Lauren Drain, a former member of the
Westboro Baptist Church, the anti-gay church helmed by Fred Phelps,
believes the church brainwashed her and her siblings.
The Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro
Baptist Church, infamous for coining the phrase “God Hates Fags,”
has said its members protest the funerals of fallen American soldiers
because they died protecting a nation which supports homosexuality.
Now 27, Drain has said she was cast out
of the church for challenging many of its beliefs.
In her new book BANISHED: Surviving
My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church, Drain talks about her
experience in the church.
“I thought people who challenged us
deserved honest, straightforward answers,” Drain
wrote. “One of my biggest problems was trying to reconcile the
scripture with our message, especially when it came to death. A lot
of people at the pickets wanted to know how we could make definitive
statements such as 'Thank God for September 11' and 'Thank God for
dead soldiers.' I wondered, too, how we could say these things with
such authority when Ezekiel 18:32 says, 'For I have no pleasure in
the death of him that dieth' and Ezekiel 33:11, where he says, 'I
have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn
from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why
will ye die, O house of Israel?' People at the pickets would ask me,
'God wants us to go to hell?' I really didn't feel like I knew the
answer.”
In an appearance on CNN's Piers
Morgan Tonight, Drain told host Piers Morgan that she believes
the church brainwashed her and her three siblings who remain in the
congregation.
“They did brainwash me,” Drain
said.
“They manipulated the children into
believing that that's the right thing to do for God. That they are
being good Christians to go out and protest all these different
things. And it's very hypocritical. They don't even hold themselves
to the hight standard they hold everyone else to,” she added. (The
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