Slowly, I began to trust that there were nice people in the world. I had a few coworkers who were really kind to me, and I also met people at my gym who shared my love of outdoor sports. Still, I really struggled with opening up and warming to people, despite the fact that I no longer thought they were all evil, vile, and unworthy. I was not particularly social. For some reason, I held on to the fear that one of these essentially good-hearted strangers was a fraud and a hypocrite who only wanted to take me down. But I tried to stop judging people’s motives, and I trusted that I was no better than anybody else. I might have known more Bible verses, but who was I to say that made me better? I was still too scared to look at things from a radically different perspective, though, because I didn’t want God hating me for that, too.
I had spent six months on my own in Topeka, almost to the day, when I made the decision to move to Connecticut. There was nothing in Kansas for me anymore, and I was tired of running into places and people that stirred up my pain. On some sidewalk somewhere in Topeka on any given day, there was a row of picketers who said God condemned fags, fag enablers, Jews, priests, mothers who ate their babies, Louis Theroux, Santa Claus, and me. I was finally sick of believing them. I had flown to Hartford to visit Scott, who was now my boyfriend, and while I was there, I interviewed for a cardiac nursing position at a hospital in his area. When I was hired, I packed up my apartment in Topeka, selling a few little things like my microwave. I made the fifteen-hundred-mile, twenty-four-hour drive with Fozzy beside me, stopping for the night at a motel somewhere along I-80 in Ohio. Scott’s family had invited us to move in with them in New Britain, which made the move that much easier.
I needed to study the Bible with someone to find other interpretations to the scriptures, and now that I was relocating physically, I was ready to move spiritually. I saw that there were huge holes in what the church had been teaching me. I had believed every angle of the church’s standpoint until they had started shutting me down. When I learned there were other interpretations equally valid as theirs based on the very same words, I was terrified that my last seven years had been all a waste, all a scam. I wanted to know there was hope.
There was something about a god who hated almost everybody in the world with a vengeance that made abandoning faith altogether an attractive alternative. Nate Phelps, the pastor’s first son to leave, became an outspoken, self-proclaimed atheist. I don’t know if it was easy for him to give up his god, but I still believed in God and cherished my spirituality, even though I no longer went to church. I still loved reading the Bible, and I started studying with my boyfriend’s mother, a woman extremely well versed in scripture.
Changing my beliefs was not easy and took a long time. It was like asking someone who had a PhD in math to change his position on numbers not divisible by zero. I already had verses and passages from the Bible memorized, so I knew my scripture by heart. My problem was with interpretation, discrepancies, and nuances. My study sessions with my boyfriend’s mother were scriptural investigations that went well beyond the rigid dogma of the WBC, and I discovered that the Bible was fluid and alive. She never shut me down or reprimanded me for asking questions.
After about two years with Scott, I made a break from him. It wasn’t a great relationship for me, but I was so used to being controlled from my seven years in the church, I wasn’t really able to see what was happening between us until I couldn’t stand it another day. I had saved enough money to buy a place of my own, a nice condo within an easy commute of my job. I let my ex keep Fozzy, as they had gotten to be quite good friends.
I liked living alone. My supportive friendships were based on trust, not fear. I was getting self-confidence for the first time in my life, which created a new sense of purpose. I kept faith a daily part of my life. I was already at a really high level of Bible study, and I had been looking up challenging words to find their Greek and Hebrew roots. I would look up each word and then look up the Greek and Hebrew translations. I was still pissed at the approach the WBC took to scripture. You don’t just read a verse, not in any version, and revise it a million times until you make it mean what you want it to. In the Westboro Baptist Church, we used the King James Bible, which is a great English translation of the original languages, authorized by King James I in England in 1604. But it was in English; that was it.
I started watching a television pastor out of Arkansas on public programming by the name of Arnold Murray. His lessons were for people who were sort of beginner/intermediate Bible readers. He did detailed studies on particular verses, which I found fascinating. Most of all, I loved his Q & A time slot at the end of each program.
In the church, I had been shut down and made to feel contentious for so long that listening to this guy answer callers’ questions with passion and enthusiasm was like a miracle. Reading the Bible at someone was not a process in which the recipient learned anything, but it happened every week at the WBC’s services. Half the time, the person reading was reciting the same story over and over. There was little input or room for doubt. Arnold Murray accepted in-depth questions as well as more juvenile ones. He wasn’t arrogant enough to pretend he had all the answers. Things he didn’t know, he’d look up, right then and there. “I am here to instruct and not to judge,” he’d say. He admitted he had stances on certain things, but those were his opinions and not necessarily the absolute truth. I wholeheartedly believed him and loved his teaching style. I liked that more than anything.
One day, my aunt Stacy found me on Facebook. After a few online conversations, she gave me her telephone number, and we started to speak on the phone. She told me that my grandmother was very anxious to talk to me and asked me to give her a call. When I reached her, she was happy and upset at the same time. She was always so emotional. She was under the impression that the church held people against their wills, and she thought my mother might be a prisoner. She was not in great health. Her kidneys were failing, and she thought she would have to go to the dialysis center near her home on a regular basis.
