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Banished

Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church
Jul 28, 2015rpavlacic rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
After reading this book, one learns that the Westboro Baptist Church isn't Baptist at all (no surprise) but instead follows an extreme form of Calvinism, and a Puritanical one at that. One also learns that the Phelps family are actually civil litigators by trade, so good in fact that people who completely oppose their religious ideology still seek their legal services, and that one of its members successfully argued for throwing out a lawsuit against the church before the US Supreme Court. As for the protagonist, we learn about a family who started out doing an investigative documentary about the hate group and ended up joining it. It is truly heartbreaking that the author was kicked out of her immediate family simply for wanting to date someone without church permission. But like some other reviewers, I can't help but get the impression this was a quite dispassionate book, without much explanation as to where she made her turnaround. I was expecting a more substantive book. But it's still a fair primer as to how some people can get totally unhinged - or get sucked into such a mentality.