Making Sense with Sam Harris - #12 — Leaving the Church

Episode Date: July 3, 2015

Sam Harris speaks with Megan Phelps-Roper, granddaughter of Fred Phelps of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

Thank you. Today I'll be speaking with Megan Phelps Roper, who is the granddaughter of the infamous Fred Phelps, who is the pastor of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. You've seen the signs they hold while picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, signs that read, God hates fags, or thank God for dead soldiers, or thank God for AIDS. Megan grew up in this church, as did the rest of her family. Most of her family remains in it. She has since left and is in a unique position to bear witness to the power of religious belief, both in her own life and in the lives of everyone she grew up with. I found it a fascinating conversation. I found her a highly intelligent and seemingly very reliable witness

to this sort of life experience. And I hope you find our conversation as enjoyable as I did. One thing I should point out is that it will seem highly anachronistic that we don't talk about the recent Supreme Court ruling that made it legal for gays and lesbians to marry throughout the United States. We actually spoke before that ruling came down. Also, I feel the need to apologize for the quality of the audio. The more I get into podcasting, the more I am horrified by the quality of the audio I've put out previously. But I assure you, eventually things will be stable on my end. Unfortunately, this was not such an occasion.

are you, eventually things will be stable on my end. Unfortunately, this was not such an occasion. I would fire my audio engineer, but then I would have to fire myself. And now I give you Megan Phelps Roper. Hey, Megan, how you doing? I'm really good. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Well, thank you for doing this. It's great to hear your voice. And you and I were put in touch by Graham Wood, the Atlantic writer. And how did you cross paths with him? And did he interview you for something previously? Yeah, so I was on Twitter and his cover story, What ISIS Really Wants, was in my feed a lot and I read it. And as I was reading it, I was hearing so many themes that were so similar to my own upbringing. I mean, obviously my family,

Westboro Baptist Church is not ISIS, but there's so many aspects of the way they believe and things that just struck me as I was going through it. And when I got to the end of the article, I was just totally blown away. And I scrolled back to the top and I saw his name and I immediately recognized it. And about eight years ago, I was talking to him for, I think it was, we were talking about soldiers' funerals. It was when, not that long after the soldiers' funerals protest had started at the church. And we exchanged emails back then. And so I, you know, found him on Twitter and I was like, hey, I don't know if you remember me, but I just read your article and it was amazing.

And then we just started talking. Yeah. What Graham thought would be interesting in putting the two of us together is to talk about the power of religious belief and the role that it plays in inspiring people's behavior. And you obviously have a unique perspective on that, having the background that you have. But let's back up and talk about your background itself and what the Westboro Baptist Church is. Many people will have seen the visuals online of, of you and the rest of the, um, of your family, I guess, holding signs that say God hates fags, or I think thank God for dead soldiers is one of them. So tell me about, uh, Westboro and let's get into what you,

what you actually believed, uh, growing up. Right. Okay. So the protesting started when I was five. And the church is located about half a mile from a public park in Topeka, Kansas. And this park was known as a place where gays could go and meet and have anonymous sex. And it was something that was well known in the community. And it was even listed in this nationally circulated address book of such places, you know, listings across the country. And, you know, one day, you know, a couple of years before the picketing started,

my grandfather was riding through the park with my older brother who was at the time about four or five maybe. They were riding their bikes and, you know, my grandfather would ride ahead a little way and then circle back. And one of the times when he was circling back, he saw two men, you know, trying to lure my brother into the bushes and, you know, just immediately wanted to do something about it. So he started writing letters to the city fathers and, you know, and going to city council meetings trying to get, you know, the part cleaned up. I mean, this was, I mean, it was really something that was well known. There were, you know, journalists and cops, they were doing sting operations. And so it was an undeniable fact. So this was, this was in what year? 88, 89. And this was your father or your grandfather who had this experience? My grandfather. Yes. My grandfather is Fred Phelps. Sorry. And he's the

one who founded, I mean, who was the first pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church. Was he a pastor already, or he just decided to become one at this point? So he was ordained when he was, I think, 16 or 17 in Utah, and he was kind of a traveling preacher. And then he ended up in Topeka, and he was preaching at a church called the Eastside Baptist Church. And they were about to start another church on the other side of town, and they asked him to stay and be the pastor. So that's how he ended up in Topeka at this church. So he had this experience of which would spark homophobia in many predisposed to it. And so he decided to start this church.

