Churchhoney

...or to marry them, or their daughters (a la Anna and the Kellers), were he now a bach....

Love this.

I think that their liking it or not is an interesting question. Yeah, it's things for free (a lot of things, actually). But it's books and not only books but books from a program with the word Imagination right up front. They've made no secret of their opposition to anything involving imagination (well, except their imaginary cult religion, but I digress...). Anyway, they are strongly opposed to fantasy, anything involving other religions than theirs, education, career goals for girls, etc. And something tells me that there are books in the program that feature all of those things. I can't make up my mind whether their greed would overcome their bias and ignorance or whether their bias and ignorance would overcome their greed.

Well, this is certainly the way the Gothard adult followers have been treating those young women for decades now. (and continue to treat them) And considering that Chad's father has probably been a major part of that whole effort to squash these minions of Satan who are trying to bring down such a godly man, it's hard to believe that his own kids, at least, haven't picked up this approach. This is a pretty father-following cult, after all. And they also don't allow for the infiltration of much external information, which is what could show them another view. I would think that any kid who had actually adopted a different view would have gone pretty far away from their parents by now, and not really been quiet about that fact. .... The Bateses all have a tv contract to protect, and Erin probably wants cd sales, after all. Wouldn't surprise me a bit if this is all lying bullshit to protect their entertainment earnings. "Mr. Gothard," she says. Her post sounds very much like careful dancing around the truth to me. I don't recall hearing anybody repudiate Gothard up to now, just because they started attending different churches than their parents. Gothard, after all, is not a church and never has been. It's a "Christian" cult that operates outside of churches and that brought in people from many churches of many different kinds over the years. There has never been any obvious contradiction between believing in Gothard and Gothardism and going to a church that didn't have tons of Gothardites.

Some of the spread has come from deliberate seeding efforts from this Character Training Institute thing described in the article below, in which people -- including the Waller family -- have tried to spread the Gothard ideas far and wide, and really by stealth as they pretend they're not Gothard-inspired and actually kind of secular. They're Gothard to the core, though. And this has gone all the way to Mongolia, among other places. Other than this kind of deliberate seeding effort for Gothard's ideas (and isn't that a concept to make your hair stand on end) what I've always heard is that the more organic spread has tended to be just local and regional, as a handful of families learned about the thing and got very very caught up in it. That accounts for most people not being familiar with it, I guess. But when a family or two in a given place did hear about it and join, the kind of fervor and rigid devotion to certain ideas that the handful showed would often spread throughout a congregation or a town apparently -- by accounts. Seems that there are lots of stories of Gothard and other cultic things spreading that way, as a few early adopters' zeal urges or shames or peer-pressures others to get involved, too. http://inthesetimes.com/article/2450 'From the outside the bland, unmarked exterior of the Character Training Institute’s headquarters blends remarkably well into its immediate surroundings. This is a section of Oklahoma City that hasn’t yet benefited from the nearby, upscale urban development intended to draw both tourism and business to the area....Inside the institute, Arizona state treasurer David Petersen takes to the conference podium to tell how his state’s Family Services Committee passed “Character Education Legislation.” '“All schools now have it implemented,” he says proudly. “We’re fighting for the soul of this nation.” Petersen is not being hyperbolic. He attributes his passion for “character” to a personal meeting with evangelist Bill Gothard. 'Gothard, the 74-year-old, unmarried man at the head of the Oak-Brook, Illinois-based Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP)–which brings in an estimated profit of at least $63 million annually–has been in the evangelism business since 1964. Originally named the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, IBLP changed its name in 1990. All totaled, IBLP boasts that at least 2.5 million people have attended the organization’s seminars and ministries in the United States and other countries, including Russia, Mongolia, Romania and Taiwan. 'Although legally and fiscally independent, the CTI is for all intents and purposes a “secular” front group for Gothard’s IBLP. In the last decade, the CTI has quietly gained entry into hundreds of elementary, middle and high schools, state and city offices, corporations, police departments and jails. Though he never uses the term, Gothard’s ideology fits into the framework of the burgeoning “Christian Reconstructionist” movement, which aims to rebuild society according to biblical mandates. Within the Christian Reconstructionist worldview, modern-day chaos is directly attributable to the division of church and state and the consequent degradation of individual character. 'For Gothard, the solution is restoring the United States–and then the rest of the world–to something that he calls “The Sevenfold Power of First-Century Churches and Homes.”''

