Banished

Lauren Drain's atheist father set out to make a documentary about the Westboro Baptist Church and its habit of picketing any event that will give them attention.  Over the course of the next few years he was drawn into the group.  He was influenced by their beliefs and started to pay a lot of attention to policing young teenage Lauren's life.  He became convinced that she was a slut and a whore.  He pulled her out of school and cut off all contact with people outside of her penpals from the Westboro church.Eventually he moved the family from Florida to Kansas to live on the same block as the church members in an attempt to control his wayward daughter.  The fact that Lauren was a well behaved teenage girl with no sexual experience did not change his conviction that she was on the road to hell. They were the only family not related to the pastor Fred Phelps in the church.Lauren was glad to move.  By this point in her life the teenage members of Westboro were the only friends she was allowed to have.  She enthusiastically joined into pickets.  Pickets are a way of life.  Westboro members picket something every day.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church demonstrate at the Virginia Holocaust Museum on March 2, 2010. by JCWilmore

The Phelps cousins and Lauren would picket outside their school at lunchtime. They picketed their own graduations. They traveled around the country to picket funerals. The whole time paranoia ran rampant in the church. Any hint of wrongdoing or wrong thinking was discussed in group emails. Humiliation was common.Lauren was taught that what they were doing was right. The fact that people got upset was proof that the church was right and people felt guilty about having their sins pointed out to them. The church prides itself on being very smart. Most of the Phelps family consists of lawyers. All of the younger generation are required to be at the top of their classes in school. They are trained to react to people who question them with intellectual rigor. It seems like the best thing to do at a Westboro protest would be to totally ignore it. They would consider that a failure.Eventually Lauren's online friendship with a male church supporter is used as proof of her sexual immorality even though they have never met. She is banished from her church and family. Over the last few years she has learned to live on her own. She realizes that the church is destructive. She isn't a gay rights supporter by any means but so far she has progressed to live and let live.It was so sad to read about how she was scapegoated in her family because of her sexuality. She was constantly told that she was a slut and a whore.

It is the typical fear that if you don't control women from a young age that you will lose all power over them. Then you can make them complicit in their own humiliation.There are a lot of documentaries on Westboro because they feel that helping with documentaries helps spread their message. This one claims to have footage of the Drains.

This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

I really found out about the Westboro Babtist Church from having seen them in the Louis Theroux documentaries - of which there are two - and of how Anonymous has hacked them. And because they make for great hate fodder, which has spawned a more philosophical question: is the eye-for-an-eye approach really OK?

This book is written by Lauren Drain, a former member of the WBC cult, who was cast out. The book is matter-of-factly written, open minded and it's tragic to read of she was and is treated by family and former friends.

She doesn't lean away from describing how she spoke with people back when she was a cult member:

We kept our signs, shirts, and caps hidden from view so that we wouldn't be harassed as we made our way through thousands of heavily armed security and military agents to our assigned protest site. Finally, almost in position, some of us started announcing our message. "God Hates You!" I declared, as we pushed forward. The high we got from picketing took over. "You are going to hell! You are all fag enablers!" we hollered over one another. "We are the only true patriots," I added. "If you people were really patriotic and religious, you would be standing with us holding signs." I told them that God mocked their calamities, and good Christians were supposed to warn nations against sin. "Thank God for September 11!" I yelled, the strongest insult to the sinners and the one most certain to get a rise out of the people within earshot.

...and she makes a strong case in explaining what she thought during the

The Washington crowd that day reacted strongly to us, which reinforced our sense of success. The more enraged they became, the more we felt we were making our message known. If they had thought we were just a bunch of crazies, they would have simply ignored us, but their heated interest in us obviously meant that our words were making an impact. We were delivering the message of the Holy Ghost, making us superior and perhaps even omniscient. In a sea of heathens, we were the messengers.

I'd love to have seen more of her inner thoughts from her WBC days, when argumenting, thinking, discussing, etc, but at the same time, one of the strengths of this book is the way that it's plainly written. Also, I believe shutting off the thinking process is one of the cult member hallmarks, so I don't think anybody can criticise her too much for that.

It's interesting to read on how Drain's father first veered into religion, and then away.

