Megan Phelps
Megan Phelps-Roper (born January 31, 1986) is an American writer, speaker, and former member of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), a small independent Baptist congregation in Topeka, Kansas , founded by her grandfather Fred Phelps and known for public protests featuring signs declaring God's hatred for homosexuals and interpreting U.S. military deaths as divine punishment for national tolerance of sin. The third of eleven children born to Shirley Phelps-Roper , a key church figure, and Brent Roper, Phelps-Roper was immersed from childhood in WBC's strict Calvinist doctrines emphasizing predestination , eternal damnation for most humanity, and obligatory public warnings of judgment. She began picketing with family members at age five and later served as the church's primary Twitter spokesperson, where interactions with outsiders prompted doctrinal doubts leading to her defection in November 2012 alongside her sister Grace. Post-departure, she has focused on deradicalization efforts, delivering a widely viewed TED Talk recounting her upbringing and exit, publishing the memoir Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church in 2019, and engaging audiences through speeches on fostering dialogue to bridge ideological chasms.
Megan Phelps-Roper was born on January 31, 1986, in Topeka, Kansas , to Brent Roper, a construction superintendent, and Shirley Phelps-Roper , a lawyer and daughter of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps , as the third of their eleven children. From infancy, she was raised in the church's family-centric congregation, which interpreted Scripture through a primitive Baptist lens emphasizing God's sovereignty, predestination of a small elect remnant for salvation, and active judgment on reprobate sinners. The church doctrine framed America as under divine condemnation primarily for tolerating homosexuality —deemed the most egregious sin—but also for practices like divorce, Catholicism, Judaism , and general moral laxity.
Church life structured her early years with daily "Godsmack" meetings at 7:30 a.m., where family members dissected news events to align them with doctrinal warnings of impending doom , reinforcing the belief that the congregation's protests served as God's mandated alerts to the unsaved. Phelps-Roper's earliest memory dates to age five, when she joined family pickets carrying signs declaring "God Hates Fags" and similar messages aimed at publicizing eternal consequences for sin. The church conducted hundreds of such demonstrations annually, targeting funerals of soldiers, celebrities, and others viewed as exemplifying societal rebellion, instilling in children a sense of divine purpose amid public vitriol.
Despite the insular family environment, Phelps-Roper and her siblings attended Topeka public schools , where they earned reputations as polite, diligent students; homeschooling was deemed impractical given the family size. Education was prioritized, with many siblings, including Phelps-Roper, later pursuing law degrees, though school interactions were filtered through church teachings that deemed peers and teachers as likely damned. This dual exposure—to doctrinal absolutism at home and conventional society at school —did not initially challenge her convictions, as family loyalty and scriptural authority dominated her worldview.
Megan Phelps-Roper participated in Westboro Baptist Church protests from an early age, beginning at five years old in 1991 when the group initiated pickets targeting gay gatherings in Topeka, Kansas , where she held signs declaring "God Hates Fags." The church's activities, which Phelps-Roper joined regularly, expanded to funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in action starting around 2005 when she was 19, as well as public events and celebrity appearances, framing these as divine warnings against societal sins like homosexuality and support for Israel .
