海角大神

Megan Phelps-Roper grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church, which has been designated a hate group by civil rights organizations. She ran Westboro鈥檚 Twitter account until she broke with the church in 2012. Most of her family remains in the church and hasn鈥檛 spoken to her since. She credits conversations on Twitter for shifting her beliefs, and she later married a lawyer with whom she had sparred online. She now works to combat extremism. She spoke with the Monitor鈥檚 Riley Robinson.聽

Q:聽How did you find common ground with your opponents on Twitter?聽

Functionally 100% of people who came to my page were angry and hostile. But people could tell I was sincere about what I believed [then]. They started asking questions, and that changed the dynamics. Then I started asking them questions and they鈥檇 say something about their day or their pets or their children.

On Twitter there was time and space to develop that rapport. It enabled me to empathize with the perspectives of other people. That was a huge part of my ability to challenge what I had been taught and then eventually walk away from it.

Q:聽How do you reconcile your love for聽family members still in the church while you no longer accept their beliefs?

I believe that they are good people who have been trapped by bad ideas.

The vast majority of people in the church are people who grew up in it, who had it spoon-fed to them the same way that I did. And I know that it was not isolation or hatred or cruelty that made me change. It was continued engagement 鈥� persistent, gentle, kind, compassionate engagement from people who believed differently.

I鈥檓 not necessarily hoping that now they鈥檒l read the book and completely change. I know that that鈥檚 not how it works. But I do hope that it will cause them to at least think about things even slightly differently.

Q:聽This book began as an essay you wrote for your husband. Why did you write that essay and why did you continue it as a book?聽

I needed him to understand the puritanical culture I grew up in, so I wrote this essay 鈥� it was 14,000 words 鈥� as a Christmas gift. Before I gave it to him, I sent it to a friend who is my writing mentor. He [said], 鈥淵ou have to write a book.鈥� When I finished that first draft, all of a sudden it hit me that I had stopped reading Westboro鈥檚 tweets every single day. I hadn鈥檛 read them for three weeks.聽

Q:聽Some readers might compare 鈥淯nfollow鈥� to Tara Westover鈥檚 鈥淓ducated,鈥� this genre of people leaving the faith they were raised in.聽

Reading Tara鈥檚 book, especially as she鈥檚 describing the physical danger that her father put her family in, where he said, Oh, the angels will take care of us, you鈥檙e like, 鈥淲hat are [they] doing?鈥�

I realized people are going to read my book and think the same thing [about Westboro church members].聽

It doesn鈥檛 matter how well you explain it. There鈥檚 just such a fundamental disconnect between how you see something and how this other person doing these extreme things sees that thing.

Q:聽What makes understanding Westboro salient at this particular moment?

It鈥檚 important to see people as being on a journey. If you look at who you were a year ago and aren鈥檛 somewhat embarrassed, you鈥檙e not growing as a person.

If you can see these people ... as human beings and capable of change, there is hope. We should be willing to reach out. Imagine what could happen if we kept reaching out to people like Westboro members? There鈥檚 so much power in seeing the possibility of change.