The next year, my father moved away from religion, saying that it tended to go to extremes. He said the preacher's theory that some people lived on the earth forever was a perfect example. Instead of the faithful Bible student he'd been, he embraced his hippie rocker side and became the coolest dad in the world. He never missed a single one of my peewee softball games, and he was always on the sidelines cheering me on. Everybody liked him. He was so sociable and still in his twenties then; he was like a big kid. All of my friends adored him, too. Dad filled the void left by the preacher's departure with a lot of wilder friends. He even started his own band called Boneyard. There always seemed to be a ton of people in the house drinking, smoking, and playing instruments in the basement. My mother had a few acquaintances from work, but they weren't really the kind of friends that came into their social life; those came from Dad. Mom would chat with them, but she really wasn't into the same kind of scene that Dad was. For one, she didn't like drinking. She might have a wine cooler here and there, but that was it. While Dad was playing rock and roll in the basement, Mom preferred being with Taylor and me in the backyard, watching us play on the trampoline, or making us treats in the kitchen. The one thing my parents liked to do together was play softball.

During my freshman year, my father started talking more seriously about making a documentary. He liked working at the Home Shopping Network and was clearly doing well there, but wanted to do something more creative and on his own terms. He'd been thinking about a subject for the two years we'd been in Florida, and was looking for a controversial topic that hadn't yet received much exposure. The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, came to his mind.

Spoiler alert: the WBC converted him. This translated quite easily into his way of relating to his children:

A year earlier, before my first-ever school dance, Dad sat me down for "the talk." He told me the responsibilities that went along with being social at my age, and said that if I was thinking about sex, he wanted me to come to him and my mother so that they could get me on birth control. Dad also said I should go to them if I was thinking about experimenting with drugs, because buying them from a stranger was extremely risky, and he didn't want me to end up dead. He had been appropriately protective, but not overly so, and above all he'd been very open and honest. But now, when I went to talk to my father about a particular boy at school named Will, I was shocked at his reaction. He said he had changed his mind about a lot of things and he didn't want me to date at all. Ever since Dad had come back from Topeka, he had become superstrict. There was no dating in the WBC, and he said I, too, needed to stay away from bad influences. My father thought Will was bad news, even though he was in my grade and from the neighborhood. I considered him to be cool because he had piercings and rode motocross bikes, but Dad said those things reminded him of himself as a teenager, and that he would never let someone with such a wild side date his daughter.

...so things happened:

Will had been very snide, so my father had head-butted him and broken his nose. I couldn't believe that he had taken it this far and actually attacked him. "You ruined everything," I blurted out, which enraged him even more. Now, he began kicking and slapping at me, backing me into a corner. I was absolutely terrified. Mom and Taylor were home, but neither of them was coming to my rescue. "You think you can disobey me, you little bitch?" "Daddy, please stop," I begged. "We weren't doing anything." I ran down the hall to my room and climbed up into my top bunk, with Dad following on my heels. Seemingly possessed by his rage, he pulled me to the edge of the bed and let me fall to the ground. His face was red and his temples were bulging as he hulked over me, practically spitting in my face. My father was a big, tall guy, and I was fourteen and weighed less than a hundred pounds. He unleashed a verbal attack on me for what felt like hours while I cowered on the floor, trying to protect my face from the spit spewing from his mouth. When his tirade was over, he stormed down the hall and out of the house, slamming the door behind him. When I went to school the next day, I saw Will in the hallway. Several kids were crowded around him, asking him what had happened to his nose. I was mortified, and after making eye contact with him, I continued walking to my next class. A couple of days later, I saw him again at the community pool. He was way across on the far side, but when he saw me, he packed up his stuff and left. Will's parents filed an assault charge against my father the day after the attack, and when my father got the notice, he filed a counterclaim against Will. I didn't attend the hearing, but apparently the judge took into consideration the lewd love notes Dad presented in court and ultimately dismissed the charges. My father even managed to get a restraining order against Will, preventing him from coming within twenty feet of me when we were in school and one hundred yards of me outside the school setting until I turned eighteen.