Was he already someone? He had to have already been someone who was quite fundamentalist in his belief anyway, right? Or was this a formative moment for him? So I'm sorry, I should back up a little ways. So the church actually started in 1955. So he had been a preacher for some time before this incident. I'm sorry, I think I misunderstood what you were saying. So yeah, so he and his views over the years had gotten, you know, further and further away from the mainstream.

you know, further and further away from the mainstream. Um, and so when this happened and, you know, he spent, I think it was about a year, maybe more than a year, um, trying to get the city to do something about it. Um, and when he kept, he eventually got thrown out of a city council meeting, um, for saying that the, um, that the city council members were sitting around like last year's Christmas trees. And so they threw him out and he said, okay, well, I'm going to do something about this myself. So that's when the picketing actually started. And it was just relatively innocuous signs like, you know, watch your kids, gays troll this park, you know, gays are in the restrooms and, you know, things like that.

And the response, you the response from the community, other churches started coming out to counter-protest, saying things like, God's love speaks loudest. There was a huge contingent of counter-protesters from KU, which is about half an hour away from the church. And so, yeah, and it started, there really wasn't much about God initially. But then when, you know, when these churches started to counter protest, they were like, well, you know, the Bible does say things about gays and it's not good. And we are a church

and we have to address this issue. So that's how it initially got started. And then over the years, it just got more and more extreme. So first, gays were the target. And then it was churches for supporting gays and otherwise not following what my grandfather and the church members believed. They weren't following what the Bible said, not just about gays, but about, you know, premarital sex and divorce and remarriage and adultery. And, you know, so, um, and then pretty quickly, um, the funeral protesting started, um, I think it was 93. So this, this was all in, um, 91 is actually when the protesting started. So I think in 93, they were protesting funerals of gay people who had died of AIDS. And it was partly an attention-getting mechanism, but it was never just to get attention.

I remember, and this is something that a lot of people have charged the church with. Yes, they're not really Christian. They don't really, they don't really follow the Bible. Here, look, they ignore this verse and this verse. And, but there was, I remember listening to my grandfather in an interview a few years ago, and the reporter said, some people say that you're just doing these things to get attention. The reporter said, some people say that you're just doing these things to get attention. And he kind of looked at her like she was crazy or stupid and said, well, of course I'm doing it to get attention. How can I preach to these people if I don't have their attention? So there was always a reason and a purpose for the protests themselves.

But to get attention for them and to get attention for the message was always the primary goal. The charge that things are done just to get attention usually carries with it the insinuation that people don't really believe what they say they believe, that these expressions of hatred are just meant to be inflammatory but aren't necessarily an honest statement of one's outlook. Was there any distance between what you and the rest of

the family believed and what you were saying publicly? Or were you just simply giving voice to your actual worldview? No, we were just giving voice to our actual worldview. I mean, my family didn't come to the table with hatred for LGBT people and then look to the Bible to justify that hatred, which is a common charge. them have committed abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. And walked away from that with, and not just that verse, but lots of other ones. They walked away from that with God hates fags and supporting the death penalty for gays. And to categorically deny a connection between those words from Leviticus and our beliefs to say that we read into the text what we wanted to see is, I think, to be blind to the nearly all-encompassing power of that sort of blinding faith. And that's why it was such almost a relief to read in Graham Wood's article to say that ISIS is Islamic, very Islamic. It's not a matter of ISIS being representative of Muslims as a whole.

