. Reporters and documentary filmmakers frequently came to her home to interview her and her family. Throughout her time with the church she gave a variety of interviews with local news, documentary filmmakers and national talk shows like The Howard Stern Show. At 13, Phelps-Roper was debating Westboro Baptist Church skeptics on the church’s chat rooms. She was also an active member of the church’s logistical and legal operations performing various functions such as giving interviews to various news and talk show outlets and organising the group’s schedule of protests.
In 2008, Phelps-Roper joined Twitter, but became an active member in 2009 after someone emailed the Westboro Baptist Church and asked if they were using the service. Phelps-Roper used the service by sending the church’s beliefs to celebrities and prominent users of the platform. She liked using the platform because it was a way to spread her opinions on church theocracy directly to people, instead of through a reporter. She decided to take a softer tone on the platform than she did during interviews because of the 140 character limit to each post and she did not want the conversation to be side-tracked by angry responses. She justified her change in tone with a proverb, which said: “By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone.” Her strategy on the platform was to counter angry responses about the church with bible verses, pop culture references and emojis. Then, she would try to engage in civil conversation with the other person to understand their viewpoint and convince them of her own.
During this time the church was focusing on prophecies of the end of the world and began making predictions of what might happen. Phelps-Roper wanted to find out if the church’s predictions were coming true, so she created a fake Twitter account under the name “Marissa Cohen” and followed influential Jewish Twitter users. One of the church’s predictions was that 144 000 Jewish people would repent for killing Jesus. Church members began focusing their attention on preaching to Jewish people and finding these people. Phelps-Roper began sending messages to prominent Jewish Twitter users calling for them to repent for their sins or stop their rituals before they were sent to hell. David Abitbol responded to her messages by asking her questions about her beliefs and engaging in theological discussions with her. Through these discussions, Abitbol pointed out inconsistencies in Phelps-Roper’s belief and she began questioning her church’s doctrine. The two also met at various functions that Abitbol was attending and Phelps-Roper was protesting to exchanged gifts.
In 2010, Phelps-Roper filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Nebraska’s law against desecrating the American flag. The lawsuit claimed that the law infringed upon her free speech rights. A federal judge overturned the law, and Phelps-Roper was awarded $8000 to pay for her attorney fees, paid for by the state.
In 2011 Phelps-Roper was urged by her family to limit her conversations to people on Twitter. This was sparked by her appearance in Louis Theroux’s documentary America's Most Hated Family in Crisis. One clip from the film includes Phelps-Roper’s explanation of her contact with four Dutch filmmakers who visited the church in 2010. Her father insisted that she block the Dutch filmmakers on Twitters, which she complied with to remove her focus on earthly matters. Phelps-Roper also began planning the church’s picket schedule in 2011 after her mother was accused of not following church doctrine.
She graduated from Washburn University, and worked at Phelps Chartered, her family's law firm, as a legal assistant and manager.

Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

Phelps-Roper began experiencing doubts about the Westboro Baptist Church’s theology at age 13, when she made friends with her classmates at her public school. She started to believe that the students were not evil, as had been preached to her by church elders. She also experienced doubts in 2009 after the death of Britanny Murphy. While her family was celebrating the actress’ death, Phelps-Roper felt an emotion close to sadness. She chose not to release a celebratory post on Twitter, as had been done in the past with other celebrity deaths.
Phelps-Roper left the church in November 2012. She has stated several reasons for leaving the church. The first was an inconsistency pointed out to her by Abitbol. Phelps-Roper’s mother had committed the sin of adultery when she had her first child out of wedlock. The church believed she had repented and God had forgiven of her sins. Abitbol pointed out that if she had been put to death when that sin happened, as the church believes is the appropriate punishment, then she would not have the opportunity to repent. Phelps-Roper has stated that this was the first instance when she disagreed with the church’s doctrine.
Phelps-Roper also began to disagree with the church’s happiness over celebrity deaths and events that seemed tragic to other people. A user known only as C.G. would discuss these events with Phelps-Roper and asked her to think of a deceased family’s response to her church’s joy over the event. In 2011, Phelps-Roper burst into tears after seeing a picture of a malnourished child in the Somalia famine. Meanwhile, her mother created a blog post that praised God for the drought, which Phelps-Roper saw as the incorrect response for the church to take.
Another point of contention was how decision-making within the church changed. Previously, decisions were made by consensus of all church members and women had influential roles within the decision making process. In 2011 a council of nine male church members met separately from other church members and decided that they would make all decisions themselves. Phelps-Roper felt that the process in which this change happened violated scripture and went against the groups's understanding of what leadership is. Female members were encouraged to submit to their husbands and fathers and Phelps-Roper was barred from wearing clothing that was considered immodest by her brother or father or using colorful nail polish. She rebelled against these changes, especially because other members of the church were allowed more leeway in their clothing choices by their fathers or husbands. In another instance, Phelps-Roper recalls that a member was asked to leave the church by a majority vote instead of by unanimous consent. Phelps-Roper considered this a violation of their policies as dictated in the Bible.
Finally, she agreed with Twitter users who claimed church members lied when they used Photoshopped photos to falsely claim that they protested the Royal Wedding in the United Kingdom or Whitney Houston’s funeral. She felt a responsibility to her followers on Twitter to avoid spreading false stories from the church about their activities, but was still pressured to do so by church elders. She started to believe that if church members could lie about these protests, then they could be wrong about their church doctrine. She contemplated staying in the church and pretending to follow their beliefs, but quickly decided against this. Instead, she was convinced by Abitbol that she must atone and fix her mistakes in a Jewish concept called tikkun olam.
Phelps-Roper began contemplating leaving the church in April 2012 after hearing Blind Pilot on the radio and becoming reminded of her previous conversations with C.G. She disclosed her thoughts to her sister Grace, who convinced her to stay. However, they would discuss their theology with each other and continue discussions of leaving. Phelps-Roper also began to withdraw from picketing and speaking to reporters, fearing that her doubts would be revealed.
In November 2012, Grace and Megan's father confronted them about a relationship Grace was having with another church member. During that confrontation, Megan encouraged her sister to leave the church with her. Phelps-Roper left with her sister shortly afterwards and stayed one night in Topeka in the basement of a former teacher. They lived in Lawrence, Kansas with their cousin then decided to move to South Dakota after visiting the state. During this transition she refrained from posting on social media and instead devoted her time to reading books and thinking about their future. A month later, after she saw that the church was going to protest the Sandy Hook Massacre, she decided to publicly announce that she had left the church. She stated that she did not want others to believe that her silence on the matter was a tacit agreement to the church’s protest.

Post-Westboro activism

After leaving the church, Phelps-Roper travelled around the United States speaking with the groups that she previously protested. She spoke at the Jewlicious festival in Long Beach, California at the invitation of David Abitbol. She also accepted a one-month engagement with the Jewish community in Montreal in 2013. where they visited religious studies classes at Concordia University and spoke at a Jewish cultural festival. In January 2017 she presented a TED talk discussing her experiences being brought up within the WBC and her journey towards the decision to leave. In June 2017, she appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
In 2019, Phelps-Roper announced that she joined Twitter's Trust and Safety Council. She currently advocates overcoming disagreements between political and religioius groups. In October 2019, Phelps-Roper released a book detailing her upbringing in the Westboro Baptist Church and her decision to leave her community and family behind, called Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope, leaving the Westboro Baptist Church.

Personal life

Since leaving, Phelps-Roper has had limited contact with family members that are still part of the Westboro Baptist Church. She stated that she reaches out to her family by sending messages on Twitter but that she does not receive responses. She also uses Twitter to monitor changes in their beliefs and learn new information about her family’s personal lives. Phelps-Roper also leaves cards and notes for her family at their doorstep when she is in Topeka visiting her family or at speaking engagements. She does this to try to convince members to leave the church or to soften their rhetoric at protests.
She is married to Chad Fjelland, an attorney and kept her maiden name to, as she describes “reform the legacy of the name.” She also has a daughter. She currently lives in South Dakota where she works for a title company.

Personal beliefs

Phelps-Roper is no longer a practising Christian and does not believe in God, remarking on Twitter in 2017, "Jesus had some lovely ideas—but also others that aren’t so helpful. I don’t reject the good because of the bad, or accept the bad because of the good." She said she lost her faith: "Ultimately, it was looking at the texts themselves. I just don’t believe they’re divine." However, she has stated that she is a “believer in humanity” and in that way still considers herself to be a believer.
In regards to Twitter, Phelps-Roper does not believe the platform is toxic but calls on them to remove bots and remove posts that promote harm to others. Rather, she believes that it is the users who bring toxicity to the platform. She credits the platform with changing her views on the Westboro Baptist Church and allowing her to engage in dialogue with others.