An interesting view of christianity as a whole:

People called us haters because the word hate was so prevalent in our protests. The rejoinders we heard most often from people trying to refute our message were: "God loves everybody" and "God is a loving, tolerant God." But as the pastor told us, these were perhaps the biggest lies of all. In truth, it was God who hated, not us. The pastor was God's mouthpiece on earth, and we were only the messengers. Most of our detractors thought that we went around spewing the same handful of lines from scripture and hiding behind a distortion and perversion of the Baptist faith. This couldn't be less accurate. The pastor might have called himself an "old school" or "primitive" Baptist, but the theology he preached was fundamental Calvinism.

That's to take in with:

Very rarely did we encounter people who could challenge us on the specifics of the Bible, but when we did, we treated them respectfully. We all carried electronic Bibles, palm-size e-readers of the traditional King James translation, which we'd take out in order to very gently show them the verses that supported each of the points they chose to contend.

Isn't it always refreshing to read stuff that the pastors of these cults come up with, by the way? On Fred Phelps:

He was always very graphic, telling us that homosexuals were the type of people who would eat each other's feces, have sex with each other's feces, take "golden showers," and drink each other's semen.

But they liked "South Park"!

We were not forbidden to watch TV shows. In fact, when it came to the media, my parents probably did less censoring than more conventional parents, who were often afraid of the language and content in the network shows. My girlfriends and I enjoyed watching South Park on Comedy Central. We loved the show's crudeness and its parodies of other religions, especially the episode that lampooned Scientology. I thought that the fact that we were teens who were out in the world and not tempted by evil proved to everyone that we were truly God's example.

The continous torture:

I was starting to freak out when my cell phone rang. It was my mother, wanting me to pick up my brother from day care. I told her I couldn't. When she asked why, I was forced to explain where I was so she could come pick me up. Her interrogation began the moment I opened her car door. She asked me if I had been visiting a boyfriend. She demanded to know how I met him, did I have sex with him, was there a chance I had gotten pregnant, why did I do it, did I want to go to hell, did I hate God, was I a whore, and would I rather be a whore or a Christian? She upset me so much I cried, but even worse, she told my father. He was furious. "I feel like I should hit you," he growled. "But it won't do any good. I will humiliate you enough to be memorable." He proceeded to tell everyone in the church about my transgression.

After being banished by the WBC and her family:

One time, I saw my father in the St. Francis cafeteria and realized that my mother was in the hospital as a patient. I figured it was probably something related to her recurring back problems. My father would never have come to my workplace unless there was a medical reason. I did a double take when I saw him. He looked me straight in the eye, then turned around and walked away. He wasn't even courteous enough to acknowledge me. I was a nurse, a person, and his daughter. He looked at me with an expression that let me know that I was not even human in his eyes. It was the scariest feeling I ever had. I suddenly thought that I had no importance, that I was nothing but a ghost. I was not a source of comfort to him whatsoever. That I was his daughter and a Christian--none of that mattered. There was no way I could have gone to see my mother in her hospital room.

All in all: a powerful book, but slightly predictable if you've read others like it. Still, the simple language and way of telling the story is non-melodramatic and very understandable.

I really found out about the Westboro Babtist Church from having seen them in the Louis Theroux documentaries - of which there are two - and of how Anonymous has hacked them. And because they make for great hate fodder, which has spawned a more philosophical question: is the eye-for-an-eye approach really OK?

This book is written by Lauren Drain, a former member of the WBC cult, who was cast out. The book is matter-of-factly written, open minded and it's tragic to read of she was and is treated by family and former friends.

She doesn't lean away from describing how she spoke with people back when she was a cult member:

We kept our signs, shirts, and caps hidden from view so that we wouldn't be harassed as we made our way through thousands of heavily armed security and military agents to our assigned protest site. Finally, almost in position, some of us started announcing our message. "God Hates You!" I declared, as we pushed forward. The high we got from picketing took over. "You are going to hell! You are all fag enablers!" we hollered over one another. "We are the only true patriots," I added. "If you people were really patriotic and religious, you would be standing with us holding signs." I told them that God mocked their calamities, and good Christians were supposed to warn nations against sin. "Thank God for September 11!" I yelled, the strongest insult to the sinners and the one most certain to get a rise out of the people within earshot.

