- Megan Phelps-Roper was once the center of the social media attention for the Westboro Baptist Church and essentially became their poster child. She was always front and center for the protests, and always the most outspoken about her hatred for certain types of people. She believed “war, natural disaster, mass shootings–were warnings from God” (Chen 2). Having been conditioned by her family, and the church, from a very young age, she never bothered to question their beliefs. She continued to blindly follow these morals until she started to be exposed to other people on social media. The people she met and interacted with were “decent but not religious” (Chen 13). This started to show Phelps-Roper that not everything she was told by the church and her family was true. When she continued to interact with these people, she began to grow relationships, and realized that she no longer feels that her opinions align with those of Westboro Baptist Church. When she saw a photo of a malnourished child from the famine in East Africa, she was moved to tears while her mother rejoiced. It was “the contradiction of her mother’s glee and her own sadness that made her wonder if something was wrong with the church” (Chen 13).
- Social media greatly influenced the impact that Phelps-Roper had when it came to spreading the message of Westboro Baptist Church. This is not to say that she wasn’t being heard before, as they would do interviews and newspaper articles. However, social media provides “proof that people are seeing it and reacting to it” (Chen 3). By being able to see the amount of people engaging with her posts, it not only encouraged her to continue making them, but it allowed people to interact with her in real time. She was also able to say anything she wanted on social media “without the filter of a journalist” (Chen 3). On the other hand, social media also brought her out of her bubble created by the Westboro Baptist Church. Once she began to see the good in people that she was supposed to hate, she started to question her beliefs. The more she interacted with people, the more she was “beginning to see them as human” (Chen 3). The exposure that was brought to her by social media was the largest and most impactful stepping stone in her transition away from the church.
- Phelps-Roper was very gifted at arguing with people, especially when she was being met with hostility. It was when she started to have less hostile interactions with people online that she started to see a change within herself. When Abitbol, the head of the website Net Hate, found that “relating to hateful people on a human level was the best way to deal with them” (Chen 9). It was connections and friendships like these that made Phelps-Roper realize that just because someone is different from her, doesn’t make them an evil person. Interactions where people have a difference of opinion, but aren’t met with hostility, are so crucial in taking a meaningless argument and changing it into a helpful discussion. By engaging with people in a calm and collected manner, one is able to actually take some knowledge with them once the argument is over. When people get all worked up while engaging in a topic of conflict, it benefits nobody, as all it does is create a further divide with no understanding of one another. When Phelps-Roper decided to leave the church, she was surprised to find that people on social media were actually very accepting and forgiving of her after all that she had said. The reason she was able to redeem herself in the end, was due to her tone change near the later part of her time in the Westboro Baptist Church. People are quicker to forgive others if they believe that they are decent people who deserve a second chance.
- If I were to meet Phelps-Roper today, I would ask her all about how she found the courage to break free from the mold that was placed on her since she was a child. Changing one’s entire way of thinking, leaving the only place they have ever lived, being disowned by those whom they had called their family is no easy feat. Change can be so unbelievably scary that it ultimately deters people from even trying, but it’s the people that take the leap (even when they know that they’ll lose everything they know) that are truly courageous.