It's a matter of them drawing inspiration from the text. Yeah, yeah. And the church and your grandfather are sometimes mentioned in this connection. So what I find as someone who criticizes the link between religious belief, in this case, Muslim jihadist ideas and a phenomenon like ISIS, I find that people who don't like that connection very much will say, well, we have our extremists, we have the Westboro Baptist Church. Now, it's always a frustrating thing to hear as though what your family has done is in any way analogous to what is happening throughout much

of the Muslim world, and in particular in Syria and Iraq right now. But your family's church is often held out as the most extreme variant of Christianity in the West, and in particular in the U.S. I'm wondering if that's true. I'd like to just find out precisely what you believed on other topics, but it's clear that this attention-getting mechanism of standing out there with signs has convinced many people that you're extreme. But are you part of the Reconstructionist or Dominionist movement that wants all of the old laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy practiced? I mean, do you think that homosexuals should be killed or adulterers should be killed? Because there are Christians in the U.S. who claim to

believe that. And is your grandfather among them? Yes. They're not trying to reinstitute all of the Levitical code, the Mosaic code. They think that there's two categories according to the church. There's the ceremonial law, which is things like the dietary code and, uh, and then there's the moral law, which is things like, uh, you know, laws against murder and against homosexuality and against adultery. Um, so if they're, they're only trying to uphold the moral, the moral law. Um, and, but that, this was actually one of the, one of, you know, that eventually helped me to see outside of our paradigm. Because my grandfather would say things like that the only way for the United States to show that they have truly repented of the sin of homosexuality is for them to institute the death penalty for homosexuality, make it a capital crime. And we had a sign that said death penalty for fags.

Yeah, so the comparison to ISIS is somewhat more reasonable than I first thought. It's not that obviously you've been running around killing people or your church has, but you're advocating a true commitment to sort of Taliban style theocracy, uh, or ISIS style theocracy. So what, what are, what are other killing offenses? What would you, what else would you pull out of, or what else would your grandfather pull out of Leviticus as, as actionable? I might say adultery, but we never, this was one, again, this was one of the things that, let me back up one second. So I had, okay, for one, they're not actually trying to institute a theocracy. that the world is going to end and that only a tiny remnant of humanity, which is to say the church itself, but only the true, the elect of God. So they're not trying to actually change the laws.

They're not actually trying to make anything happen with the government. They don't believe it's possible, and so it's not something that they pursue. Right. But that question about death penalty for Vags, that was the very first point, the very first real question that I had about our theology. And when I say question, I mean doubt, the first thing I realized that we were wrong about. And it came from a conversation with a Jewish guy on Twitter. It was really, I mean, I'm advocating for the death penalty for gays, and he, you know, I'm quoting these verses from Leviticus, and, you know, and he says, well, what about this member

of your church who had a child out of wedlock? And I said, you know, what about her? She repented, so she doesn't deserve that punishment. And he said, yeah, but that's also a sin worthy of death. And, you know, and also didn't Jesus say, let he who is without sin cast the first stone? Also, didn't Jesus say, let he who is without sin cast the first stone? And so this is the first time, you know, stepping back from that and realizing, you know, if she had been killed, you know, just if you kill someone, as soon as they sin, you completely cut off the opportunity to repent and be forgiven, which is a major foundation of Christian theology. This is what we were preaching, repent or perish. You have to repent and follow God's laws and live as we live,

and that's the only way to heaven. And then for him to say that, you know, quoting Jesus, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, I realized, because we would always answer that quote, because people would throw that in our face all the time. We would answer that by saying, yeah, but we're not casting stones. We're preaching words. All we have are words.