...and she makes a strong case in explaining what she thought during the

The Washington crowd that day reacted strongly to us, which reinforced our sense of success. The more enraged they became, the more we felt we were making our message known. If they had thought we were just a bunch of crazies, they would have simply ignored us, but their heated interest in us obviously meant that our words were making an impact. We were delivering the message of the Holy Ghost, making us superior and perhaps even omniscient. In a sea of heathens, we were the messengers.

I'd love to have seen more of her inner thoughts from her WBC days, when argumenting, thinking, discussing, etc, but at the same time, one of the strengths of this book is the way that it's plainly written. Also, I believe shutting off the thinking process is one of the cult member hallmarks, so I don't think anybody can criticise her too much for that.

It's interesting to read on how Drain's father first veered into religion, and then away.

The next year, my father moved away from religion, saying that it tended to go to extremes. He said the preacher's theory that some people lived on the earth forever was a perfect example. Instead of the faithful Bible student he'd been, he embraced his hippie rocker side and became the coolest dad in the world. He never missed a single one of my peewee softball games, and he was always on the sidelines cheering me on. Everybody liked him. He was so sociable and still in his twenties then; he was like a big kid. All of my friends adored him, too. Dad filled the void left by the preacher's departure with a lot of wilder friends. He even started his own band called Boneyard. There always seemed to be a ton of people in the house drinking, smoking, and playing instruments in the basement. My mother had a few acquaintances from work, but they weren't really the kind of friends that came into their social life; those came from Dad. Mom would chat with them, but she really wasn't into the same kind of scene that Dad was. For one, she didn't like drinking. She might have a wine cooler here and there, but that was it. While Dad was playing rock and roll in the basement, Mom preferred being with Taylor and me in the backyard, watching us play on the trampoline, or making us treats in the kitchen. The one thing my parents liked to do together was play softball.

During my freshman year, my father started talking more seriously about making a documentary. He liked working at the Home Shopping Network and was clearly doing well there, but wanted to do something more creative and on his own terms. He'd been thinking about a subject for the two years we'd been in Florida, and was looking for a controversial topic that hadn't yet received much exposure. The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, came to his mind.

Spoiler alert: the WBC converted him. This translated quite easily into his way of relating to his children:

A year earlier, before my first-ever school dance, Dad sat me down for "the talk." He told me the responsibilities that went along with being social at my age, and said that if I was thinking about sex, he wanted me to come to him and my mother so that they could get me on birth control. Dad also said I should go to them if I was thinking about experimenting with drugs, because buying them from a stranger was extremely risky, and he didn't want me to end up dead. He had been appropriately protective, but not overly so, and above all he'd been very open and honest. But now, when I went to talk to my father about a particular boy at school named Will, I was shocked at his reaction. He said he had changed his mind about a lot of things and he didn't want me to date at all. Ever since Dad had come back from Topeka, he had become superstrict. There was no dating in the WBC, and he said I, too, needed to stay away from bad influences. My father thought Will was bad news, even though he was in my grade and from the neighborhood. I considered him to be cool because he had piercings and rode motocross bikes, but Dad said those things reminded him of himself as a teenager, and that he would never let someone with such a wild side date his daughter.

...so things happened:

Will had been very snide, so my father had head-butted him and broken his nose. I couldn't believe that he had taken it this far and actually attacked him. "You ruined everything," I blurted out, which enraged him even more. Now, he began kicking and slapping at me, backing me into a corner. I was absolutely terrified. Mom and Taylor were home, but neither of them was coming to my rescue. "You think you can disobey me, you little bitch?" "Daddy, please stop," I begged. "We weren't doing anything." I ran down the hall to my room and climbed up into my top bunk, with Dad following on my heels. Seemingly possessed by his rage, he pulled me to the edge of the bed and let me fall to the ground. His face was red and his temples were bulging as he hulked over me, practically spitting in my face. My father was a big, tall guy, and I was fourteen and weighed less than a hundred pounds. He unleashed a verbal attack on me for what felt like hours while I cowered on the floor, trying to protect my face from the spit spewing from his mouth. When his tirade was over, he stormed down the hall and out of the house, slamming the door behind him. When I went to school the next day, I saw Will in the hallway. Several kids were crowded around him, asking him what had happened to his nose. I was mortified, and after making eye contact with him, I continued walking to my next class. A couple of days later, I saw him again at the community pool. He was way across on the far side, but when he saw me, he packed up his stuff and left. Will's parents filed an assault charge against my father the day after the attack, and when my father got the notice, he filed a counterclaim against Will. I didn't attend the hearing, but apparently the judge took into consideration the lewd love notes Dad presented in court and ultimately dismissed the charges. My father even managed to get a restraining order against Will, preventing him from coming within twenty feet of me when we were in school and one hundred yards of me outside the school setting until I turned eighteen.