A lot of us would have had that breakdown, I think. But most of us wouldn't have gone on in quick succession to have 15 more. What in the hell would possess you? Seriously.

No need to worry with Jim Bob. He doesn't have anything but impure thoughts in any case.

I think that people get into that particular cult because they're rigid and can't deal with any shades of grey or ambiguities. Hard for people like that to change their views. They tend to double down.

That's my second-place guess. But I think I see laces, closed heels and a couple of those sneaker-leather-stripes-on-the side, so my guess number one is sneakers. Whatever they are, they remarkably awful looking. ...

I think it's a "I'm a twinnie with my buddy!" thing. They look to me like smaller versions of those (dulled and bedraggled) black running shoes that Jim Bob always wears to inappropriate occasions (up to and including black-tie dinners, if I'm not mistaken). .... I haven't ever noticed them wearing matching shoes before, but I expect it's what Tweedledumbest and Tweedleevendumberthanthat are doing here.

Ah, but even the softest, most whispery "yes" is the Lord showering approval upon you. While every "no" is the sign of Satan's hand, seeking to use this ungodly world to thwart the Lord and His believers! See how that works?

The truly scary part is that I'm pretty sure that both the Maxwells do have college degrees. When you read some of Teri's stuff on homeschooling, it's clear that she is intelligent, reasonable and even informed in some ways -- but all of that is obviously for naught when you're nuts.

I remain skeptical about the presence of any actual big scandals -- other than the oh-so-godly-and-utterly-pure-and-ideal-as-a-family Duggars being hypocrites about absolutely everything. But I'm absolutely sure that what will be leaking through the sieve at Niagara-like volume is more excruciatingly boring shit. ..... More girls courting! How many times to people want do hear that young people in their 20s aren't allowed to hold hands? And that this is something that everyone would aspire to, if we were only as good as the Duggars? Mindblowing, to me.

Not to mention using the song at your wedding when the family in charge of said wedding believe and proselytize the belief that only a minion of Satan would attend the university (or attend any university, for that matter). One thing the Duggars are world champions at is cognitive dissonance.

In the U.S., option one is for losers. Option two is what we're all about! (that appears to be the majority view, at least )

Gothard... I mean God wants his army!!!

There's no way they have enough money to last that many people into retirement, though. So, yeah, greedy rotten Jim Bob would do something to make sure that whatever is left when he rots for real goes to his spawn and not elsewhere, and according to his ideas. But that's not in the least the same as thinking about your kids' long-term future. He clearly doesn't think about that at all, if you ask me, since he strongly encourages them to get no education or training and hold no jobs that would qualify them for Social Security or any other long-term funds that come from something other than his (paltry-when-you-have-19-kids-cum-dependents) trust. Jim Bob's trust is to keep Jim Bob's money from escaping in ways he wouldn't want. It's for him, in my opinion, not for the kids.

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." "Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" I have a feeling this is what they're clinging to. And why would the parents of these families really care? They're all complete narcissists and they'll be dead.

