Making Sense - Sam Harris - #171 — Escaping a Christian Cult

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris okay very short intro today

00:00:23.500 just two things reminding supporters of the show to subscribe to the private rss feed

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00:00:46.300 you should be seeing this show appear in your podcatcher with a red making sense icon not

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00:01:00.340 you to fall through the cracks sorry for the inconvenience and finally with regards to my

00:01:06.920 previous podcast with andrew mcafee whose book is more from less many of you love that podcast

00:01:13.380 and i just want to let you know that his book is now available this week publishing on tuesday

00:01:20.040 the 8th of october and now for today's guest who also has a book publishing this week my guest

00:01:28.980 today is megan phelps roper megan is an amazing woman she's been on the podcast before her book

00:01:36.820 is unfollow a memoir of loving and leaving the westboro baptist church and megan is a writer

00:01:43.880 and uh formerly a member of the westboro baptist church which she left in 2012 and she's now an

00:01:51.300 educator on topics related to extremism and communication across ideological lines as you'll

00:01:57.900 hear she's very well placed to do that and really just an amazingly resilient and wise and

00:02:05.240 together person given her background that is no small miracle so without further delay i bring you

00:02:13.940 megan phelps roper

00:02:15.140 i am here with megan phelps roper megan thanks for coming back on the podcast it's really good to be

00:02:25.000 back so uh you have been really busy the last time we spoke on the podcast you just had a twitter

00:02:34.320 feed if i'm not mistaken and now you have a daughter first and most important but you also

00:02:39.260 have a book and uh i think a movie that will be based on the book you you've been you've been very

00:02:45.240 busy yeah there's been a lot going on it's kind of it's kind of funny for a long time i felt like

00:02:51.100 everything i was doing was really reactive you know somebody was asking me to come speak somewhere

00:02:56.160 or you know talk about westboro and my life and everything and then when it came time to write this

00:03:02.540 book this was the first thing that i actually had to say i want to do this and then to and that was a

00:03:08.320 little bit and i think i think we talked about that a little bit last time just that feeling of

00:03:13.280 you know not wanting to having spent my entire life telling people how to live to now say okay you

00:03:19.840 guys now i have it all figured out and let me tell you what the answers are now right right so

00:03:25.040 obviously that's not the tone i take in the book and that's not the tone i take in real life

00:03:28.680 but definitely it's kind of a little bit of a mental hurdle to to get over yeah yeah well it's

00:03:34.880 certainly quite a task to decide to sit down and write a book as well and and um you've written

00:03:41.180 really a wonderful one to read and i think our conversation will not do the book justice

00:03:47.380 deliberately i just want people to read it the book is unfollow and it's your your memoir and your

00:03:53.400 account of leaving the westboro baptist church and on the last podcast we we spoke you know a fair

00:04:01.640 amount about your life and what it was like to be in the church i think we should recapitulate a little

00:04:06.980 bit of that just so people have a sense of what's going on here but you know then we'll move on to

00:04:12.620 some other topics and also i got questions solicited from twitter which i want to cover sure i guess look

00:04:19.900 i think you have to tell people who don't know and and that will be some significant percentage of

00:04:24.700 people i think just what is the westboro baptist church and how did it start the westboro baptist

00:04:32.400 church is a group of about 70 to 80 people and it's made up almost entirely of my extended family

00:04:39.920 and they have become really well known in the past it's been almost 30 years now since they started

00:04:46.800 this picketing ministry they would go we would go starting from the time i was five years old

00:04:53.380 in 1991 and protest it started with the lgbtq community and then and then just expanded from

00:05:01.680 there until it included literally everyone outside of our church everyone outside was a legitimate

00:05:06.820 target for our protests the things that they're probably most well known for are again their their

00:05:12.500 protests of the lgbtq community and then also military funerals the funerals of aids victims and

00:05:19.020 anybody that they considered sinners which again is literally everyone so and anybody that got any

00:05:25.280 kind of attention was especially was a target yeah so people have seen pictures of kids and and you

00:05:32.960 were one of those kids holding signs at military funerals and just you know in protest over

00:05:39.820 whatever basketball games and just in random places and the signs the juxtaposition of the

00:05:46.880 kids and the signage is what has been so shocking about this church i mean you know the the classic sign

00:05:54.060 is god hates fags give me some of the other signs that were most offensive to military families and

