Have Megan Phelps-Roper and her sister Grace left the Westboro cult?

It appears two granddaughters of Westboro patriarch Fred Phelps have left the fold. Megan and Grace Phelps-Roper, daughters of Shirley Phelps-Roper, have reportedly posted the following on Medium.com under a title borrowed from The Avett Brothers, Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise:

“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:

Megan Phelps [Image Credit]

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.

Where do you go from there?

I don’t know, exactly. My sister Grace is with me, though. We’re trying to figure it out together.

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.

Up until now, our names have been synonymous with “God Hates Fags.” Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what we did. We hope Ms. Kyle was right about the other part, too, though – that everything sticks – and that the changes we make in our lives will speak for themselves.

Megan and Grace

Sometimes these types of reports are little more than hopeful urban legends, but the link to this story came from Megan’s well known Twitter account:

Hi. medium.com/turning-points…

— Megan Phelps-Roper (@meganphelps) February 6, 2013

The next day, Grace tweeted simply:

Every day & every day & every day.

— Grace Phelps-Roper (@gracethecurious) February 8, 2013

I hope this report is true. We should pray both of these young ladies come to know God in a way they never before have, but into a relationship into which He invites them.

Previous Westboro articles:
A plea to all media outlets re: the Westboro cult

Is Westboro Baptist Church a cult? Yes, it is

‘The most hated family in America,’ documentary on the Westboro Cult [VIDEO]

Click below to order (pre-order before March 5, 2013) Banished, by former Westboro member Lauren Drain.