Megan Phelps-Roper was raised in the Westboro Baptist Church – the controversial religious sect who rejoice at natural disasters. The church was the subject of Louis Theroux’s riveting and widely watched BBC documentary ‘The Most Hated Family in America’.
Megan, who controversially left the Westboro Baptist Church back in November 2012, will be coming to the city to discuss her inspirational memoir ‘Unfollow: A Journey from Hatred to Hope, leaving the Westboro Baptist Church’.
From childhood to her early twenties, Megan participated in the Church’s notorious picketing campaign almost daily. As well as soldiers’ funerals – their ‘God Hates Fags’ signs became infamous Westboro even demonstrated outside the high school Megan and her siblings attended.
Used from her earliest years to using every available tool to spread the Westboro word, Megan spearheaded the church’s use of social media. She trolled and was trolled. But dialogue with those ‘enemies’ online including one who challenged her via Words with Friends, and to whom she is now married, proved instrumental in her deradicalisation.
In November 2012, at the age of twenty-six, Megan left the church, her close-knit family, and her life behind. She writes intelligently, sensitively and heartbreakingly about breaking with her past.
Since then she has become an advocate for people and ideas she was taught to despise especially the value of empathy in dialogue with people across ideological lines and her TED talk has received over 7 million views online. Her message is one of enormous hope for our divided world.
Megan will be at The Dancehouse on the 13th November speaking about her memoir and being interviewed by Simon Savidge, the man behind the much-loved blog Savidge Reads.