00:06:00.720 and others thank god for september 11 thank god for dead soldiers those those especially were

00:06:06.800 really offensive to a lot of people and then there were ones like pray for more dead soldiers

00:06:11.940 and pray for more dead kids and those ultimately were they became a huge problem for me and i'm i'm happy

00:06:20.760 to say now that you know for you know in the in the time after i left the church i started you know

00:06:26.580 making art you know reaching out to my family and making these arguments to them generally from a

00:06:32.560 scriptural perspective so even though i am no longer a believer i don't believe in the you know

00:06:37.560 the infallibility of the bible i still make arguments to my family from the scriptures because i know that

00:06:44.540 that will be what they find most compelling and so i started to say i'm happy to say that since i left

00:06:49.880 and started making those arguments they they no longer hold those signs and of course i always have

00:06:55.740 to joke that you know not praying for people to die is kind of a low bar you know when it comes to

00:07:01.360 human decency but for westboro it was a huge shift in their position and so that's for me that's a

00:07:06.820 really hopeful sign that just like i was reached they can still be reached that's interesting so i

00:07:12.780 wasn't aware that they had modified their message to that degree because i saw the the louis theroux

00:07:18.280 documentary the the more recent one which we'll talk about so you're saying that they they still

00:07:24.420 hold the the homophobic signs but they don't hold the ones celebrating the deaths of soldiers and

00:07:30.680 children i think they still have the thank god signs because for them that's absolutely still

00:07:36.580 a scriptural you know because they believe in predestination that is a scriptural proposition

00:07:40.380 that you are supposed to thank god for all of his judgments because they are by definition

00:07:45.540 righteous so i think this the thank god signs are still there but the praying for more dead praying

00:07:52.140 for more curses on their enemies those ones are the ones that have that are not part of their

00:07:56.720 repertoire anymore so your grandfather started the church and and what was his background i mean how

00:08:03.300 did he how did he get his revelation or his commitment to a an unusually doctrinaire version

00:08:10.120 of christianity i think he grew up methodist it wasn't it didn't seem like they were particularly

00:08:15.880 or especially religious but then he graduated high school at 16 and got a principal appointment to

00:08:23.260 west point military academy and but he had to wait until he was 17 you know in order to you know

00:08:30.600 matriculate and so in that time between when he graduated and and when he could actually enroll

00:08:35.740 he got saved at a tent revival meeting in the south and he thought it was he thought he needed to become a

00:08:44.280 preacher and so that's what he did so for a while he was a traveling preacher he went to a a few

00:08:49.620 different uh he went to bob jones university which at that time was in tennessee and then also

00:08:55.360 to pray bible institute in in canada and and so he started this religious education and then

00:09:03.580 either he got to topeka you know as a as a traveling preacher he got to topeka kansas

00:09:08.900 and he was preaching at this church called east side baptist and they liked his preaching so much

00:09:16.360 that they asked him to stay in topeka and you know settle down and become the pastor of the

00:09:22.880 westboro baptist church on the other side of town and but how do you think he became more hardcore than

00:09:28.620 anyone within a thousand miles what was that path like for him you know some of this of course is is

00:09:35.680 conjecture it just seems like he had such confidence in his own thinking he was extremely intelligent

00:09:41.480 you know he graduated high school at the top of his class and but it just seemed to like over time

00:09:48.120 and especially once he became the pastor of his own church it just seems like he he had such a sense

00:09:53.880 of certainty that the bible was the literal and infallible word of god and that his understanding

00:09:59.600 of it was necessarily the the truth you know the only righteous view of it he didn't believe in

00:10:06.380 interpretation which is you know it's a that's kind of a feature of groups like westboro they don't

00:10:12.140 believe in interpretation even while they are necessarily interpreting you know they're they

00:10:17.380 have to figure out how to apply these principles to their lives and but yeah they don't believe in it

00:10:23.540 so so they just think that just the the literal understanding as as from their perspective is the truth

00:10:31.160 and and the unquestionable truth so it seems like you know with grams it was just that that sense of

00:10:36.380 certainty that you know made him so sure that everyone else was wrong and that everyone needed

00:10:41.980 to bow to his understanding of it yeah and so and so then he essentially indoctrinated the whole family

00:10:50.220 i mean he didn't have a family yet i suppose and then he started having many children and many