She told me she thought my mother had been calling her recently, based on a number of hang-up calls to her house from the Topeka area code. “I hope she’s not feeling trapped,” she said. I couldn’t help but feel a little sad for my mother. My father had severed her relationship with my grandmother by taking her to Kansas to save me, and then threw me out, severing her relationship with me, too.
Sometimes, I agreed with my grandmother that my mother might be struggling and feeling helpless. There was virtually no one for her to turn to. She couldn’t go to people inside or outside of the church with complaints or problems, because either way she would be kicked out. When I was still living at home, I’d sometimes heard my parents arguing about church doctrine. My father always told me that he and my mother were “clarifying,” which I think he said because he didn’t want Shirley to get wind of their disagreements and scrutinize Mom.
After my grandmother told me about the calls, I wanted Mom to know I was there if she needed me. I loved her madly, despite everything we had been through. I didn’t have a guy in my life, I had a steady job, and I had my condo with a spare bedroom if she ever needed to come live with me. I decided to reach out to her. I hadn’t talked to her in two years, but I wanted to see if there was anything I could read into what she said that would let me know she was okay.
“Lauren, why are you calling me?” were the first words out of her mouth. I immediately felt like I’d made a huge mistake.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to you. I miss you. I love you.” She didn’t hang up, so I continued. I told her what I was up to and about my job. I shared with her I had a room for her if she was considering leaving.
“I just wanted to find out if you are okay,” I said.
“Why do you want to know how I am doing?” she asked. I told her I had just talked to Grandma, who was worried.
“You are lying right now,” she said. “You are not supposed to be talking to them.” I didn’t p
oint out to her the absurdity of the statement. The church no longer had me bound by their rules, although obedience was still second nature to me, and hearing my mother scold me made me feel loved. Plus, part of me still feared going to hell. It was so ingrained in me that either you were part of God’s elect people or you were destined for eternal incineration in the lake of fire that sometimes I had fleeting thoughts of trying to get back into the good graces of the church. I didn’t want marks against me if I ever changed my mind.
My mother told me there was no reason for me to contact my grandparents or my aunt. They were ungodly and would never be capable of having good advice for me. She went on and on about it for what seemed like several minutes. It was so nice to hear her voice that I didn’t pay that much attention to the bombastic statements about whom to avoid. Finally, she let me speak without interruption, and I had the chance to tell her the gist of Grandma’s phone call.
“Grandma and Stacy still love you,” I told her. “They care about you. They miss you.” I told her about my grandmother’s concern and the hang-ups from the Topeka area code. I asked her if it had been her calling.
She was totally offended. “Do you think I want to break up with your father?” she asked indignantly. “I don’t understand the purpose of this phone call.” We concluded with a hasty good-bye.
We haven’t spoken since.
Unfortunately, we hung up before I had a chance to tell her about my life. I would have liked her to know that I am happy, that not every day is perfect, but sinners are not at every turn begging me toward evil, and God’s blessings are widely available. I meet all kinds of people and have friends of every persuasion, all really good people, very worthy, and very kind. I make a decent, honest living doing work I really love. I have time and opportunity for travel and adventures all over our great country. Most of all, I would have liked to tell my mother how grateful I am to have been part of the Drain family, and I love them all. If it is God’s will, we will see each other again someday. I hope it happens. Sadly, they have made the decision for me to not be part of their lives. But my well-being is not dependent on their approval. Banished I was, but happy I’ll be, because I have it right with God.
EPILOGUE
Any system of faith requires making various judgments and holding sometimes unpopular beliefs. I have no problem with minority religions; it’s only when taken to the extreme that they become dangerous. When I was in the WBC, I was often driven by misguided self-righteousness, and I spent a lot of time moralizing and censuring other people. I am still very spiritual, and I have strong beliefs and convictions, too, but I like to think I am now approachable, reasonable, and fair. So many members of the Westboro Baptist Church think they are God or his only prophets. They feel their judgment is God’s judgment. They use scripture by heart, and they use it so well, they find passages to justify their right to judge so righteously. They think God’s glorious kingdom is a place to continue judging, mocking, and condemning others.… I’ll let God be the judge of me and them. The God I love and know wants people to have perfect love that casts out fear and judgment.
The trouble is, the church has a tendency to switch things around and view them backward. They tell others to thank God for everything, including calamities, but when bad things happen to them, they can’t handle it. Their fervor and their zeal can be attractive, until you change your perspective and realize it is all about control.
The church thinks the Bible is talking to them and about them exclusively, and they assign prophetic meaning to current events. I believe in the Bible, too, but everything has a context, and the Bible is a historical document. Not every prophecy has the same meaning in every age. In reading something, I have to ask: Is it applicable now, or was it only applicable then? When passages are taken out of context and twisted, the result is a powerful, manipulative, and dangerous weapon indeed.
