Surprised by Grace
Some fragmented thoughts on Megan Phelps-Roper and Westboro Baptist Church; roasted tomato and white-bean stew; and a profile of actor Steven Yeun
The 246th Day after Coronatide*
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Dear reader,
It surprises people when I say that Westboro Baptist Church taught me about grace.
While reporting my book in 2011, I spent five days with the small Kansas congregation, which has won outsized notoriety for their anti-gay theology, their fiery vitriol, and their “God Hates Fags” signs. In Topeka, I had to wrestle with the reality of what I said I believed. When someone is shouting reprehensible things at you, how do you see them as more—more beautiful, more precious—than the worst thing they’re saying? What does it take to perceive a source of such toxic emissions as a beloved child of God? What do accountability and responsibility look like, once grace enters the equation? How could I honor my convictions about love and justice while maintaining a gracious posture toward those I saw as preachers of hate and injustice?
I’m still not sure I have good answers to those questions. Grace can seem so tidy in the pages of a theological text. Among the tacitly worthy, it’s neatly academic—something we can tell ourselves we’re living out, because it requires such minimal effort. In the complicated reality of the world, though, grace often makes a mess.
Maybe there are no once-and-for-all answers, only faithful attempts at any given moment. That’s what came to mind on Monday, when I called my friend Megan Phelps-Roper. I wanted to see how she’d been doing—and she agreed to let me share some of our conversation with the rest of the world.
Megan and I met at Westboro. Megan is a granddaughter of Westboro founder Fred Phelps. One of the church’s most effective evangelists, she established the church on social media. Pungent and quick-witted online, she was equally sharp in person, though much gentler and more measured. But Twitter couldn’t capture how she listens or thinks; most phone conversations with Megan are punctuated by moments when you wonder whether she’s still there, because she’s pondering what you’ve said.
Her processing eventually led to a realization: She no longer believed. About a year after my visit, Megan called to say she had left Westboro, and some months later, she visited Tristan and me in Brooklyn. During that visit, eight years ago this week, she decided she was ready to announce that she had broken with her family and her church. (You can read that story here.)
After her public disclosure, she began to make public amends for the harm she had done at Westboro. Initially, it was more of an intellectual exercise than an emotional and spiritual one. “It was very hard to think that this thing I had done with so many good intentions—I really really thought I was doing the work of the divine creator of all mankind—was so hurtful,” she said. “It was hard to feel the hurt that I had caused.”
In our conversations in 2012 and 2013, I was struck by how deeply Megan wanted the world to acknowledge her family’s messy humanity even as she struggled to embrace the messy humanity of the rest of the world. A couple years after leaving the church, she found her then-boyfriend/now-husband watching the war movie Lone Survivor on TV. The Mark Wahlberg film tells the story of a Navy SEAL team hunting a Taliban leader. Westboro regularly protests the funerals of U.S. soldiers, because it wants to draw attention to its belief that these deaths are punishment for the country’s sin, and Megan had retained some lingering antipathy toward the military. In that moment, she recognized her feeling and resisted the temptation to tell her boyfriend to change the channel. “I sat down,” she said, “and just watched.”
As she watched the TV, a parallel screen played in her mind: memories from those funeral protests, her family singing loudly and dancing on American flags as the fallen soldier’s loved ones mourned. “One by one, the men in this unit are killed. And it gets to the end, and it turns out, it’s a real story, and it shows the photos of the soldiers who had died, and their families, and their children, and their pets,” Megan said. She recalled the video parodies and protest signs Westboro had produced, “in which we were proudly and happily mocking the deaths and tragedies in these families. We turned those funerals into circuses,” she said. “I just lost it.”
As she de-centered her own experiences and feelings, she found more room for others’. “It wasn’t about my need to show that I had been trying to do what I thought was right anymore,” she said. “It was about another person’s experience—and the ability to say, ‘That was wrong. I am so sorry. No matter what my intentions were, I am so sorry I did that to you.’”
She has encountered people both online and off who tell her that nothing she says or does will ever repair the damage she and Westboro have caused. “I never try to invalidate that opinion or to persuade them that they’re wrong,” she said. “But I can’t agree with them either. If I really believed that, I would just go kill myself. If there is no hope, if there is no redemption, if there was no path forward that didn’t involve me in misery for the rest of my life, then why should I exist? Even if I can’t reverse all the harm I’ve done—and I know I can’t—I can try to make it better.”