00:10:55.340 grandchildren and you all became the church right yeah so most of the church it's it's about 80 percent

00:11:02.080 80 85 percent is my is my extended family and even now the few outsiders who have joined the church the

00:11:09.620 very few outsiders when you especially when you consider how much attention westboro has gotten

00:11:13.700 the few outsiders who have joined many of them have married into the family as well so you know of

00:11:19.460 this if you saw louis most recent documentary two of my siblings are now engaged to a family that had

00:11:27.460 you know a father had joined with four children three of those four are now either married or engaged

00:11:33.220 and i think the oldest is just in their early 20s yeah and there's a crazy story of the first

00:11:38.140 documentarian who who came from the outside world to cover the church wound up joining it is he is he

00:11:43.880 still a member of the church he is he's one of the elders actually he wasn't the first documentarian

00:11:48.560 who came but he he is the first one who came and stayed right right he he really went native

00:11:54.140 amazing so and from my i mean from my you know perspective he had this you know many of the same

00:12:00.540 features you know just psychologically as gramps you know that that idea of there being one standard

00:12:06.880 that's a really compelling idea that there is one standard that it is a divine and unquestionable

00:12:12.160 standard and that that my judgment has to be followed you know in all things like that's for a lot of

00:12:18.500 people that's that can be really especially especially people with large egos which i believe is

00:12:24.240 absolutely true of both that documentarian you mentioned and and my grandfather well it's also

00:12:29.720 it is the path to perfect clarity right i mean if you're just going to eschew any ambiguity or any

00:12:37.400 burden of of multiple readings and you're just going to find the most literal one possible in every case

00:12:44.500 was that the the algorithm that you guys used as far as rendering interpretations that were not

00:12:51.260 considered interpretations just be as literal as possible in every case basically i mean that was that

00:12:57.820 was definitely definitely a feature of how we read the bible it's kind of funny because i also feel

00:13:02.940 like you know we we tended to choose the most strict interpretation so for instance there was an expositor

00:13:09.360 that we would read a lot named john gill and you know when it came to certain aspects of the new

00:13:15.920 testament you know we're in cases like um you know divorce and remarriage westbrook sees that as

00:13:21.220 always that is always you know forbidden by god because jesus and you know in luke 16 says

00:13:27.980 if you divorce your wife and marry another then that's adultery and if you marry a woman who's been put

00:13:33.180 away from her husband then that's adultery so it seems like very clear but there are other verses that

00:13:37.860 kind of seem to moderate that position and john gill you know took the more lenient stance and

00:13:43.460 in that case we thought john gill was a heretic so even the people that we looked to for a lot of

00:13:49.480 guidance you know became heretics if they weren't as hardline as we were and the other interesting fact

00:13:55.140 about your grandfather that became an interesting fact about the whole family is that basically

00:13:59.940 everyone became a lawyer right or so many of you became lawyers and there's a family legal firm

00:14:07.640 that you must have had clients that were not religious maniacs so how did all that work

00:14:13.740 yeah no we there i would say most of the clients of phelps chartered are they're not related to us

00:14:20.700 they don't share any kind of ideology with us but my family has a reputation of being good at their jobs

00:14:27.840 not you know overcharging and i feel like it was very similar to the way it was in school people just

00:14:33.700 kind of generally compartmentalize who we are at work or at school versus who we are on the picket

00:14:39.900 line and so yeah i mean there were we had clients that were you know part of the lgbt community so

00:14:45.800 like there was wow there was a couple i remember every time they sent in a payment they were it was a

00:14:50.440 lesbian couple they they wrote on both the check and the envelope with the check they would put the

00:14:55.600 two female symbols like interlocked and i just thought that was very funny just this this

00:15:00.760 you know that's gonna work yeah but yeah where did the the emphasis on protest come from i mean this

00:15:10.620 is not the usual way that people try to spread their brand of christianity or any other faith how

00:15:17.200 is it that you guys spent so much time with all the kids in tow on the sidewalk with signs well it

00:15:24.700 didn't start with picketing you know there was about a two-year period from you know because i

00:15:30.280 mentioned i think last time the the incident that sparked the picketing at this yes at this local

00:15:36.120 park and so from the time of that you know that incident to when we actually picked up the first

00:15:42.060 picket sign was about two years and in that time my grandfather was going to city council meetings

00:15:47.500 and writing letters to the you know mayor and such and trying to and the park commissioners and trying

