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    Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church
    Unavailable
    Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church
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    Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church
    Audiobook8 hours

    Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church

    Written by Lauren Drain and Lisa Pulitzer

    Narrated by Lauren Drain

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER You've likely heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. Perhaps you've seen their pickets on the news, the members holding signs with messages that are too offensive to copy here, protesting at events such as the funerals of soldiers, the 9-year old victim of the recent Tucson shooting, and Elizabeth Edwards, all in front of their grieving families. The WBC is fervently anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and anti- practically everything and everyone. And they aren't going anywhere: in March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the WBC's right to picket funerals.

    Since no organized religion will claim affiliation with the WBC, it's perhaps more accurate to think of them as a cult. Lauren Drain was thrust into that cult at the age of 15, and then spat back out again seven years later. BANISHED is the first look inside the organization, as well as a fascinating story of adaptation and perseverance.

    Lauren spent her early years enjoying a normal life with her family in Florida. But when her formerly liberal and secular father set out to produce a documentary about the WBC, his detached interest gradually evolved into fascination, and he moved the entire family to Kansas to join the church and live on their compound. Over the next seven years, Lauren fully assimilated their extreme beliefs, and became a member of the church and an active and vocal picketer. But as she matured and began to challenge some of the church's tenets, she was unceremoniously cast out from the church and permanently cut off from her family and from everyone else she knew and loved. BANISHED is the story of Lauren's fight to find herself amidst dramatic changes in a world of extremists and a life in exile.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateMar 5, 2013
    ISBN9781619692800
    Unavailable
    Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church

