Shut Your Mouth. You Weren’t in a Cult, Karen.
Who doesn’t love to hate Westboro Baptist? Those assholes with their signs saying God Hates Fags? Their picketing of soldiers’ funerals. Their outfits made up entirely of sweatshirts.
They’re hillbillies, rednecks, idiots. Ignorant racists who hide from the world then exit to scream hate.
But researching for a podcast episode lately on the church, I listened to Megan Phelps-Roper’s book Unfollow. Damn. Not only did it blow my mind she left the cult, that was her FAMILY, but I knew way less about Westboro than I assumed I did.
They’re lawyers. Lawyers who tried some of the first civil rights cases in Topeka, Kansas. And we found out other things that had us doing that thing I hate to do: try and understand people. You can hear it here.
What got to me, yet again, while learning about a cult, is how similar it is to good ol’ religion. And by religion, I mean that “relationship” I claimed was not religion, but IS because relationships get taxed.
Charismatic leader, giving of money, laughing at the leader’s jokes when not funny, feeling you are “in a presence” when around them, being shunned when you leave (bye, old church friends who unfriended me on Facebook), feeling only your group had The Truth. It goes on and on.
The distinction experts try and make between cults and run-of-the-mill religion is that cults cause true damage. I’m happily whole after deconstructing out of religion, but just because I didn’t get the pastor’s initials branded on me or have to be his child bride doesn’t mean that harm hasn’t happened.
I’m a huge sadness to my family. It took me a decade or longer to be able to make my own decisions AND take responsibility for the positive outcomes (could always do that if it was a negative outcome because God gets the credit for good things, and I must have screwed it up/not listened correctly/not laid down my ego if things didn’t work out well).
Once you slide out the bowels of the church, you can see how everyone spoke the same — lingo and timbre, dressed alike, did the same activities, vvvvottted the same, and are oblivious to see any of it. (If I see one more “I love Jesus, but I cuss a little”…)
Megan Phelps-Roper left a legitimate cult, one that looks very different according to what angle you’re viewing it from. And Zeus-bless her for joining the hordes who risk what they have to to stop living a lie.
