In 2012, she and her sister made the incredibly brave (and rare) decision to abandon their cloistered way of life, leave their family and home, and renounce their teachings. However, after interacting with calm, civil, and genuinely empathetic individuals online-including one user who would eventually become her husband-Phelps-Roper began to question the dogmatic assertions of her faith and its celebrations of human tragedy. By 2009, she was running the church’s Twitter account (as granddaughter of Fred Phelps, church founder, and daughter of Shirley Phelps-Roper, former church spokesperson, Megan played a central role in spreading its signature brand of hateful rhetoric to a global audience). Megan Phelps-Roper was raised within the virulent religious group The Westboro Baptist Church: known for picketing against the LGBT community, funeral services for soldiers, and nearly every other religious faith.

Phelps-Roper’s intelligence and compassion shine throughout with electric prose…For anyone interested in the power of rhetoric, belief, and family, powerful, empathetic memoir will be a must-read. Phelps-Roper is a unique example of how empathy can overcome hate, and how acceptance can bridge ideology. Now, with her brand new memoir, Unfollow, she’s able to share her fascinating journey even more deeply than in her major New Yorker profile and popular TED Talk. But engaging in open dialogue with strangers on Twitter showed her another life was possible-and, she escaped her home, family, and faith. Megan Phelps-Roper grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church: an infamously intolerant group.

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