The Westboro Baptist Church Is Dying

Two more members have left the church.

1. Remember Megan Phelps-Roper?

Megan was one of the most outspoken members of WBC.

Via: coffeelovingskeptic.com

She was very active on Twitter and the Kansas City Star called her the “heir to hate.”

4. This is Megan’s sister, Grace.

Video available at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=fSTGjCoPEKU.

She was a photographer for the WBC. You should watch this clip from Louis Theroux’s awesome WBC documentary to get an idea of the type of person she was. You can kind of tell she’s not that into it.

Source: youtube.com

5. Megan hadn’t been heard from since October of last year.

6. Then today she said “Hi.”

The link led to a letter from Grace and Megan called “Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise”.

The letter stars out with a quote from Batman:

“There’s no fresh start in today’s world. Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what you did. Everything we do is collated and quantified. Everything sticks.”

Don’t act surprised that I’m quoting Batman. At WBC, reciting lines from pop culture is par for the course. And why not? The sentiments they express are readily identifiable by the masses – and shifting their meaning is as easy as giving them new context. So put Selina Kyle’s words in a different framework:

In a city in a state in the center of a country lives a group of people who believe they are the center of the universe; they know Right and Wrong, and they are Right. They work hard and go to school and get married and have kids who they take to church and teach that continually protesting the lives, deaths, and daily activities of The World is the only genuine statement of compassion that a God-loving human can sincerely make. As parents, they are attentive and engaged, and the children learn their lessons well.

This is my framework.

Until very recently, this is what I lived, breathed, studied, believed, preached – loudly, daily, and for nearly 27 years.

I never thought it would change. I never wanted it to.

Then suddenly: it did.

And I left.

Then they apologize:

There are some things we do know.

We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that hurt.

We know that we dearly love our family. They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love them.

We know that we can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.

The letter ends and points to a more in depth interview by Jeff Chu.

Hopefully Megan and Grace will find the same kind of happiness like their cousin, Libby.