An interesting view of christianity as a whole:

People called us haters because the word hate was so prevalent in our protests. The rejoinders we heard most often from people trying to refute our message were: "God loves everybody" and "God is a loving, tolerant God." But as the pastor told us, these were perhaps the biggest lies of all. In truth, it was God who hated, not us. The pastor was God's mouthpiece on earth, and we were only the messengers. Most of our detractors thought that we went around spewing the same handful of lines from scripture and hiding behind a distortion and perversion of the Baptist faith. This couldn't be less accurate. The pastor might have called himself an "old school" or "primitive" Baptist, but the theology he preached was fundamental Calvinism.

That's to take in with:

Very rarely did we encounter people who could challenge us on the specifics of the Bible, but when we did, we treated them respectfully. We all carried electronic Bibles, palm-size e-readers of the traditional King James translation, which we'd take out in order to very gently show them the verses that supported each of the points they chose to contend.

Isn't it always refreshing to read stuff that the pastors of these cults come up with, by the way? On Fred Phelps:

He was always very graphic, telling us that homosexuals were the type of people who would eat each other's feces, have sex with each other's feces, take "golden showers," and drink each other's semen.

But they liked "South Park"!

We were not forbidden to watch TV shows. In fact, when it came to the media, my parents probably did less censoring than more conventional parents, who were often afraid of the language and content in the network shows. My girlfriends and I enjoyed watching South Park on Comedy Central. We loved the show's crudeness and its parodies of other religions, especially the episode that lampooned Scientology. I thought that the fact that we were teens who were out in the world and not tempted by evil proved to everyone that we were truly God's example.

The continous torture:

I was starting to freak out when my cell phone rang. It was my mother, wanting me to pick up my brother from day care. I told her I couldn't. When she asked why, I was forced to explain where I was so she could come pick me up. Her interrogation began the moment I opened her car door. She asked me if I had been visiting a boyfriend. She demanded to know how I met him, did I have sex with him, was there a chance I had gotten pregnant, why did I do it, did I want to go to hell, did I hate God, was I a whore, and would I rather be a whore or a Christian? She upset me so much I cried, but even worse, she told my father. He was furious. "I feel like I should hit you," he growled. "But it won't do any good. I will humiliate you enough to be memorable." He proceeded to tell everyone in the church about my transgression.

After being banished by the WBC and her family:

One time, I saw my father in the St. Francis cafeteria and realized that my mother was in the hospital as a patient. I figured it was probably something related to her recurring back problems. My father would never have come to my workplace unless there was a medical reason. I did a double take when I saw him. He looked me straight in the eye, then turned around and walked away. He wasn't even courteous enough to acknowledge me. I was a nurse, a person, and his daughter. He looked at me with an expression that let me know that I was not even human in his eyes. It was the scariest feeling I ever had. I suddenly thought that I had no importance, that I was nothing but a ghost. I was not a source of comfort to him whatsoever. That I was his daughter and a Christian--none of that mattered. There was no way I could have gone to see my mother in her hospital room.

All in all: a powerful book, but slightly predictable if you've read others like it. Still, the simple language and way of telling the story is non-melodramatic and very understandable.

I really found out about the Westboro Babtist Church from having seen them in the Louis Theroux documentaries - of which there are two - and of how Anonymous has hacked them. And because they make for great hate fodder, which has spawned a more philosophical question: is the eye-for-an-eye approach really OK?

This book is written by Lauren Drain, a former member of the WBC cult, who was cast out. The book is matter-of-factly written, open minded and it's tragic to read of she was and is treated by family and former friends.