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    Reviews for Banished

    3.5/5

    63 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A cautionary tale that reminds us that there is a fuzzy line between orthodoxy and heresy. Lauren, and her co-author, the well-named Lisa Pulitzer, do an exceptional job of putting us in the mind of a teenager trapped in a cult. If you ever wonder why people don't just get up and walk out, Lauren's story should help.
    • 3/5
      I read this book primarily to attempt to understand the mindset of a church that regularly pickets funerals of the military and others involved in tragedy. Lauren Drain was moved by her parents to Topeka, Kansas as a young teenager when her father became enamored with and later joined the Westboro Baptist Church. I would like to point out that the Westboro Baptist Church is an independent group, unaffiliated with any of the major Baptist denominations, nor would any of them claim an affiliation with this church. The description of her life within the group is not mean-spirited and it is obvious that Lauren herself does not see them as totally evil or even totally wrong. But over time her eyes are opened to the unscriptural and inconsistent lifestyle being lived by the group which mainly consists of one family and a couple of small "hangers on". It was helpful to read the book to begin to understand the mindset of this sect.
    • 4/5
      I thought this book provided a great perspective of someone who was cautious of the beliefs, yet still wanted desperately to fit in. I feel that this book could have been like twice the size and I would have still been interested. I would have loved to hear more about her life post-church and how she became the inspiration she is today.
    • 4/5
      This is a very sad but moving book. Drain was fourteen when her family joined the WBC, and her tale is one of a teenage girl who just wanted to fit in and please her father. I feel for her, and I'm glad the book ended the way it did. May she have a long and happy life. She's earned it.
    • 4/5
      Very, very disturbing. These people aren't Christian, they belong to a nasty cult. The double-standard in the church, the Phelps spawn get second chances, while those not of the clan, get held to a higher standard and then tossed out on their ears for minor infractions.
    • 2/5
      Reading a book like this one makes this reader even more convinced that joining any religious organization is a foolish endeavor. Drain's father was raised in a dysfunctional family and it appears to have scared him for he could not settle for a stable life style. It would appear he was man who possessed some charisma for he was a good salesman and had organizational skills. He found his niche in life when he talked himself and his family into the Westboro Baptist Church. His treatment of his daughter was abusive and he was the one who led the movement to have her banished.If ever a group of nut cases used the Bible and God for bizarre purposes, this is the group. With a belief that God is an angry God and has already preordained at birth that one will go to heaven or hell no matter how one lives one life, this church sets out to attack everything and anyone based on Americas acceptance of homosexuality. This includes picketing military funerals because soldiers are killed because the military supports a corrupt government (read condones gay marriage), and in Drain's case, she picketed her own high school and university graduations wearing her cap and gown because the education system accepts gays.The hierarchy of this church is controlled by the Phelps family and they use fear and intimidation to control the flock. Spying on other members of the congregation is encouraged. The one positive piece of information that is revealed, that because it is almost impossible to marry someone who is not a church member and almost impossible to join the church, it is going to be extinct as an viable institution in the future. At the rate they were throwing members out for minor offenses such as hoarding, the future did look brief.Includes some photographs.
    • 2/5
      Lauren Drain spent several of her formative years in the Westboro Baptist Church, a hate group based in Topeka, Kansas. She picketed at various events, including military funerals and other churches. She was eventually banished from the church (hence the title of the book), leaving her without a family or friends.I thought that I would like this book more than I did. It's not particularly well-written, though, and there's little information about the Church that isn't available in other places. I listened to the audiobook, which may have been a mistake. Lauren often comes across as a whiny, petulant child. I do sympathize, to an extent, with her; she did spend her teenage years under the control of a cult, and she was kicked out for the "infraction" of flirting with boys a few too many times for her group's liking, which left her on her own at a young age (early twenties). However, Lauren spends much of the book making it appear that the Westboro Church wasn't really THAT bad. Instead of "surviving" her years in the church, as the book says, she seemed to enjoy it. She described picketing as "fun," and she made friends with some of Phelps' grandchildren and seemed to have a great time with them. She seems bewildered that people were just so MEAN to her and her church group when they were holding up such signs as "God hates f***" (I'm sorry, I won't type out that word). She states that the group wasn't really evil, just that they were trying to draw attention to themselves, so they used incendiary language to do so. Sure, Westboro thrives on attention, but I have no doubt that they mean EXACTLY what their signs say.She also has a tendency to whine. She was offended that her father looked through her bookbag when she was fourteen and found sexually explicit notes from a boy in there. While I think his response was definitely an overreaction to the extreme, she acted like her parents had no right to look in her bag (umm...). She also whined about how her parents would call her to ask where she was if she took longer than usual at the store (I don't see what's wrong with that), and she really went emo about how the parents at Westboro didn't trust her driving their kids around after she was involved in THREE accidents. I wouldn't trust her, either. Geez. Anything to try to add some drama, I guess.At the end of the book, I was left with the distinct impression that Lauren would gladly have remained in Westboro forever had she not been banished by the group. In fact, I was left wondering if she would return if she could. A statement in her epilogue also left me with a bad taste in my mouth: "I will never be a political activist for gay rights, but I like gay people and have lots of gay friends, too." Oh god, not the "I don't believe gay people should have the same rights as straight people, but hey, I have gay friends so it's totally okay!!!!!" thing. Ugh. (She did, however, pose for a No H8 picture - did she change her mind or was she still trying for attention?) I just can't recommend this memoir.
    • 5/5
      At fifteen Lauren Drain moved from Florida to Kansas with her family to join the Westboro Baptist Church, famous for picketing the funerals of American soldiers killed in battle with huge signs and shouted slogans denouncing homosexuality. The church and its teachings were her world for eight years, and then she was banished. While a member of the church she embraced its belief in a wrathful God bent on punishing just about everyone. She didn’t see the church’s protest messages as hateful--she saw passion, bravery, and superior reasoning ability, and was proud, at the time, to be a member of the group. As someone interested trying to understand people’s motivations, beliefs, and behavior I found Lauren’s story fascinating and moving. She wanted to be a full and faithful member of the Westboro Baptist Church, but not being part of the Phelps family she always felt some insecurity, and her need to seek clarification on several Biblical issues got her branded as a trouble maker. When even her family turned their backs on her, she was forced to find a new way to live and think. Lauren writes about the evolution of her beliefs and actions with openness and honesty. It’s a mesmerizing and often heartbreaking book, which she ends with an apology for the hurt she has caused.