We put words on signs and we stand on public sidewalks. We're not hurting anybody. But we were advocating for the government to kill people. And what was Jesus talking about, if not the death penalty. So, you know, I take that to, you know, my mom and a few other people in the church and was just immediately shut down. It's like, no, Leviticus calls for the death penalty. If that penalty was good enough for God, then it's good enough for us. Romans 1 says that gays are worthy of death and so are their enablers. No. So what did your mom say about the

analogy to the other member of your family who had had a child out of wedlock? Just that I was getting wrapped around an axle. Like, oh, this is just, it's just not this an important piece of theology or that the point is they're not going to do it. That's what she said. And I remember thinking like, well, yeah, but if we're going to use this as a litmus test, the fact that, you know, instituting death penalty, since Jesus said, let he who is without sin cast the first stone, shouldn't the litmus test be the other direction? Shouldn't the fact that we don't do that be, you know, showing that we're obedient to God and such? One thing that I think we should flag here is that it's often believed on the atheist,

secularist, rationalist side of the conversation that you just can't reason people out of their heartfelt religious convictions because there's this meme that has gone around, often attributed to someone like Mark Twain. I don't know who actually said it, but the idea is that if you can't reason somebody out of something they didn't reason themselves into. But that's clearly not true, and anyone who's actually been in dialogue with many people like yourself over the years knows it's not true, is your effort to make your beliefs self-consistent. And this person on Twitter pointing out a logical contradiction in your beliefs was an entering wedge for you, which ultimately separated you from these ideas that had been drummed into you.

So I want to get into what you now believe in a minute, but I want to linger for a moment on just what the church doctrine is. In a church like Westboro, how do you resist the move that many, many Christian denominations make, which is to disavow more or less everything in the Old Testament because it no longer applies. You don't have to fulfill the law that Jesus gave a doctrine of grace and none of that old barbarism applies. Why wasn't that move open to you and your family? Because we believed that the, I mean, there are a lot of verses in the New Testament, a lot of passages and writers in the New Testament who referenced the Old Testament as, you know, a basis and foundation for their doctrines and sort of reinforcing them.

And Jesus himself said that not one heaven and earth will pass away, but not one jot or tittle of my word will pass away until all is fulfilled. Yeah, there is that. Yeah. We definitely didn't disavow the Old Testament. And the only reason that distinction I was explaining a minute ago about the difference, the distinction between the ceremonial law and the moral law, the reason they don't keep kosher or something, is because of a New Testament passage that specifically sort of revises.

It's in Acts 10 and 11. It talks about Peter is having a vision and, you know, God sends this sheet down with all these animals that were unclean under the Mosaic code. And God says, rise, Peter, kill and eat. And Peter says, not so Lord for no unclean thing. It's past my lips. And this happens three times. And God finally says, don't you call unclean what I've cleansed. So it's like, okay, this is now, now this, it's, it's not no longer required to, to keep kosher or to follow these. And there are several other passages in the New Testament that specify which of the laws you have to follow. So we definitely took a lot of our doctrine and a lot of our beliefs from the Old Testament. It doesn't help that Paul also endorses at least the morality of killing homosexuals.

I think it's in Ephesians, although I think he also says that it doesn't have to be carried out. Isn't that how things shake down with Paul? I don't know. I'm not sure about that passage you're referring to in Ephesians. But I do know that we memorized Romans. We memorized a lot of the Bible. But we memorized Romans 1 one summer. And the end of Romans 1, it's basically starting from verse 18 towards the end of Romans 1, you know, it's basically starting from verse 18 towards the end.

You know, it's talking about gay people. And then at the end, it says that, don't you know that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only those which do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. That really is always the issue, that a more literalist hewing to the text has a kind of self-consistency and power. Even when the text is, as the Bible is, rather amazingly inconsistent, the effort to connect the dots, the effort to make it as consistent as possible

keeps you as wedded as possible to a first century or a thousand year B.C. moral code, depending on what you're emphasizing. into here where the theology is really on the side of the literalist when it comes down to an argument about what the books actually say. Because any effort to make them seem merely metaphorical or more elastic than any plain reading of the text would suggest that effort itself is clearly being driven not from some imperative that the reader is finding in the text, but an imperative that's coming from outside the text, from the world that's filled with libertines who want other things out of life. You have a different set of priorities that have come from a modern, secular, scientific, cosmopolitan commitment, and then you go back to the text trying to make sense of its sacredness, and the deck is stacked against you if you're a moderate or a liberal. Right. I mean, I think the difference, and Graham talks about this a little bit, I think,