She has recognized in herself a tendency toward fundamentalism, which still lives in her like muscle memory. After leaving the church, she got into Whole 30, which bans grains, dairy, and soy. “I found myself talking about food in the same moral terms. I demonized all food that wasn’t Whole 30,” Megan told me. I told her I remembered, because she’d visited once during that Whole 30 period, and I didn’t bother trying to cook for her; we went out instead, and I endured her excruciating analysis of the diner menu. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a few months before I realized what I was doing.”
In 2019, Megan published Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church. Anyone wanting a vindictive tell-all will be disappointed. Even as she reckons honestly with her family’s damaging theology, she retains tremendous love for them. Of her ten siblings, six remain in the church, as do her parents.
Even now, she speaks with deep respect for her parents: “They instilled a sense of love and care, and I can’t imagine anything that they could do now that would cause that feeling to go away. Even if they told me they hated me, I wouldn’t believe them, because I have so many years of memories of intense love.” She cited 1 Peter 4:8, which instructs the faithful to “love one another deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” “I absolutely feel that with my parents,” she said. “I still know it and feel it.”
It’s a remarkable thing to say, given that Brent Roper and Shirley Phelps-Roper have abided by Westboro’s prohibition of all but the sparest contact with those who have left the church. (Reference is often made to 1 Timothy 1, which likens apostasy to shipwreck.) Occasionally, a legal or financial matter might crop up, which members are allowed to address. “These very logistical issues, these practical things, end up taking on way more meaning than they otherwise would,” Megan said. “Those kinds of things used to be very sad for me. Now I see it as one small way that my mom can take care of me.”
I was also surprised that Megan mentioned the Bible. Though she no longer identifies as a Christian, “I still do feel like a believer in so many ways—just not in a supernatural force.” Then she qualified her statement, as she has a tendency to do, saying, “I’m not saying there is no God. I’m just saying, I don’t actively believe in a God, but I’m definitely open to the possibility.”
She retains great affection for the Scriptures she was reared on: “I’ll remember some story, and I’ve lost some of the texture or the details. And I wonder, if I read it now, what will I get?” When she reread the parable of the Good Samaritan, what she found in the text shocked her. Westboro’s interpretation is not mainstream; it sees the priest and the Levite, who don’t stop to help the traveler by the roadside, as evil, but it also mocks the Samaritan, who, according to Megan’s memory of the teaching, “didn’t tell the man who had fallen among thieves that this had happened because he was a sinner and needed to repent.” Fred Phelps interpreted the parable through the lens of Matthew 4:4, which says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” “Gramps said: ‘These people need our message,” Megan recalled, “more than air to breathe, water to drink, or food to eat.’”
Returning to the parable, she had a realization: “We were the priest and the Levite!” Then, returning to the Matthew verse, she had another: “The verse says, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ Which means they still need bread! I think there had to be a willingness on my part to recognize that we weren’t the good guys before I could see the story with more clarity.”
Some things don’t change: She still insists on the King James Version. “I read it as literature,” she said. “It’s a book that has shaped the lives and perspectives of so many people for a long time. And I still think there are so many things in the psalms and in Proverbs—like every time it talks about the industriousness and diligence of the ant—that it’s good to think about.”
One of Megan’s greatest teachers today is her daughter Sølvi, who is 2. Parenthood has been humbling and revelatory. “There is so much magic—and a lot of fear and worry that you’re doing it wrong,” Megan said. “You don’t have any idea who they’re going to be and whether they’re going to like you and whether you’re going to be a good influence on them—it’s just such a trip. The older she gets, the more profound the experience is.”
Sølvi is too young to understand who her mom’s side of the family is, but Megan has thought extensively about how she will explain the family’s beliefs or what they have done in the world. Recently, she read Sølvi a book about writing a letter to Grandma. “I showed her pictures and said that she lives far away. And I told her that she loves her, and I don’t think I’m lying. I believe that’s true,” Megan said. “I just want to be as honest as I can. That’s one thing my mom always was with me.”
Megan, her husband, and her daughter live in South Dakota, and last year, Unfollow was chosen by the South Dakota Humanities Council as the state’s “common read” selection. Over the course of the year, she had many opportunities to talk to folks all over the state about her story and to hear theirs. Several said that Westboro had protested their loved ones’ funerals. “For me to listen to their stories and to have the opportunity to personally apologize and to say that I was grateful for their kindness and their generosity in offering forgiveness—that’s incredibly meaningful,” she said.
Reese Witherspoon’s production company is working on a film adaptation of Megan’s story. Megan got audibly uncomfortable when I asked if she’d imagined who might play her onscreen. “We’re not there yet,” she said. (I think Jennifer Lawrence would be excellent.)
