Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving Extremism

Product Description

The activist and TED speaker Megan Phelps-Roper reveals her life growing up in the most hated family in AmericaAt the age of five, Megan Phelps-Roper began protesting homosexuality and other alleged vices alongside fellow members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Founded by her grandfather and consisting almost entirely of her extended family, the tiny group would gain worldwide notoriety for its pickets at military funerals and celebrations of death and tragedy. As Phelps-Roper grew up, she saw that church members were close companions and accomplished debaters, applying the logic of predestination and the language of the King James Bible to everyday life with aplomb―which, as the church’s Twitter spokeswoman, she learned to do with great skill. Soon, however, dialogue on Twitter caused her to begin doubting the church’s leaders and message: If humans were sinful and fallible, how could the church itself be so confident about its beliefs? As she digitally jousted with critics, she started to wonder if sometimes they had a point―and then she began exchanging messages with a man who would help change her life.A gripping memoir of escaping extremism and falling in love, Unfollow relates Phelps-Roper’s moral awakening, her departure from the church, and how she exchanged the absolutes she grew up with for new forms of warmth and community. Rich with suspense and thoughtful reflection, Phelps-Roper’s life story exposes the dangers of black-and-white thinking and the need for true humility in a time of angry polarization.

Review

“[Phelps-Roper] paints a nuanced portrait of the lure and pain of zealotry . . . She urges all of us to reach out in good faith to those we disagree with, to try to understand the experiences and motives that have shaped their stances, and to realize that grievous behavior isn’t necessarily driven by ill intent.” ―Ruth Padawer, The New York Times Book Review”[A] scrupulous, anguished account of ‘loving and leaving’ the church, a satisfying story” ―James Lasdun, The London Review of Books”Unfollow is an exceptional book: a loving portrait of a fanatical organization . . . Love, it seems, for Phelps-Roper, is not only the answer, but the one thing she knows for sure.” ―Grace McCleen, The Times (London)“The story of how Phelps-Roper extricated herself (and one of her sisters) from Westboro unfolds like a suspense novel, so I won’t spoil it here. Suffice to say, leaving was wrenching, despite its clear necessity. And life after Westboro was disorienting ― liberated but also adrift, Phelps-Roper had to face the guilt over “years I had wasted hurting people in a misguided effort to serve an image of a God that seemed less real all the time.”” ―Kate Tuttle, NPR”[Phelps-Roper] describes a struggle not only to untangle herself from twisted bonds of family and faith but to establish a private self, behind the weaponized media persona she had grown up inflicting on the godless world . . . The delusion behind the rise of the Information Age was the same as the delusion that the end of cold war conflict . . . would necessarily breed enlightenment. Phelps-Roper supplies a helpful corrective, explaining how the biblical literalists of the Westboro Baptist Church navigated the mass media . . . Westboro was not afraid of popular culture; the church was popular culture.” ―Tom Scocca, The New York Review of Books“Phelps-Roper’s intelligence and compassion shine throughout with electric prose … She admirably explicates the worldview of the Westboro Baptist Church while humanizing its members, and recounts a classic coming-of-age story without resorting to cliché or condescending to her former self.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)”Phelps-Roper is a masterful writer. She writes movingly about the searing pain of separation from those she continues to love, and beautifully about how freeing herself from a theology of hate has given her life greater meaning and purpose. In a time of