Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church by Lauren Drain (✰✰✰)

Banished fell far short of my expectations. I picked up this book because I wanted to understand why anyone would join an organization known for picketing funerals of fallen servicemen and women and first responders to 9/11. It was inconceivable to me that anyone claiming to be Christian could do something so disrespectful. I was also curious how a cult whose members live among regular society manages to keep their people in line.

This book never went below the surface emotionally and analytically. I got the feeling that Lauren herself does not know the answers to my questions. From middle school into adulthood, she, for the most part, did what she was told. Even while describing what it was like to live under the constant scrutiny of her parents and other church members, it was as if she was writing from a perspective that was still too close to the person who thought that was normal. The part of her that got out knows that free people do not live like that, but the part of her that still yearns for the love of her family and the fellowship of the church cannot see how warped it is. The result was writing that was flat and lacking in self-awareness.

When she wrote about the thing the church is best known for — picketing — her prose was so matter-of-fact that it was as if she could not bring herself, even now, to condemn the behavior and see it for how appalling it is. Even in the book’s epilogue, where she offers an apology to the families of the deceased and the other groups, in particular homosexuals, whom she reviled thousands of times, she hedges. Instead of just offering her apology, she tempers it by saying that she will never advocate for the causes she used to advocate against. Why add that? It is her right to still feel that way (after all those years of brainwashing, it is understandable), but it made her apology seem so disingenuous, and that really bothered me.

My thought with this one is that either not enough time has past for Lauren to process her feelings enough to be able to answer all the “why” questions with honesty and depth or she is simply unable to think that profoundly, maybe due to having her every thought dictated to her for eight formative years of her life. Either way, she admits that she never found a scriptural reference to support why the church takes the position they do on homosexuals. Asking others did not get her an answer either. She did say that in one way or another, all of the church’s stances stem from hatred of homosexuality and hatred of the Jews (who they blame for killing Jesus). All in all, the book did give a glimpse into what life is like for members but no substance in terms of their theology or philosophy.