00:15:52.140 to figure out how to clean up gage park because it's this this ongoing problem right so to remind

00:15:58.140 people there was there was a park where gay men were were having sex in the bushes essentially

00:16:05.820 and i assume all of that's true right this was not your grandfather's malignant not making this up

00:16:12.700 right no he wasn't making it up i mean he wasn't making up that it was a there was a pickup spot

00:16:17.160 i think once the picketing started and once once he saw the kind of attention that that he could get

00:16:23.820 from that kind of activity that became you know just it just became this something that he couldn't

00:16:30.620 turn away from and even i remember at a certain point after we'd been i was in middle school so we

00:16:35.900 would have been picketing for you know nearly 10 years by then you started when you were five

00:16:40.840 yeah so just before i started kindergarten i started picketing well so yeah so i remember being in middle

00:16:46.980 school and uh and it became it was like a discussion they were having with a newspaper a local

00:16:53.520 newspaper about possibly like like basically if we give you a column a column a weekly column in the

00:16:59.860 newspaper will you stop picketing because if your goal is to reach people you know this is this could

00:17:05.040 be a possible you know this could be a way of doing that and and i remember first being aghast that we

00:17:12.160 would even consider this like it just it didn't occur to me that you know and then of course everybody

00:17:18.140 else in the church seemed to come to the same conclusion like this was not this was not an

00:17:21.960 option like our place is you know there's these phrases from the bible without the camp like we are

00:17:27.040 outside of mainstream society we are not inside talking to these people we are outside because they

00:17:32.400 have cast us out because they have abhorred god and his message and so therefore they abhor us

00:17:37.740 yeah well there's something self-fulfilling about that kind of persecution complex once you tell

00:17:46.140 yourselves a vivid enough story of how separate you are from the rest of human society and all that that

00:17:56.740 entails and you begin to act on that perception as you did you then as if by magic or some perverse

00:18:07.200 irony begin to attract all the hatred that seems to confirm your status as everlasting outsiders

00:18:15.860 and so your experience be you write about this in the book but your experience even as a young child

00:18:21.860 standing on the sidewalk picketing was the experience of just reaping a kind of an infinite amount of

00:18:30.380 hatred from the rest of society and i can only imagine that experience confirms the sense that

00:18:38.400 you know these people are are irretrievably lost and destined for hell yeah absolutely and i think it

00:18:45.260 was those very human dynamics that kind of pushed us further and further to the extreme as time went on

00:18:51.580 you know because there are passages you know the things that that led us to be praying for our enemies to

00:18:59.160 die and for god to do horrible things to them like that that didn't happen overnight that was that was

00:19:04.980 kind of a i mean in some ways it did happen overnight because it was a sudden shift in doctrine

00:19:09.280 but the theology and the mental state that got us there definitely developed over time and so you know as

00:19:17.340 we're as time goes on you know and the the louder we get the more angry the response gets the more

00:19:24.060 hostile that response gets and so then you can't help but even though we work and this is where you

00:19:30.300 know i i write about this in the book like that moment where it finally hits me that i that i am

00:19:36.180 believing these two completely contradictory things at the same time i'm holding them in my mind together

00:19:42.780 at the same time but never in the same moment so it's this the sense that you know our stated goal

00:19:49.600 for picketing the reason we were out there was the fulfillment of the commandment to love thy neighbor

00:19:55.620 as thyself it's the idea that you go and rebuke your neighbor when you see him sinning because you

00:20:00.880 know that the consequences of that sin is death and curses from god in this life and then hell in the

00:20:07.860 next so ostensibly we're out there because we love these people and we we need to go and warn them

00:20:14.080 and yet because of those dynamics on the picket line we it just pushed us further and further to

00:20:21.040 the to the extreme of we stopped thinking of them in as our neighbors and people that we loved and that

00:20:27.180 we needed to go and preach this to as their only hope for salvation and started thinking of them as

00:20:33.540 these people who are irredeemably lost and hellbound and cursed by god and so now we need to pray for god

00:20:42.580 so we would be demanding we would be standing out there demanding that people repent and we hold

00:20:47.620 these signs repent or perish and then we go in our prayers as we as we arrive to the picket and as we

00:20:53.840 leave the picket for god to preserve them in their sins so it's this again this completely contradictory

00:21:00.680 ideas that i i was simply unaware of at the time i can't remember if we talked about this last time but

