Lyz Lenz: When people hear about organizations like the Westboro Baptist Church, the reaction is often: just leave. But it’s more complicated than that. For you, your church was your family; it was your whole world. What did it mean to leave?

Megan Phelps-Roper: If organizations like Westboro were universally bad, they wouldn’t exist. There had to be some draw, and at Westboro, there was a lot of draw. The church was almost entirely made up of my extended family, and everyone in the church felt like family. We did everything together: We had dinner together, played video games; we read books and watched movies together. You were raised to be willing to do anything for one another. As long as you were a member of good standing, there was this incredible sense of love and belonging. In many ways, it was really beautiful.

These were the people who brought you food when you were sick. They threw baby showers and weddings. Westboro was your whole life. After you left, who were you?

I was indoctrinated. I shied away from using that term for a while, but the fact is, it’s true. I was taught that our beliefs were the infallible words of God. The paradigm was just so strictly ingrained into my brain. The idea of deviating from it was absolutely terrifying. What leaving means is you are going to be cut off from this community that is your everything.

Also, you’re going to hell.

At Westboro, the depictions of hell are extremely vivid. The only thing that changes in hell, according to the church, is your capacity to feel pain. As the capacity to feel pain increases, so does the pain. It’s absolutely terrifying. I believed God was going to curse me for having left this group of people. I was terrified I was going to get in a car accident, or I’d get some terrible disease. I believed there was no chance I was going to make it to old age.

I think for people not raised in a fundamentalist church, it’s hard to understand how the concept of hell is used as a tool of control.

My husband had a very difficult time understanding that we really believed in hell. He really thought we were all just pretending because this was what was required of us. But it was a very real fear for me.

What do you think people in America need to understand about religious fundamentalism?

That people can choose to believe differently. I was 26 years old when I left. Technically, I had the legal choice to leave when I was 18. But because of the way I was raised, leaving made just as much sense as cutting off a limb and then jumping into shark-infested waters. That’s how we saw the world, as this evil, corrupt place. And Westboro was the only refuge from that world.

Do you think that Westboro is an aberration in the world of Christianity? Or do think it’s an extension of what white Christian America says about faith?

There are aspects of Westboro that are, of course, more extreme in the way that certain religious practices manifest. But the idea that the Bible is the infallible word of God, that it’s unquestionable — this is common. Some people cannot believe there is an alternative interpretation of the Bible aside from their own. I was really shocked after I left and started talking to Evangelical Christians who were different from those I met in Westboro.

I remember going to a Lutheran church where there was a sermon about the apocalypse. The pastor told us the apocalypse is a metaphor, that it’s something we inflict upon ourselves and each other, and that the second coming of Jesus happens inside our hearts. I was like, “You can say that?”

Absolutely! That’s what I write about, the idea of epistemological humility. You can have strong beliefs, but people need to understand our perspectives are limited and that there is still more to learn. This kind of thinking is not at all limited to Westboro. I wrote about going into a casino after leaving the church and talking to a bartender, and she described the Westboro-like beliefs that her mother had taught her. Westboro is really well known because of its unique, extreme beliefs. But all across the country and around the world, it’s really unreal how common these things are.

So how do you get someone like you to leave?

I gave a TED Talk a couple of years ago detailing the strategies that helped change my mind. If you want to reach people on the other side, don’t assume bad intent on their part — they came to these beliefs based on a lifetime of experiences. Instead, ask questions.

One of the positive things about looking at extreme beliefs is that it highlights the fundamental problem with thinking that way. Taking these beliefs to their somewhat logical extension, people can see the parallels; they can see the similarities and realize, “Wow, that is not what I believe.” That’s the experience I’ve had too.

You encourage people to have a dialogue. But dialogue can be dangerous if you are queer or a person of color.