She doesn't lean away from describing how she spoke with people back when she was a cult member:

We kept our signs, shirts, and caps hidden from view so that we wouldn't be harassed as we made our way through thousands of heavily armed security and military agents to our assigned protest site. Finally, almost in position, some of us started announcing our message. "God Hates You!" I declared, as we pushed forward. The high we got from picketing took over. "You are going to hell! You are all fag enablers!" we hollered over one another. "We are the only true patriots," I added. "If you people were really patriotic and religious, you would be standing with us holding signs." I told them that God mocked their calamities, and good Christians were supposed to warn nations against sin. "Thank God for September 11!" I yelled, the strongest insult to the sinners and the one most certain to get a rise out of the people within earshot.

...and she makes a strong case in explaining what she thought during the

The Washington crowd that day reacted strongly to us, which reinforced our sense of success. The more enraged they became, the more we felt we were making our message known. If they had thought we were just a bunch of crazies, they would have simply ignored us, but their heated interest in us obviously meant that our words were making an impact. We were delivering the message of the Holy Ghost, making us superior and perhaps even omniscient. In a sea of heathens, we were the messengers.

I'd love to have seen more of her inner thoughts from her WBC days, when argumenting, thinking, discussing, etc, but at the same time, one of the strengths of this book is the way that it's plainly written. Also, I believe shutting off the thinking process is one of the cult member hallmarks, so I don't think anybody can criticise her too much for that.

It's interesting to read on how Drain's father first veered into religion, and then away.

The next year, my father moved away from religion, saying that it tended to go to extremes. He said the preacher's theory that some people lived on the earth forever was a perfect example. Instead of the faithful Bible student he'd been, he embraced his hippie rocker side and became the coolest dad in the world. He never missed a single one of my peewee softball games, and he was always on the sidelines cheering me on. Everybody liked him. He was so sociable and still in his twenties then; he was like a big kid. All of my friends adored him, too. Dad filled the void left by the preacher's departure with a lot of wilder friends. He even started his own band called Boneyard. There always seemed to be a ton of people in the house drinking, smoking, and playing instruments in the basement. My mother had a few acquaintances from work, but they weren't really the kind of friends that came into their social life; those came from Dad. Mom would chat with them, but she really wasn't into the same kind of scene that Dad was. For one, she didn't like drinking. She might have a wine cooler here and there, but that was it. While Dad was playing rock and roll in the basement, Mom preferred being with Taylor and me in the backyard, watching us play on the trampoline, or making us treats in the kitchen. The one thing my parents liked to do together was play softball.

During my freshman year, my father started talking more seriously about making a documentary. He liked working at the Home Shopping Network and was clearly doing well there, but wanted to do something more creative and on his own terms. He'd been thinking about a subject for the two years we'd been in Florida, and was looking for a controversial topic that hadn't yet received much exposure. The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, came to his mind.

Spoiler alert: the WBC converted him. This translated quite easily into his way of relating to his children:

A year earlier, before my first-ever school dance, Dad sat me down for "the talk." He told me the responsibilities that went along with being social at my age, and said that if I was thinking about sex, he wanted me to come to him and my mother so that they could get me on birth control. Dad also said I should go to them if I was thinking about experimenting with drugs, because buying them from a stranger was extremely risky, and he didn't want me to end up dead. He had been appropriately protective, but not overly so, and above all he'd been very open and honest. But now, when I went to talk to my father about a particular boy at school named Will, I was shocked at his reaction. He said he had changed his mind about a lot of things and he didn't want me to date at all. Ever since Dad had come back from Topeka, he had become superstrict. There was no dating in the WBC, and he said I, too, needed to stay away from bad influences. My father thought Will was bad news, even though he was in my grade and from the neighborhood. I considered him to be cool because he had piercings and rode motocross bikes, but Dad said those things reminded him of himself as a teenager, and that he would never let someone with such a wild side date his daughter.