She continues to hope that the intersections of all kinds of human stories will help us grow. “My faith is in people now,” she said—and then paused. “That’s kind of a hard thing to say, because of how insane the world has seemed for the past five years especially. But I have had so many experiences of good people trying to do good things—and doing good things. For me, the hope is in that—that we can find a way together through these dark times.”
I share that hope. My unexpected friendship with Megan might be one small indicator that the unlikely isn’t the same as the impossible. If you’d told me 10 years ago that anyone associated with Westboro Baptist Church would become a friend, I’d have laughed in your face. (Fact check: I would probably have laughed on the inside but just shifted awkwardly on the outside. I am who I am.)
In the liminal space of relationship, beauty can surprise us. Goodness can grow like a weed that thrives in the cracks of a sidewalk. And even in what seems to be depleted soil, grace can emerge, if only we’re attentive to it.
What I’m Cooking: A bowl of Colu Henry’s roasted tomato and white bean stew warmed us on a recent wintry evening. It’s easy and versatile. The first night, we had it as a side dish alongside some green chorizo and roasted sweet potato and Brussels sprout; the next day, we had the leftovers, with more broth and some crusty bread. It’s also adaptable: I had some sorrel from the farmers’ market, so I added that to the parsley and lemon zest topping, and as she notes in her New York Times recipe, you can throw in some greens if you want.
What I’m Reading: I often struggle with how and if to write about my heritage. Being Chinese, the child of immigrants, Asian American—these are indelible parts of who I am and how I see the world. Yet each time I've ventured there, it gets far less response than anything else I write, unless there’s a recipe involved. Is that how Chinese culture is perceived? Is that what Asian tradition is worth? Recently, I was talking with someone in the publishing business, and she was blunt: “It's not enough for your writing to be beautiful,” she said. “You're going to have to work that much harder, because most readers can't see themselves in you.” Is that true? And if so, what work do we have to do to build empathy as readers?
Well. Yesterday, I read Jay Caspian Kang's profile of the actor Steven Yeun in the New York Times Magazine. Honestly, I can't summarize how I feel about this beautiful, rich, layered story. It hits on many of the insecurities that I as an Asian American writer bring to my work—and that I as a Chinese man carry through my American life. It captures much of the emotional and mental wrestling that I and many others have done. I hope that anyone who has ever cared the tiniest bit about the Asian American experience will read it.
I know stories about Westboro can be hard to read, all the more so when the word “grace” appears somewhere within. When I was on book tour, one man even walked out of a reading after shouting at me, saying that I had gone too far with grace. I get it: As Nadia Bolz-Weber has said, “Grace is offensive.”
Whatever reading about Westboro stirred up in you, I’d love if you were willing to share. I’d also be glad to know where you might be finding glimpses of unusual grace or unexpected hope.
Thanks for reading! As always, I’m so glad we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.
Best,
Jeff
*I’m still counting my days from June 1, when my governor, Gretchen Whitmer, lifted Michigan’s stay-at-home order. I’m glad to see that deaths are slowly declining, and I’m hopeful about all the progress with vaccines. But we’re not safe yet, so please continue to wear your masks and keep your distance. We can do this!
Hello!
Thank you for your writing! My students just put on The Laramie Project this week, so Fred Phelps has been on my mind.
Your question of how folks respond or engage or don’t when you write about your Asian identity has me thinking. I don’t engage directly with a lot of Public Intellectuals that I follow out of a sense of boundaries and probably social anxiety. I see folks on Instagram actively asking their followers to not DM them because it’s presumptive to ask of their time and energy. But then does that leave us as readers in a purely consumeristic position? As in your job is to produce and my job is to read and consume? I don’t like how that feels. Building community online can feel so bizarre.
Back to the question of when you write about your Asianness. Do we as white folks just engage when there’s a recipe bc of some internalized Orientalistic views? Or is it some form of Communion, that food is a way to sit together for a little while? Maybe a little bit of both?
Your wrote an essay a few months back in which you used a Chinese structure for your writing - I haven’t read it in some time, but I remember you circling around a central idea several times. As an English teacher, this piece really stuck with me. I spend inordinate amounts of time teaching The Structure of Writing Good Essays (often linear, often hierarchical), and your piece was so helpful for me to see my own limitations.
Thank you for sharing your writing; your emails truly are a highlight of my week.
Jeff, I very much would love to read anything and all that you would write or share about your heritage, your chinese culture, your chinese american experience, or anything of the sort. I, personally have so much to learn and love learning from your stories. I am grateful for your perspective.