[Previous: Meet the Duggars: The secrets and lies of Christian patriarchy]
In the second episode of “Shiny Happy People”, the filmmakers interview a variety of people raised in families that attended Bill Gothard’s IBLP seminars. Some of them knew the Duggars from these seminars before they were on TV. Each and every one of them testifies to the lasting harm that Gothard’s toxic theology inflicted on their lives.
IBLP wasn’t affiliated with any one denomination, although it tended to spread through Southern Baptist churches. One of its key teachings is that the world is organized into a strict hierarchy of authority and obedience. Children are meant to obey their parents, wives are meant to obey their husbands, husbands are meant to obey their churches… and, one presumes, the churches are meant to obey Bill Gothard’s teachings. This means he’s effectively made himself the pope.
Approved voices and book burnings
IBLP calls this the “umbrella of protection” and teaches that you’re safe as long as you’re under the shield of your rightful authority. To them, this isn’t just a metaphor. If you disobey the authorities set over you, or commit some other sin, it creates a “hole” in your umbrella. Gothard taught that demons can get through this hole to gain control over your life, which dooms you to an eternity of torture after death. It’s a cultlike religion based on fear and obedience.
As you might guess, there’s a long list of sins that IBLP devotees are expected to avoid. They’re taught to reject evolution and any other science that conflicts with Gothard’s literal interpretation of the Bible. They’re not supposed to dance or listen to rock music, which according to Gothard contains Satanic rhythms invented in Africa. It’s also a sin to worry, to doubt, or to be unhappy. (One ex-IBLP interviewee said they weren’t allowed to watch Winnie the Pooh because Eeyore glorifies depression.)
As with every other misogynist religion, the list of rules for women is much longer than the list of rules for men. There are approved clothes and approved hairstyles. One of the assignments in IBLP’s homeschooling books is to study drawings of women and circle what’s wrong with each one’s attire. One interviewee cracked, “Instead of math, you’re learning slut-shaming.”
There are even approved voices. IBLP women are supposed to speak in soft, mild tones at all times, like you’d use to talk to a small child or a skittish animal. They played a clip of the Duggars’ show which demonstrated how Michelle Duggar does this. Now that I’ve heard it, I can’t unhear it.
Gothard’s theology is also saturated with loathing of sexuality and the human body. Dating isn’t allowed, only “courtship”—effectively, arranged marriage—where parents decide who will wed their daughters. Engaged couples aren’t allowed to kiss or even be alone together until after their wedding. Like the Taliban, Gothard treats women as property to be transferred from fathers to husbands.
His paranoia runs so deep that he advises against allowing boys to change infant girls’ diapers. Pornography, which in his eyes includes romance novels and anything with a sex scene or an immodestly dressed woman, is the worst crime of all. Gothard says it’s done more damage to humanity than “a hundred Hitlers”.
In one shocking scene, the Duggar family holds their own book-burning after realizing that even they had allowed material into their house that was displeasing to their prudish deity. (God’s ire was focused on Disney books.)
Child abuse as discipline
The other major aspect of IBLP theology is physical abuse as a means of discipline. It’s a vicious theology of cruelty and intentional infliction of pain, in line with evil Bible verses like, “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell” (Proverbs 23:13-14).
Gothard’s theology endorses Michael and Debi Pearl’s book To Train Up a Child, which teaches that children as young as 1 year of age should be beaten until their spirits are broken. One of their practices (which Michelle Duggar mentions using) is called “blanket training”, where toddler-age children are set on a blanket with a favorite toy in reach and told not to touch it. Whenever they reach for it, they’re hit with a rod until they stop trying.
Amy King, the Duggars’ cousin, also says she saw the children being beaten with rods. According to her, the Duggars called it “encouragement”.
As several interviewees point out, a theology like this, where obedience flows upward and independent thinking is punished with violence, is ripe for abuse. It’s the dream of a sexual predator. Some of the women who escaped IBLP testify that they were forced to marry violent, rapist men who justified their brutality by citing Gothard’s teachings about husbands having supreme authority over their wives.
It’s no surprise that this system created and nurtured a monster like Josh Duggar. We can only guess at what else he got away with, and what more he would have gotten away with if he hadn’t been exposed by outsiders.
Unanswered questions
This episode of the documentary was weaker than the first. Although the testimonials offer helpful context to viewers who aren’t familiar with Gothard, the Duggars themselves are out of focus. There are natural questions about how they applied Gothard’s teachings which the filmmakers leave unaddressed.
After viewing this episode, I had two big questions. One of them was this: If the Duggars beat their children as a means of discipline, how did they get away with it while starring on a popular reality show? Did they only do it when the cameras were off?
Or, more damning, did the TV show help cover it up by editing out incriminating footage? If physical abuse was a regular practice in the Duggar household, I find it very difficult to believe that no director, producer, camera operator, makeup artist, or any of the countless other people involved in filming a TV show ever witnessed it.
Jill (Duggar) Dillard, the second-oldest Duggar daughter, is interviewed in the previous episode and this one. Since she agreed to an interview, they could have asked her about this. However, in this episode, the question never comes up. If they could have asked her but didn’t, that’s a major missed opportunity. If they did ask and she refused to answer, they could at least have noted that.
The other question that came to my mind is this. In a clip at the beginning of the episode, Jim Bob claimed that Josh only (“only”) groped his sisters over their clothes while they were asleep, and they didn’t even know it had happened until Josh confessed. In the Megyn Kelly interview, Jill said the same.
When Jill rewatched that interview on camera, it was with tears in her eyes. She said that, with the benefit of hindsight, she wouldn’t have done it. Her husband Derek Dillard described it as “carry[ing] out a suicide mission” to protect the Duggars’ image, and she didn’t disagree.
Here’s the question I had: If all she did was tell the truth, why does she regret the interview? Was it only out of shame—because it made her feel violated to talk about her own assault on national television? Or was there another reason?
Here’s the million-dollar question that the documentary could have asked but didn’t: “Did your father tell you to lie to protect Josh?”
Do we know everything that happened in that house? Or is Jim Bob still covering up for Josh, only admitting to the lesser incidents that he thought he could explain away? Are there worse things that haven’t come out?
It’s clear that Jill is still carrying a heavy burden of guilt and trauma. That isn’t surprising, since she was raised in a culture that consistently blames women for crimes committed against them. Obviously, I wouldn’t expect anyone to disclose graphic details of their own sexual assault. However, it’s hard to imagine why she would agree to be in this documentary if not to clear the record.