00:21:06.700 i think i think i think we must not have because you know you started to read on the podcast the end

00:21:12.700 of faith and you you got to that the part you kind of paused and told the story of about being in paris

00:21:19.460 with your wife and both at the same time trying to avoid the american embassy and then also trying to

00:21:27.680 get a room at a hotel next to the american embassy yeah and i think it just has to do with you know the

00:21:32.780 way that our you know minds process information like in certain contexts and we have you know

00:21:38.100 different we compartmentalize and so we we can hold these completely contradictory ideas at the same time

00:21:44.360 we're just and then when they finally meet when we finally become aware of them we i i don't i think

00:21:49.740 i don't know i can't remember what you said about it but i literally felt insane how could i have

00:21:54.600 believed both of these things at the same time and and the the phrase preserve them in their sin

00:22:00.060 that is that is to say you're praying that god keep them in ignorance so that they merit the the pain

00:22:07.600 of hell or is or does this have some other meaning no yeah that's exactly right that's a theme in in

00:22:14.900 islam as well that's you you encounter this a lot in the quran that you know if god had wanted to

00:22:21.660 illuminate them and give them faith he would have so you know the fact that the unbelievers are uh blind

00:22:28.880 to the truth is something that god intends you know you know it's really it's a kind of a perverse

00:22:34.340 vision of a a psychological experiment that's never really honestly run and it's it's not like anyone

00:22:40.700 outside the faith ever had a chance when you when you actually look at the details and this is

00:22:45.980 considered a good thing right and that's actually something that i mean i still currently you know when

00:22:50.820 i i will be reading my family's tweets sometimes and they're written from a perspective

00:22:56.660 perspective of you know as if it were possible for these people whoever that they're accusing and you

00:23:04.220 know demanding repentance from as if it were possible for them to repent even while believing

00:23:09.800 in predestination right or that that things that anything that they have done could have been otherwise

00:23:15.560 they don't believe that it could have been otherwise because it happened it must have happened

00:23:20.600 exactly as god set it up to happen so it's always very funny when they're when they when they try to

00:23:26.980 do that it's like but you don't you don't believe that you don't actually believe that it's possible and

00:23:31.440 yet you are working yourself up into a frenzy of rage getting mad at these people and upset with them

00:23:37.020 for you know for taking the wrong path and for having done these things that you know westboro

00:23:42.300 imagines will lead them to hell and yet from your own perspective from your own theology it could not have been

00:23:48.980 otherwise and so that like that was something that i i also kind of would skim over you know in my own

00:23:56.120 mind when i was still with westboro and mostly people didn't bring it to our attention and so now

00:24:00.880 sometimes it just becomes i just have to say something because it's it is so i don't know it's

00:24:07.780 like at some point like can't you you hope at some point that they will be able to step back long enough

00:24:13.520 to realize that this doesn't make sense yeah it's interesting to see the footage of these protests

00:24:20.800 because there's something it almost has a kind of trolling feel to it i mean i know that you guys

00:24:28.760 believed what you said you believed and but so that was on some level a sincere communication but

00:24:35.600 it's playful enough and kind of arch enough that it just seems like you're also sort of trolling i mean

00:24:43.700 can you explain what how that impression is coming across yeah so i mean it was always very important

00:24:49.940 for us to be happy on the picket line and just generally like we we had to be happy to show that

00:24:56.500 we were content with our lot right that god had given us this ministry and we needed to to be joyful

00:25:02.380 about it even when it was difficult and so that that's kind of just a big part of just the church

00:25:08.600 culture i mean it's just so arresting to see a little girl of any age beaming you know the good

00:25:16.940 vibes of childhood while holding in each hand a sign you know damning people to hell yeah i mean it's

00:25:24.260 just i mean that that's why it does have a perhaps trolling is the wrong framework but it's something

00:25:29.520 not straightforward about the communication it's just a it is a kind of goof that on some level is

00:25:36.800 very high stakes and perverse because you know you know viewed from the outside what's happening here

00:25:42.880 is really a kind of child abuse i mean we have a child you know i.e. you and your siblings in a

00:25:50.360 situation where you're you've been you know truly deprived of you know real world information and

00:25:57.360 have been indoctrinated into this kind of malicious and paranoid worldview and now you're being put to

