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The Duggalos: Jinger and the Holy Goalie


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Closure Notice: This Thread is now closed due to the name (and much of the posting within it). Please be mindful going forward by naming topics in a way that invites a healthy community conversation. If you name something for a cheap laugh, this thread may be closed later because it encourages discrimination and harm. 

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59 minutes ago, Lisa418722 said:

I'll give Jer a break on his "Christian" comment.   I go to a non-denominational Christian church and on a first date one time a guy asked about my religion.  I did say that I was a Chrisitan and he got huffy with me "we're ALL Christians."  Then I added that the church I go to is a non-denominational Christian church and he just rolled his eyes at me.  That was the first and last date.   

But the Duggars and Jeremy probably don't want to say they are Baptist (an example only since we don't know for sure) because there are different "sects" of the Baptist Church.  I grew up Southern Baptist, but I know a church I used to go to wanted to leave the Southern Baptist Convention because of the SBC's policies.  I think at the time it was boycotting Disney for some reason - I don't remember.  This church was full of families and they didn't want to tell their members not to take their families to Disney.

Yeah, I do get that.

To the extent they're in a group, you'd call it Reformed....and possibly Reformed Baptist-- i.e., it's mostly Calvinist with an evangelical twist. Not sure MacArthur uses the Reformed Baptist name, but Chuck Vuolo has tended to, and he's in the same strand of things. 

It does surprise me that Jeremy's not interested in making some Reformed/Calvinist points in a little blurb. And just say that they basically have a Reformed theology.

But maybe he figures it's too complicated to explain.

I can see that. Although if you're going to spend your life preaching about it,  you'd probably better work up a description. And maybe sooner rather than later. And Jeremy's already had a job in a church with a very similar theology -- the same theology, as far as I know --  so I'm actually surprised he doesn't have some laypeople-friendly stuff to say at the ready right now. 

ETA: I wouldn't expect that from somebody who's only a congregant. But Jer plans to be a biggety big big shot in this faith., it seems. So why wouldn't he jump at the chance to explain to people why it's so good and so important. ....

Plus, he chose to answer the question about religion. He could have skipped it until J&J Q&A #9 or whenever he manages to construct a people-friendly answer. As with a lot of Jer actions, I find it baffling that he didn't jump at the chance to do that, really. I would think his not answering it wouldn't look good to his mentors, either, frankly. 

Edited by Churchhoney
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2 hours ago, Christina87 said:

i just have zero idea why someone who went on American idol and finally got her dream would give that up! She would be smart to strike while the iron's hot. If she were a school music teacher, she could take a break and then come back, but no one is going to be interested in her recording an album in 20 years. I really, really hope this dipshit doesn't hold her back. She deserves to spend as much time on her career as she wants! She could easily remain childless for ten years and enjoy her career, before retiring to raise kids. However, she absolutely does not need to quit to become a young mom and stay home! She'll regret that forever. 

She’s nineteen. I can only hope someone can grab her and shake some sense into her before she marries this putz.

 I have a vision of him posting that crap with his bony butt parked on the sofa while she vacuums under his manly man legs. All hail, hallowed penis!

😠

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9 hours ago, jcbrown said:

Because admitting on camera that they belong to a patriarchal cult is a bad look? Just another facet of their hypocrisy. If you're so proud of your super specialness and so much better than the rest of the heathens, why not own it?

Especially if you’re trying to convert others to your ways.

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56 minutes ago, JoanArc said:

FWIW  I’ve seen Michelle state that the religion is independent fundamentalist Baptist several times and interviews, she’s been very consistent, but only when asked. 

Yes, I thought it was well known that they are Baptists (or whatever sort). Jinger can’t even admit that?

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10 hours ago, DangerousMinds said:

WHY can they not answer the question about their denomination? That’s just ridiculous.

I think it's part of their theology. They are "Christians" meaning "the right sort of Christian" whereas there are millions of other people who call themselves Christian are not. All those Catholics and Lutherans and Methodists are simply heathens while they are Christians.