Some people are just this obsessed with total control. He couldn't control his workplace. But when you start with a woman who's in love with you (why is another question...) and you pop out babies that you can mold every second of the day from birth to believe that your ways are the be-all and end-all of the universe, you clearly have a very good shot at being able to control at least most of those people for life. For some people that's obviously the most valuable thing they can imagine. I've seen this happen. To intelligent people. It's brainwashing. The world's Steves (of whom there are clearly a surprising number) implant little versions of themselves into babies' brains that quickly learn to do the work of the controller. The kids adapt from infancy to the rules of his house, which are completely internalized in their brains. Few of them can apparently even imagine that anything else is acceptable and he mostly doesn't even have to say anything after a while because their own brains have adapted to survive in his environment -- and that means following his rules without even thinking about it. As we've seen with these families, very very few people manage to see what's really going on and escape. Those that do just got a lucky break somewhere -- their minds work a bit differently or some experiences planted another seed that makes them skeptical. For most people, though, if a control freak gets you at birth and works on you every day, you're probably going to be that person's hand puppet for life, even if he or she dies or you live somewhere else, really.

Not according to their dumb ideas, though.

I think they're pretty wedded to "going out into all the world" to "share the good news" with those who haven't heard it before. And they count Catholic nations as places that haven't heard it before. If we 'Murcans aren't doing so well, it's our own fault, since we have plenty of chances to be exposed to "real" gospel. I mean, we've been able to watch the Duggars on tv all these years! I wouldn't bet on JB and M (and assorted younguns) not visiting the Dulls in a place like Seattle or LA, though. They don't seem to have any problem jet-setting (well, prop-setting, mostly, I guess) around anywhere, especially if there might be filming involved. Plenty of them went to visit the Smugs in DC, and that's another well-known hotbed of liberal sin -- And they've had no objections to visiting NYC, Japan, evil liberal Europe, etc. I think that JB and M (especially JB) are so fixated on keeping all the kids firmly under their thumbs that there's literally nowhere they wouldn't go for the purpose of checking up on them and reminding them that they'd better keep adhering to the Duggar way.

I'm not a psychology expert, but I did grow up in a household like this, although mine had the added feature of actively denigrating and/or ridiculing anything one tried to do well or did well or did well and was proud of. I don't know whether this is a feature of Duggardom (although it wouldn't surprise me if it is). Anyway, in my experience one thing this kind of parenting does is separate those with strong self-motivation and a rebellious spirit from everybody else. Most people seem to get quickly disheartened when there's no affirmation -- I wouldn't say it's really a "why knock yourself out?" thing so much as it's real disheartenment that leads to giving up on doing things but also to being somewhat sad about it -- leads me to think that every kid really does want to do something well and have others acknowledge and appreciate that. Strong internal motivation and fury seemed to be the only things strong enough to keep someone going at anything that didn't have clear external utility. Even if you kept going, though, you pretty much lost your self esteem, and you really lost your belief that anything you did would ever actually reach or please anybody else, even if it pleased you, and it made it seem so futile to try to reach anybody else that you learned to do things only for yourself -- that can lead to some pretty solid achievements but it makes it damned hard to earn a living from them, among other things. My experience suggests that the self-motivated and rebellious will keep achieving without any affirmation, but without any affirmation even they will not really believe that they have done anything worthwhile, for the most part. That's what happened in my family anyway. It's crap what the Duggars do. Killers of young souls is what they are, really.

Well, I think we have to do them the justice (as a Jane Austen character would say) of admitting that their homeschool education is probably infinitely superior to that supplied by MEEEEEchelle and her minion daughters. Beyond that, though ....

Well, she's supposed to be the one that seemed to express some interest in being a nurse, made some kind of effort to study Spanish for a long time, and completed the reading and such for her kind-of-a-midwife course. So she's certainly supposed to be the one most dedicated to learning something (aside from John David, who has a somewhat similar record with his instrument rating) -- and it looks to me as if she has a good claim to that title, actually. Aside from her and John David, has anybody else attempted to learn anything at all except Bible verses or expressed an interest in a career after they've passed early puberty? I don't remember anybody, but maybe there is somebody else. But have they ever actually called anybody the smart one? Maybe Josh? I don't remember hearing much about anybody being deemed smart. It's not something they value -- it's almost a sin, isn't it? Trying to rely on your brain instead of on handouts from Jesus? Isn't that considered something that Satan would suggest?

No. She's not brainwashed. Not a bit.