Ex-WBC Members Perspective on the Church

Megan Phelps-Roper:

Megan Phelps-Roper was born into the Westboro Baptist Church, the granddaughter of its founder, Fred Phelps. Raised with the belief that her family alone upheld the true word of God, she began protesting funerals at 19, including those of fallen U.S. soldiers. Within the church, these acts were seen as expressions of love—warnings to a sinful world rooted in scripture. Challenging someone’s sin, she was taught, was the only way to truly love them. Protesting a funeral, no matter how painful it appeared from the outside, was seen as a divine responsibility.

Everything began to shift when Megan took over the church’s Twitter account. While many people responded with anger, others approached her with questions and thoughtful challenges to her beliefs. Over time, these interactions sparked doubt. She started to see contradictions in the church’s theology and began to empathize with those she had been taught to condemn. For the first time, she felt ashamed of celebrating death and questioning others’ grief. That sense of shame, coupled with growing connection to people outside the church, became the beginning of her departure.

In 2012, Megan left Westboro—a choice that cost her family, community, and the certainty she had once clung to. In the years since, she has become an advocate for empathy and dialogue, sharing her story as a way to show that change is possible, even in the most rigid belief systems. Her journey is not one of instant transformation, but of learning to listen, to doubt, and to see others with compassion rather than condemnation.

Libby Phelps:

Libby Phelps left the Westboro Baptist Church on March 13, 2009, after years of internal questioning and discomfort with the group’s teachings. While she had grown up participating in the church’s protests and embracing its theology as part of her upbringing, she eventually reached a point where she could no longer align herself with its beliefs. For her, the church’s focus on condemnation, particularly through funeral picketing and exclusionary doctrines, felt increasingly unjustifiable. She noted that members were often quick to ostracize those deemed unworthy, which made the group feel less like a faith community and more like a closed social circle. Over time, she no longer believed that this approach reflected the values she wanted to live by.

Since leaving, Libby has become an advocate for equality, including LGBTQ+ rights—issues the church had long opposed. She has spoken publicly about how her views evolved and how, as a child, she trusted that her parents were leading her in the right direction. Stepping away from those teachings was not easy, as it meant separating from her family and the only community she had known. But as she began to form new connections and reflect on her own beliefs, she found herself drawn to the principle that no one person is better than another. Attending the anniversary of Equality House, located across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church, was a meaningful act for her—one that symbolized how people can grow and change, even after deeply rooted beginnings.

Reflecting on her time in Westboro, Libby has said that her life was deeply insular. While she attended public school, her social world revolved around the church. Close bonds with her cousins and siblings provided a sense of belonging, and she remembers singing duets with her sister while their father played piano. Despite her disagreements with the church’s ideology, she still misses the emotional closeness of her family. Her story reveals the complexity of leaving a tightly controlled environment: the process of reshaping belief often comes with both freedom and loss.