When I look now at church members on the picket line, I still see the qualities that attracted me in the first place—passion, bravery, a high value placed on knowledge, dedication, and hard work. But my misgivings are stronger. I think they are too judgmental and sanctimonious. I don’t think anyone should display such arrogance and righteousness, as they do. They have human errors and human faults like the rest of us. They have crazy hierarchies and paranoid conspiracy theories in their church, too. The extreme taunting, teasing, laughing—it seems crazy, fiendish, and extreme. I don’t like that the church thinks it is above everything and everybody else. I also don’t see the need to vilify people who have legitimate theological questions.
When I look at videos of myself as a church member, I seem mean. I think I might have been taking out my own inner unhappiness on others, projecting all this bottled-up emotion onto the subjects of our pickets. In saying this, I am not trying to avoid taking full responsibility for my actions. What I’ve done still disturbs me and makes me feel sad and embarrassed. That pathetic, helpless person is not who I am now. When I happen to see footage of my former family and friends now, they look like little drones with dead eyes. The situation they are in, where there is no room to question things, is extreme and cruel.
I was inundated day in and day out with what the church was thinking. I didn’t ask myself if I was doing the right thing. I wanted to get to heaven, and picketing was validating me. I went to thousands of pickets. To me, this was proving I was a Christian, a prophetess. I wasn’t thinking about anyone else or what kind of impact I might have on someone. I was too busy thinking about what I was doing spiritually and how I was helping someone. I really thought everyone just misunderstood us.
I did have human emotion. If someone came up to talk to me, I would talk to him. I would read about horrible events in the news, very upsetting things like the rape of a child. I thought protesting was a way to bring people’s attention to God’s wrath. I never thought I had lost compassion for humanity—just the opposite.
I used to fear going to hell every single day, and that my family could fall apart. The Lord could come tomorrow, and if I was not showing my faith strongly enough, I would be doomed. Everybody’s story would be told in heaven. It was a very motivating, powerful drive to do and say the things I did. I never had a cruel intention. I never had space to think about people’s concerns with how I was judging things and the negative impact of my protesting. At military funerals, I wasn’t thinking of who I might be harming and how I might be dishonoring them in their time of grieving. I thought I was just enlightening them that serving in the U.S. military inevitably ended in this kind of punishment. Now I realize how much I was disrespecting each fallen soldier and his or her family and friends, and I apologize deeply for this. I no longer feel this way. I value the military and the selfless service of all of our soldiers.
I apologize equally to the families of AIDS victims and homosexuals whom I disrespected. I will never be a political activist for gay rights, but I like gay people and have lots of gay friends, too. I don’t judge them, and I don’t believe anyone else has the right to judge them, either. I also won’t be a political activist for abortion, but I am perfectly okay with everyone living his or her own life and making his or her own choices.
Without question, the WBC’s rhetoric is vitriolic, provocative, and shamefully insensitive. However, I always bear in mind that their right to free speech infinitely trumps their message. Shutting down their rights would be a blow to the constitutional rights of every single American. The Snyder v. Phelps lawsuit, in which the dead soldier’s family had initially won a judgment of $10 million in U.S. District Court, went all the way to the Supreme Court. On October 13, 2010, Margie herself presented the oral argument for the defense in front of the nine justices, while many Phelps family members picketed outside. The court justices sided with Margie in a historic 8–1 ruling, affirming her position that a law-abiding picket in a public place, even if tasteless and insensitive, was a protected freedom. That was not only a monumental victory for the church, but for all of us
who like saying what we think without fear of being sued for it.
I am so glad I am not filled with bitterness and resentment right now. I could have made really dumb choices, first out of anger, then out of shame. When my parents put me out without any regret, I felt so angry and hurt that I could easily have tried to hurt them back. After I had time to reflect on my sanctimonious righteousness, my shame could have gotten the best of me. Instead, I chose to hang on to gratitude. I am happy I chose nursing so young. It’s a great, productive field. Even when I look back and see that I was kind of fast-tracked and forced into the profession by my parents, I am still grateful to be in a career that really helps other people.
I no longer believe that I am going to hell. I have a newfound appreciation for God and my right to believe in Him. Not long after completing this book, I traveled to Europe and Turkey on a two-week vacation with my boyfriend, David. The trip was especially rewarding, because when I was younger, I had never thought that I would set foot outside of the United States. The WBC warned us that we would be arrested in foreign countries, where our Constitution had no value. I know I am a work in progress, and even though I am growing more accepting of other cultures, every once in a while, I still get extremely overwhelmed with feelings of shame or fear, remembering how I used to condemn all other religions and ethnic traditions when I was part of the WBC. I had these feelings in the Vatican, and I had them again while visiting the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. In both places, I became so upset I started crying. Trying to console me, David asked me what was wrong, but for some reason I couldn’t articulate it. It only hit me later that the WBC had instilled so much hate, judgment, and fear in me that I was having a flashback to those feelings.
Banished : Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church (9781455518470) Page 26