00:26:03.640 work to spread it and yet you're this happy little thing in a parka with a god hates fag sign and it's

00:26:10.800 just it's just such a mind stopper yeah i mean i think you know when people people look at groups

00:26:17.420 like westboro they see them generally as very like uneducated backwards unhappy people who are just

00:26:25.900 looking for something you know to be mad about and they have found it in whatever the gay community

00:26:31.640 or people committing fornication or whatever like so you you see them as just and so there is

00:26:37.160 definitely part of that you know part of the reason it was so important that we show our happiness on the

00:26:42.100 picket line is is to thwart that image and also you know there's there's this bible passage that my mom

00:26:47.260 would quote all the time about how this is the love of god that you keep his commandments

00:26:52.400 and that his commandments are not grievous to you so if god's commandments if it's grievous to you to

00:26:59.360 follow his commandments then clearly you're not one of god's elect you're not one of his people

00:27:03.520 because even if you follow the letter of the law and your spirit isn't in it your heart isn't in it

00:27:10.320 and you're not joyful about it then that's that is unacceptable service to god so i feel like there's

00:27:17.060 there's a whole lot of you know and the fact that we were so happy as part of what and that

00:27:21.640 that dichotomy that you described the juxtaposition between the extremely serious you know negative

00:27:28.560 message and the happiness of the people proclaiming it that was part of what you know got so much

00:27:34.580 attention for the church and were you having religious experiences that you interpreted as

00:27:41.820 confirmation of your faith i mean what was it like apart from just announcing it on the sidewalk and

00:27:49.100 dealing with the the blowback i mean every day we were you know reading the bible memorizing bible

00:27:55.200 verses and and talking about what was happening in the world in light of westborough's understanding

00:28:00.180 of the scriptures for me i mean i i never felt like god was like talking to me or something you know

00:28:06.800 that that wasn't how i experienced religion i experienced it as this very rigid set of rules

00:28:13.340 that it was literally only possible to follow if god was giving you the right kind of heart to

00:28:20.820 to want to do it i experienced religion as as fear you know initially especially as a kid

00:28:28.700 because there was so much yeah fear of hell exactly and and what god would do to you if you stepped out

00:28:34.580 of line i got baptized when i was 13 i had tried to get baptized a little earlier than that a few

00:28:40.560 years earlier but apparently one of my aunts thought i wasn't serious so that closed down that discussion

00:28:46.000 oh see so in that church you you can't get baptized before you demonstrate that you're actually serious

00:28:53.420 in some ideological way yes exactly they do not believe in infant baptism i actually i saw on twitter

00:28:59.820 one of the questions that that your tweet about this are doing this podcast elicited one of the

00:29:04.740 questions was what was one of the funniest things that you thought was a sin at the church you know

00:29:10.100 now looking back and i think one of the funniest things that i i wrote about this in the book was

00:29:14.560 when i look back at my grandfather gave a sermon about infant baptism and without any sense of

00:29:20.760 hyperbole whatsoever he compared that act of sprinkling some water and saying a few words you know

00:29:27.760 about this infant and and their hopes that they go to heaven or whatever and they're washed in the

00:29:33.100 blood of jesus like he compared that to literally burning the child alive and sacrificed to a pagan god

00:29:39.100 and that was exactly and when i look back at that now that's a little extreme yeah yeah but but yeah so

00:29:45.720 they do not believe in infant baptism at all so you have to you have to demonstrate an orderly walk

00:29:51.340 you have to talk to all of the members of the church and so they say like if there's this

00:29:56.920 question can any forbid water so is there any reason that anybody in the church has that you should

00:30:02.780 not be baptized as long as the answer is no then then you can be baptized so you know kids as young

00:30:09.940 as like i think six seven eight have been baptized at westborough well it's a much stronger

00:30:16.620 ceremony i mean it's it sounds like it has just far more import to it i mean there's obviously no

00:30:25.740 content on the the infant side where when you're getting baptized and you can't even speak a human

00:30:32.660 language and so this is the real thing if you are demonstrating you have sufficient commitment to the

00:30:39.200 to the creed that's that's where you actually transition to something significant so

00:30:44.520 you were so you got baptized at 13 but so so the experience where that was going from sorry you

00:30:51.600 you asked a question but i i've forgotten what it was that led me there yeah it was just whether

00:30:56.240 you were having religious experience of any kind and interpreting anything in the world apart from

