Lauren Drain Biography
Lauren Drain is an American author, a Fitness Model, Personal Trainer and a Nurse. Prior to this, she is a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Most importantly, she is the writer of the 2013 book Banished, which chronicles her experiences and eventual banishment from the church.
Lauren Drain Age
Drain was born on December 31, 1985, in Tampa, Florida, South Africa. Therefore, she is 33 years of age as of 2019.
Lauren Drain Height
She stands at an approximate height of 5 feet 6 inches.
Lauren Drain Family
Lauren was born in Tampa, Florida, South Africa to parents Steve Drain and Lucy Drain. Together with her two sisters, and brother, they lived in nearby Bradenton until age five, when she moved to Olathe, Kansas.
During this time, her father enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Kansas. Citing this, he first came into contact with Westboro while working on a documentary critical of the church.
In addition to this, Steve eventually became a fervent convert and his entire family followed him into the church. Prior to this, Drain was a member from 2001 until 2008 when she was excommunicated for questioning church doctrine.
Nevertheless, Drains’ parents, two sisters, and brother are still members of the church and have cut all ties with her. She graduated from Topeka West High School in Topeka, Kansas and earned a Wiseman Scholarship to Washburn University.
Lauren Drain Husband
Drain is married to her lovely husband named David Kagan on the 3rd of August 2013. Before being a wife of David, she was approached and proposed by many but she found David as her true soul mate.
From the time of getting married to till date, the lovely couple is living happily together. They currently reside in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States.
They have shared strong love and relation with each other. Moreover, she is loyal to her husband and so is her husband to her. Most importantly, the duo announced that they are expecting their first child – a baby girl in August 2019. As a result, they headed to Sin City with her husband to celebrate the big news.
Lauren Drain Net Worth
Lauren sits at an approximate net worth of $2 million as of 2019. She has earned her lucrative income from her successful career as an author and Fitness model, Personal Trainer as well as a Nurse.
Lauren Drain Fit
Drain worked as a Registered Nurse for nine years before becoming a full-time personal trainer and fitness model. Moreover, she uses her social media account such as Instagram and Facebook to showcase her fitness routines, strength, and motivational content.
To view this page, visit: https://www.fitangelcollection.com
Lauren Drain Banished – Lauren Drain Book
Lauren Drain’s memoir is essentially about an abusive relationship — though not with another person. “Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church” details Drain’s involvement with the cult-like congregation led by Fred Phelps, whose members often picket events such as soldiers’ funerals carrying signs with hate-filled messages.
The story surrounding Drain’s introduction to the church as a teenager is fascinating: Her father, a liberal atheist and aspiring filmmaker, wanted to make a documentary that would highlight the WBC’s ridiculousness. But the more time he spent with its members, the more his skepticism turned to understand — so much so that he eventually relocated his wife and two daughters from Tampa to Topeka, Kan., to become full-time church members. Drain enthusiastically embraced her father’s new faith in order to get back into his good graces (having fallen out of his favor for chatting with a boy online).
Co-authored with Lisa Pulitzer, “Banished” chronicles Drain’s years with the church until she was dismissed 10 days shy of her 22d birthday for being a “whore” — for talking to boys and communicating repeatedly with one outsider.
While Drain offers some insight into the mentality of the WBC’s members, there’s nothing revelatory here. Because she’s writing as an outsider with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that Drain now finds certain aspects of the church (its isolationism and hypocrisy, for instance) shocking. But while these realizations appear to be mind-blowing for her, to anyone who is even passingly familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church, they are hardly surprising. One eyebrow-raising tidbit: Many members of the Phelps family are lawyers whose legal fees are paid by the state when they represent the church in lawsuits. “So being sued was kind of a win-win,” Drain notes.
Drain leaves little doubt that the church members truly get an intoxicating, almost chemical “high” from picketing — but it’s not because they’re trying to get people to repent. (”We didn’t really believe their souls were salvageable,” she writes. Rather, a sense of superiority is the driving force behind all of the church’s actions, according to Drain.
“When we staged protests, we were proving that we were right and righteous, and everyone else was wrong and clueless,” she writes.
Though Drain clearly now feels a sense of remorse about her actions, as a reader, it’s often difficult to sympathize with her. Sure, as a high school sophomore she didn’t have much say about her involvement with the church, but at what point does youthful obsequiousness become willful ignorance?
Drain is nearly 22 when she’s banished from the church, and though her complete abandonment by her parents is heartbreaking, many readers — especially those who don’t have a strong sense of faith — may be unwilling or unable to pity her lack of independent thinking. Even though she has started to question the church’s teachings, once things start to really go downhill with her family and other church members, Drain goes from indignant to contrite, begging for forgiveness and acceptance from the same people whose hypocrisy she derided pages earlier.
In fact, Drain’s assertions occasionally provoke a sense of condescension. Regarding picketing immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, Drain (who was 15 at the time) writes, “I was too young and childish to care about and consider the feelings of people I didn’t know.” After the 2006 Amish school shootings, Drain (then 19) believes, “If it was God’s will that I spread His Word . . . then even if I personally found it distasteful and exploitative to picket the funerals of small children, I was in no position to say no.” Regardless of the degree of truth behind them, those are awfully convenient excuses to use when justifying such dangerous beliefs and behavior.
Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com
Lauren Drain Westboro
The Westboro Baptist Church is well-known for loudly making its hateful, virulently homophobic views known by protesting at high-profile funerals, including those of soldiers.
But for family members who have escaped what they call a “cult,” the church’s silence may be the loudest protest of all.
Just before her 22nd birthday, Lauren Drain was kicked out of the Topeka-based church, reportedly for “questioning elements of church doctrine,” according to Advocate.com. Since then, she moved on to become a registered nurse and she joined the NOH8 campaign.
On Sunday, Lauren posted a photo from her wedding to Reddit, showing her walking down the aisle not with her father, but with other friends who have escaped the church as well.
“My father is in a cult & wouldn’t attend my wedding, so two ex-cult members & close friends who also escaped stepped in to take his role & give me away,” she titled the thread.
In an email exchange with Business Insider, Lauren confirmed she did invite her family members, but they did not attend, nor did they even respond.
“When I was ostracized I was given a few hours to pack my life into a few suitcases, dropped off by my father at a motel and told to never return, never contact my siblings and that I was now disowned,” Drain wrote in a plea to help other WBC escapees. “Anyone that leaves or is kicked out is banished for life and all ties to your family, friends, community, life is severed and you are truly on your own.”
The Westboro Baptist Church is well-known for loudly making its hateful, virulently homophobic views known by protesting at high-profile funerals, including those of soldiers.
But for family members who have escaped what they call a “cult,” the church’s silence may be the loudest protest of all.
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