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3 minutes ago, cmr2014 said:

They are all Baptists. None of them would marry outside of their denomination. There is no way a Duggar would marry a Methodist any more than they would marry a Muslim or a Unitarian.

True. Are the Duggars Calvinists? I never met Calvinist Baptists--or Calvinists in general--until I attended a religious college that had a significant Reformed history, so it was only in recent years that I realized they existed. 

Honestly did not like most of the Calvinists I met, but they often struck me as more intellectual-leaning, at least the ones I met, than anyone in the Duggar circus, including Jeremy. 

Edited by Zella
7 hours ago, farmgal4 said:

Maybe because their church is non-denominational, or because they don’t want to admit being one religion (Baptist) and risk losing the fans from a different religion (Church of Christ).  I used Baptist/Church of Christ as examples only.

Yes, if you don't have a denomination; then you can't answer the question in any other way.  I mean, you can answer it longer and clearer, and I'm surprised Jeremy hasn't spent more time thinking about it because it seems unsurprising that he would be asked in a lot of situations as Jinger's husband and a purported proselytizer; and generally you have a prepared, pat little explanation so people who haven't been to any kind of church in decades aren't scratching their heads.  "It's a non-denominational, Bible-believing church", is generally the one; after which the answerer takes their lead from the questioner's response.  If the questioner says "Well, I'm Jewish, so that doesn't mean much to me", the non-denominational church attendee can then say "well, then you probably know about the differences between [reform and orthodox Judaism; Jews for Jesus; what-have-you].  We think the legalism in denominations just clutters things up, so we went to a church where the creed is basically just to obey the Bible", or whatever they want to say.  If people insisted upon a classification for their own mental labeling comfort, my parents said "Fine, call us Protestants."

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5 minutes ago, queenanne said:

Yes, if you don't have a denomination; then you can't answer the question in any other way.  I mean, you can answer it longer and clearer, and I'm surprised Jeremy hasn't spent more time thinking about it because it seems unsurprising that he would be asked in a lot of situations as Jinger's husband and a purported proselytizer; and generally you have a prepared, pat little explanation so people who haven't been to any kind of church in decades aren't scratching their heads.  "It's a non-denominational, Bible-believing church", is generally the one; after which the answerer takes their lead from the questioner's response.  If the questioner says "Well, I'm Jewish, so that doesn't mean much to me", the non-denominational church attendee can then say "well, then you probably know about the differences between [reform and orthodox Judaism; Jews for Jesus; what-have-you].  We think the legalism in denominations just clutters things up, so we went to a church where the creed is basically just to obey the Bible", or whatever they want to say.  If people insisted upon a classification for their own mental labeling comfort, my parents said "Fine, call us Protestants."

Yeah I know a lot of people, including relatives, who attend non-denominational churches, and their response is always to just note that they attend a non-denominational but Bible-believing church. They don't have to turn their non-answer into the big mystery that they have. 

I've met a couple of people who are very attached to their denominational allegiances who can be a bit huffy with the non-denominational answer, like it's not a real church if it's non-denominational LOL, but if that is Jeremy's concern, he's going to have to get over it. Whatever happened to being bold in Christ, JereMe?

Edited by Zella
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8 hours ago, Zella said:

I know the Duggars are Baptists (of a sort), but what is Jeremy? 

Chuck is a Reformed Baptist, i.e, a Calvinist evangelical. There are several loosely organized groups of churches under that rubric in the U.S. that are denominations in the sense that they hold to the same creeds and such, but I don't think any of them has the denominational organization and hierarchy that the mainlines do. Whether Chuck's churches have belonged to one of those groups I don't know. 

A fair number of independent churches are also both evangelical and Reformed (i.e., Calvinist), but they generally don't call themselves Reformed Baptist as far as I can tell. I suppose because they want to show they're not part of any of those somewhat organized groups. MacArthur's church is among those. (and so was Conway's Grace Community in Texas, from which the Laredo church is a plant)

So since those are Jer's church connections -- and thus his faith past, present and future, as far as I can tell -- he should say that he's an evangelical Christian who follows a Calvinist theology and say a bit about what that means, it seems to me. 