00:31:02.960 the the harassment you were getting from the outside as confirmation of the truth of your faith

00:31:08.820 yeah i mean obviously that the interaction with outsiders and how much they hated it you know

00:31:14.520 especially given all those passages in the new testament where jesus is saying if you follow me

00:31:19.320 the world is going to hate you yeah you know blessed are ye when men shall hate you and revile you and

00:31:24.820 persecute you for my name's sake for so did their fathers to the prophets so we saw ourselves in that

00:31:31.480 you know in that line of righteous people who had who had delivered the word of god to a world that

00:31:37.240 that despised them and it that so there's no question that was a huge part of it but you know

00:31:42.700 just because of how you know everything in the church you know this this extraordinary amount of

00:31:49.480 love and support that you get as a church member as long as you are a member in good standing all of

00:31:55.060 those you know i felt enveloped in the love of god you know by those things and because they teach you

00:32:02.760 you know your own worthlessness from such a young age that you are of yourself you have nothing

00:32:08.440 that god didn't give you and and that you know of your you know any any part of you you know that's

00:32:15.260 you like that's that's all corrupt and and and you know there's this passage talks about their

00:32:21.260 righteousness is as filthy rags right so it's just you you are taught from such a young age that you

00:32:26.340 are nothing and that you have nothing and that all things come from god and so you know the sense

00:32:33.020 that the idea that you could have this really wonderful family and people who loved and cared

00:32:40.020 about you and showed you that in innumerable ways you know all of that felt like a wonderful gift from

00:32:47.120 god you know i i felt the same way singing in church on sundays you know all these songs that talk

00:32:52.820 about how worthless you are as a human being and how graceful god is and how merciful to have taken

00:32:58.440 any pity on you and given you you know any good thing that just tells you how what a wonderful god

00:33:04.060 he is and how generous because clearly you are too worthless to deserve any of this on your own

00:33:08.720 yeah well it really is a complex picture because you know at first glance from outside again this just

00:33:16.380 seems like pure misfortune i mean you were unlucky to be born to the people you were born to

00:33:22.300 and insulated from sort of a normal happy life in the modern world and you're very lucky to have

00:33:31.900 gotten out and i i would certainly sign off on the on that final claim but your experience of being in

00:33:40.420 your family and being your your mother's daughter and your father's daughter uh and even your grandfather's

00:33:46.460 granddaughter is far more complex than that and i mean you are clearly a remarkable person and you

00:33:54.000 you got some gifts from this ordeal as well i mean just how do you view your childhood and

00:34:01.580 and what you got from this experience you know i i think about this a lot now because i now that i am a

00:34:09.460 mother and and the kinds of things that i want you know there are so many aspects of my upbringing that

00:34:16.880 i want to give my daughter and you know i think i talked about this i think i talked about this last

00:34:23.240 time i definitely wrote about it in the book and it's something that was really powerful to me this

00:34:28.260 moment where it was just a few months after i left and i was you know at the shabbat table of

00:34:34.560 this rabbi that i had protested you know a few years earlier with this you know your rabbi is a

00:34:39.980 whore sign being held by my sister and david abbott ball who he was the one who invited me there and he

00:34:47.560 had he was the one who made that first point on twitter that first allowed me to in my own mind

00:34:54.060 challenge westborough's teachings so as i'm sitting there with him just a few months after i left and

00:34:59.200 feeling like a complete betrayer that there was i had you know completely i walked away from

00:35:05.840 from my family and everyone i loved and having betrayed everything that i stood for and and i just

00:35:13.760 felt so overcome with guilt and shame and and and you know in that moment for david what he said was

00:35:22.480 you know in a lot of ways leaving westborough baptist church was the most westborough baptist church

00:35:28.080 thing you could have done they're the ones he what he told me and my sister he said you are your

00:35:33.060 parents children they're the ones that taught you to stand up for what you believe in no matter what

00:35:37.980 it cost you they just never imagined you'd be standing up to them and that was the first time i realized

00:35:44.000 that i because i basically had accepted westborough's framing of the whole situation you know that i had

00:35:52.560 walked away from my family that i had rejected all these people that i loved and you know being able

00:35:58.820 to start to see it with nuance and to realize no i didn't walk away from my family i walked away from

00:36:05.280 the church i walked away from the ideology that i saw had come to see as extremely destructive not just