...so things happened:

Will had been very snide, so my father had head-butted him and broken his nose. I couldn't believe that he had taken it this far and actually attacked him. "You ruined everything," I blurted out, which enraged him even more. Now, he began kicking and slapping at me, backing me into a corner. I was absolutely terrified. Mom and Taylor were home, but neither of them was coming to my rescue. "You think you can disobey me, you little bitch?" "Daddy, please stop," I begged. "We weren't doing anything." I ran down the hall to my room and climbed up into my top bunk, with Dad following on my heels. Seemingly possessed by his rage, he pulled me to the edge of the bed and let me fall to the ground. His face was red and his temples were bulging as he hulked over me, practically spitting in my face. My father was a big, tall guy, and I was fourteen and weighed less than a hundred pounds. He unleashed a verbal attack on me for what felt like hours while I cowered on the floor, trying to protect my face from the spit spewing from his mouth. When his tirade was over, he stormed down the hall and out of the house, slamming the door behind him. When I went to school the next day, I saw Will in the hallway. Several kids were crowded around him, asking him what had happened to his nose. I was mortified, and after making eye contact with him, I continued walking to my next class. A couple of days later, I saw him again at the community pool. He was way across on the far side, but when he saw me, he packed up his stuff and left. Will's parents filed an assault charge against my father the day after the attack, and when my father got the notice, he filed a counterclaim against Will. I didn't attend the hearing, but apparently the judge took into consideration the lewd love notes Dad presented in court and ultimately dismissed the charges. My father even managed to get a restraining order against Will, preventing him from coming within twenty feet of me when we were in school and one hundred yards of me outside the school setting until I turned eighteen.

An interesting view of christianity as a whole:

People called us haters because the word hate was so prevalent in our protests. The rejoinders we heard most often from people trying to refute our message were: "God loves everybody" and "God is a loving, tolerant God." But as the pastor told us, these were perhaps the biggest lies of all. In truth, it was God who hated, not us. The pastor was God's mouthpiece on earth, and we were only the messengers. Most of our detractors thought that we went around spewing the same handful of lines from scripture and hiding behind a distortion and perversion of the Baptist faith. This couldn't be less accurate. The pastor might have called himself an "old school" or "primitive" Baptist, but the theology he preached was fundamental Calvinism.

That's to take in with:

Very rarely did we encounter people who could challenge us on the specifics of the Bible, but when we did, we treated them respectfully. We all carried electronic Bibles, palm-size e-readers of the traditional King James translation, which we'd take out in order to very gently show them the verses that supported each of the points they chose to contend.

Isn't it always refreshing to read stuff that the pastors of these cults come up with, by the way? On Fred Phelps:

He was always very graphic, telling us that homosexuals were the type of people who would eat each other's feces, have sex with each other's feces, take "golden showers," and drink each other's semen.

But they liked "South Park"!

We were not forbidden to watch TV shows. In fact, when it came to the media, my parents probably did less censoring than more conventional parents, who were often afraid of the language and content in the network shows. My girlfriends and I enjoyed watching South Park on Comedy Central. We loved the show's crudeness and its parodies of other religions, especially the episode that lampooned Scientology. I thought that the fact that we were teens who were out in the world and not tempted by evil proved to everyone that we were truly God's example.

The continous torture:

I was starting to freak out when my cell phone rang. It was my mother, wanting me to pick up my brother from day care. I told her I couldn't. When she asked why, I was forced to explain where I was so she could come pick me up. Her interrogation began the moment I opened her car door. She asked me if I had been visiting a boyfriend. She demanded to know how I met him, did I have sex with him, was there a chance I had gotten pregnant, why did I do it, did I want to go to hell, did I hate God, was I a whore, and would I rather be a whore or a Christian? She upset me so much I cried, but even worse, she told my father. He was furious. "I feel like I should hit you," he growled. "But it won't do any good. I will humiliate you enough to be memorable." He proceeded to tell everyone in the church about my transgression.

After being banished by the WBC and her family:

One time, I saw my father in the St. Francis cafeteria and realized that my mother was in the hospital as a patient. I figured it was probably something related to her recurring back problems. My father would never have come to my workplace unless there was a medical reason. I did a double take when I saw him. He looked me straight in the eye, then turned around and walked away. He wasn't even courteous enough to acknowledge me. I was a nurse, a person, and his daughter. He looked at me with an expression that let me know that I was not even human in his eyes. It was the scariest feeling I ever had. I suddenly thought that I had no importance, that I was nothing but a ghost. I was not a source of comfort to him whatsoever. That I was his daughter and a Christian--none of that mattered. There was no way I could have gone to see my mother in her hospital room.

All in all: a powerful book, but slightly predictable if you've read others like it. Still, the simple language and way of telling the story is non-melodramatic and very understandable.