and there's a difference. There's different kinds of belief. There's belief like my family and that I believe at least some percentage of ISIS is in similar groups. And those are people who read the text and, like you said, the plain meaning of the text. So, and whatever they take away from that plain reading, like that is, the plain meaning of the text. So, and whatever, whatever they take away from that plain reading, like that is what it says. And there is no interpretation. And that, that idea about there not being any interpretation, that's another thing that was so similar. I don't know if you read the, in the New Yorker, there was a story recently called Journey to Jihad. And again, with this, you know, all these similarities. And that one

was one of the first ones. It says the leader of one of these, you know, groups, it was called Sharia for Belgium, asked this prospective recruit if he was prepared to learn the Quran without any distortion or editing or interpretation. It's like, okay, you just read the text and it means what it means and you have to go along with it no matter what your moral impulses would say otherwise. And then there are people who read it and there's a willingness when they read it to include their own thoughts of, like you said, things outside the text, their own beliefs and understanding of the world,

that obviously influences the way that they read it. Or that they're trying to read it in light of beliefs that they already have. And my family saw that as explicitly evil. Like, you are substituting your judgment for God's judgment when clearly the book says this. And we would quote the Bible. We meant, like I said, we would sit around, we read the Bible every single day. We talked about world events and the church's interpretation in the light of the church's interpretation of the Bible. And we would memorize big parts of it, and we would be standing out on the picket line,

you know, talking with people, and just quoting verse after verse. And so many people, and I'm not saying everyone is like this, but so many of the people we were talking to had no idea that the Bible said these things. I mean, and so it's a very, and again, this is one of those things, I mean, I was reading Reza Aslan said something like, if I were to, he was talking about you and Bill Maher and he says like, they believe that people derive their values from their religion.

That as every scholar of religion in the world will tell you is false. People don't derive their values from their religion. They bring their values to their religion. That, as every scholar of religion in the world will tell you, is false. People don't derive their values from their religion. They bring their values to their religion. And I can just say flat out, that's exactly the reverse of what happened to my family. My family, without these texts, they would be doing amazing incredible things that would change the world for the better i mean my family is full of lawyers there and you know professionals and they work hard and they're incredibly intelligent they have advanced degrees and and incredibly it can be incredibly kind and generous and that's one of the things you know when you're there when you're part of it that shows you the goodness of,

like, see, so much of this stuff comes directly from the scriptures and it's so good and so wonderful and it's such an amazing thing to be a part of. And yet, because they have to set aside, again, their own moral impulses and accept this, you and accept this reading of the text as they understand it, because they believe it's the Word of God. They are left with picketing funerals and causing all sorts of trouble and heartache for people. Yeah. Well, none of that is a surprise to me, of course. And I think the same is true even amid all the grotesque violence you see in ISIS. You see these guys. These are not depressed, suicidal psychopaths who just want to destroy their lives and go out with a bang. These are people who are deriving incredible experiences of meaning

and highly energized, passionate experiences of bonding with their brothers in arms. And they just have no doubt that what they're doing is morally right and that the creator of the universe is going to reward them for doing it. And so it's not to hear that your family was experiencing and probably still is experiencing a rich life in the context of these beliefs doesn't surprise me at all. What is it about? Explain the picketing of funerals, in particular, the funerals of soldiers, what is that about, and what does the sign, thank God for dead soldiers, mean? Soldiers' funerals, the picketing started in June of 2005.

So it was a couple of years into the war, and they were seeing that. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast, along with other subscriber-only content, including bonus episodes and AMAs and the conversations I've been having on the Waking Up app. The Making Sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now at SamHarris.org.