00:36:12.340 for the people that the church targeted but for the church itself and all of its members and then

00:36:17.500 and then also to to look and look back and realize that there was so much of my upbringing that was

00:36:24.040 really wonderful i mean it's the idea of and and of course you know you have to also keep in mind all

00:36:31.300 of the destructive parts of it like it's not like i'm i'm not trying to take away from the

00:36:36.220 destructiveness of it or or the pain that we cause so many other people but to to look back and see this

00:36:42.480 this idea of you know that we were motivated by you know at least initially by this desire to

00:36:49.060 love our neighbor right that we as a group of 70 to 80 people could be so dedicated and so active that

00:36:57.220 we could get that much you know attention for our cause and it's not just attention right it's it's

00:37:03.580 this idea of dedicating yourself to something and sacrificing for it in such a way that you you can

00:37:11.040 accomplish the objectives that you set out to so like that kind of you know perseverance and the

00:37:16.660 diligence the hard work that went into that the very you know spending so much time trying to get

00:37:25.060 to the bottom of a thing and examining it from so many different angles so obviously i think you know

00:37:30.720 now a lot of the things that we spent a lot of time on were not good but the process itself is

00:37:37.120 something that i absolutely still want to emulate if that makes sense yeah so you mentioned twitter

00:37:43.680 a couple of times and you are really if anyone is a social media success story it is you because

00:37:51.120 twitter was your way out of this and you then met your husband on twitter tell me why twitter is a good

00:37:59.280 thing for one person on this earth so i mean for me twitter yes twitter was the way out that was

00:38:08.100 another question that somebody asked in response to your tweet yesterday was it was about do you think

00:38:14.100 you would still be part of westboro if not for twitter and i have every reason to believe that i would

00:38:20.300 be because even though you know and i write i write about this in the book this whole process of

00:38:25.440 this group of you know older men in the church kind of taking over as the you know becoming the elders

00:38:31.920 like taking over as this you know this church leadership role and and a bunch of other things that

00:38:37.240 happened that helped me see that we were doing wrong but i just i have every reason to believe that

00:38:43.200 without those conversations on twitter without having come to the realization that we could be wrong

00:38:50.960 about something before that conversation with david abbott ball you know where he points out this

00:38:56.340 internal contradiction in our theology before that i always felt like i had the answer to everything

00:39:03.120 there was not you know we spent hours hours hundreds thousands of hours on the picket line

00:39:09.860 talking to people about these doctrines and westboro's theology and you know there wasn't a person outside of

00:39:16.520 our church who agreed with it all and so we're constantly being challenged by it and you know

00:39:21.660 doing that from the time i was five years old and you know by the time i'm you know in my mid-20s on

00:39:28.420 twitter the feeling that we had an answer for everything that the doctrine was airtight you mentioned that

00:39:34.280 my family is full of lawyers and that's they're extremely intelligent analytical people and we spent a lot of

00:39:39.680 time memorizing the evidence aka the bible so that that we always were ready to give an answer to the

00:39:46.400 people who asked these questions so i had so much faith in the church and their understanding of

00:39:52.820 the bible their interpretation of how the world worked and i've mentioned all this the sense that

00:39:59.040 you have of yourself as being just this depraved human being and and you know that bible verse about

00:40:05.380 how you can't trust your heart the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and who can

00:40:11.200 know it so having that be your framework and then having this this group of people who it feels like

00:40:18.120 this divine unquestionable institution until that came into question for me because of those

00:40:25.700 conversations on twitter anytime something didn't quite make sense i always assumed that the problem

00:40:32.400 was in me that the error was in my own thinking or because i had some kind of depraved heart or satan

00:40:38.620 was whispering in my ear you know those this is the framework i was dealing with yeah i mean that is

00:40:43.780 the way any religion or cult hermetically seals itself against criticism from the outside i mean so

00:40:51.020 so any point that seems unanswerable or you know any blow that seems to land can be reinterpreted as

00:40:58.440 you know your own fallibility you can't trust your own intuitions here who can understand god's ways

00:41:05.440 or that you know you're actually in dialogue with and being tempted by satan or some you know divine

00:41:12.800 adversary yep and that that was if not for twitter i just have i have every reason to believe that i

00:41:20.680 would have continued to do the same thing i had always done so what was the moment on twitter where

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - October 08, 2019

#171 — Escaping a Christian Cult

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