I’m always very careful to say that it is incumbent upon every individual in every situation where you have an opportunity to reach out to do it. I still reach out to my family in Westboro. I do it in interviews and on Twitter. But I also do it privately in messages that don’t get a response. I miss them desperately, but sometimes it’s just too painful and unsafe to reach out.

What I’m advocating for is that more people reach out across these divides. But for whatever reason, if you don’t have the emotional resources or you can’t or don’t want to develop the skills to do it, I completely understand that.

What I found so compelling about your story is that you were actively making Twitter a toxic place — but it also became a positive place for you.

I often say things like, “Twitter is a cesspool because we’re making it a cesspool.” And social media companies can do something to improve it. But I also think we’re looking for a technical solution to a cultural problem.

We need to be deliberate. We can decide to follow people we disagree with, consider their ideas and why they think the way they do, and be willing to engage with them.

That was the difference between the people who changed my mind on Twitter — the people who were willing to listen, have a conversation with me versus the people who just wanted to shame me. And again, I completely understand why people wanted to shame me. I was doing really shameful things, but I couldn’t see that they were shameful because of the environment that I was in.

I heard someone define shame as the feeling that we get when we violate the norms of our community. For me, that was a huge aha moment. I had grown up learning to celebrate death and tragedy because that’s how Westboro responded to bad things that happened. When I look back, how absolutely disgusting and backward is that? When I went on Twitter and all these people were trying to shame me, I knew I wasn’t part of their community. I felt like they were evil.

This dynamic is now playing out across our polarized country. We’re not recognizing that if you try to shame people, they’re not going to be moved by your shame to feel shame. They’re going to be motivated by your shaming to keep doing what they’re doing. It really just pushes them deeper into these beliefs and into their own communities. It’s one of the hardest things in the world to be willing to empathize with a person in a moment when they seem not to deserve it the most.

I want to understand how you see forgiveness. You did do things that were really harmful to other people, and now you’re back in the public sphere, saying things and asking people to listen to you again. How can people trust you?

For a long time after I left the church, everything I did was something somebody asked me to do. I didn’t talk about my experience unless somebody said they wanted to hear it. After having spent my entire life telling other people how to live, I was wary of stepping back and telling people, “Okay, I figured it out.”

I wrote about this in the book, but I went to a Jewish festival where I learned the concept of Tikkun Olam — repairing the world. I understood that I and my family have added to the brokenness in the world, and it’s up to me to try to find a way to repair some of it.

How do you define your faith today? Do you go to a church?

I am not religious anymore. I don’t want to say I’m not a believer because I’m still such a passionate believer in so many things. It’s just not in the divine or supernatural; it’s in humanity, hope, and grace. That concept of grace, that’s the epigraph of the book, is this line from The Great Gatsby. It says, “Reserving judgment is a matter of infinite hope.” And to me, that is the concept of grace. It’s the idea of seeing other people and being on a journey and that there is hope for them tomorrow or to change over time. We know that we grow and change all the time.

Grace is a very religious concept. How does your concept of grace now differ from the one you were taught in the church?

My mom had a two-word definition of grace: unmerited favor. I was taught that is the grace of God. You deserve nothing. You deserve nothing good. You deserve death and hell. And it’s only by the grace of God that any good, any human being, has any hope. But now I see grace as a posture of generosity for ourselves and other people to understand when people do things that are wrong.

I feel like the recipient of so much grace. What we did to people in their most grievous, vulnerable moments, being outside of those funerals, praising and thanking God that this person was dead and that it was the judgment of God — I had done this to so many people, and for them to be willing to see me with grace was absolutely unreal to me. That was the thing that really gave me hope after I left.

What does that atonement look like?

I don’t like to talk about the financial aspect, but giving is one way. It’s reaching out to my family and trying to help them find better ways. Not just because I want my family back but because they still affect so many other people.

It is helping other people escape similar destructive ideologies. Every opportunity that I have been offered, I have tried to take advantage of. I want to use these experiences to be a force for healing rather than what I did for so many years, which was contributing to people’s pain.