Unfollow is Megan Phelps-Roper’s account of growing up in the extremist Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). The church is notorious for its inflammatory preaching against gay people, Jews, Muslims and for picketing the funerals of American soldiers and the American Holocaust museum. Its members brandish signs that scream: “FAG GOD = RECTUM”, “PRAY FOR MORE DEAD SOLDIERS” and “GOD HATES JEWS”. Its leader Fred Phelps warned against “a militant sodomite agenda” and proclaimed Muhammad was a “demon-possessed whoremonger and paedophile”.
Unfollow is an exceptional book: a loving portrait of a fanatical organisation. In fact, “family” may be a better word in this case: Fred Phelps was Megan’s grandfather. He founded the church in Topeka, Kansas, in 1955 and it consists primarily of Phelps’s family. Now, apparently,
