Her Grandfather Founded the Westboro Baptist Church. Twitter Helped Her Leave It.

To understand her own extreme beliefs, Megan Phelps-Roper began listening to people who reached out to her on social media

Megan Phelps-Roper’s conversion began on Twitter. Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, the founder of Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kansas. Westboro is infamous for its anti-queer protests at the sites of military funerals and other tragedies, deploying church members to hold up signs that say, “Thank God for dead soldiers,” “God blew up the troops,” “Thank God for 9/11,” and “God hates America.”

In 2008, when she was 22, Phelps-Roper started a Twitter account for the church, where she quickly gathered followers by replying to celebrities and politicians and asserting the church’s hateful message. But Twitter was also where Phelps-Roper’s understanding of faith, God, and identity began to change. In her memoir, Unfollow, Phelps-Roper tells the story of her life in the church and how the dialogue she encountered on Twitter caused her to leave her family and her entire way of life.

Like Phelps-Roper, I also grew up as a fundamentalist Christian and have struggled to come to terms with the faith that raised me and the faith I have…