It's not some out-there thing. (Although not too many years ago, combining "Baptist" and "Reformed" would have been the Jabberwock.)  Over the past 30 years or so, growing numbers of people even in the Southern Baptist Convention -- including seminary heads -- have embraced Calvinist theology fully and openly. 

So in fact Jer's part of a very large and possibly even, by now, dominant strain of evangelical Christianity -- across some denominations and many independent churches alike.

And so when somebody asks a person who claims to already have been a professional leader in that kind of church for years, that person should be prepared to give a little explanation of what it means to be an evangelical and a Calvinist, if you ask me. 

To fumble around and not do that raises the exact same issue as he had early on in this ask-me-questions-I'm-a-star phase regarding Jake the Cat. Not doing it raises way more questions than an answer would raise. And it makes people wonder whether something nefarious is going on or whether J&J are just some kind of idiots. Or what. 

Jer's doing himself no favors by appearing both unwilling and unable to give immediate clear answers to perfectly ordinary and straightforward questions. 

I doubt even his current suck-up-ees would be thrilled to know that their future star preacher and favorite golfing buddy can't immediately state that he follows a Reformed theology and tell people what that means. (Don't know that it would thrill Chuck to learn that, either. He raised Jeremy fully in that tradition and spends his own life talking about it.)

[Just to clarify (or complicate) (and despite what I said about the Jabberwock) there is a fairly long history of minglings of Baptist or Baptist-related evangelicals and Reformed churches in the U.S.

That's largely because the Baptist revival tradition caught hold from time to time with the large number of both English-descended inheritors of the Calvinist/Reformed Puritan early Americans and many German-Americans, many of whom had Reformed churches in the U.S., offshoots of Germany's Calvinist churches. So you got various churches over the years that combined Baptist traditions seen in revival movements with Calvinist theology.

When I was a kid, we went to an Evangelical and Reformed Church (a denomination formed in the early 20th century by German-Americans out of the Calvinist tradition but influenced by Baptist-type revivalism). And then when I was a slightly older kid that denomination joined with the Congregational Christian Churches, one of the heirs of the Puritan/Calvinist tradition, to form the United Church of Christ.

That history is living proof that neither Calvinism nor Baptist theology only gives rise to close-minded ultra-conservative misogynists. In this case an English Calvin-influenced denomination came together with a German Calvinist denomination to form what was then and is still the most liberal of the mainline churches by a long shot...............

So, I say again, these people's close-mindedness and bigotry really are not the result of their faith and theology. They're what result when fearful, close-minded, pissy, bigoted people take up any faith and theology, in my opinion.]

Edited by Churchhoney
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6 hours ago, Love2dance said:

I don’t understand....didn’t J and J choose their own questions to answer? If so, they shouldn’t have had any hesitation or problem answering ANY of them, and should have been completely prepared with their answers.

Exactly. 

If you don't have an answer today, leave that question for the (tragically, inevitable) next "J&J Q&A" and -- between now and then -- spend your time coming up with an answer instead of publicizing and taking free food from casual-dining restaurants across the LA area. 

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6 minutes ago, Churchhoney said:

Exactly. 

If you don't have an answer today, leave that question for the (tragically, inevitable) next "J&J Q&A" and -- between now and then -- spend your time coming up with an answer instead of publicizing and taking free food from casual-dining restaurants across the LA area. 

Exactly. What is he doing with all his time sitting in his study with all of his books?

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2 hours ago, Churchhoney said:

Chuck is a Reformed Baptist, i.e, a Calvinist evangelical. There are several loosely organized groups of churches under that rubric in the U.S. that are denominations in the sense that they hold to the same creeds and such, but I don't think any of them has the denominational organization and hierarchy that the mainlines do. Whether Chuck's churches have belonged to one of those groups I don't know. 

A fair number of independent churches are also both evangelical and Reformed (i.e., Calvinist), but they generally don't call themselves Reformed Baptist as far as I can tell. I suppose because they want to show they're not part of any of those somewhat organized groups. MacArthur's church is among those. (and so was Conway's Grace Community in Texas, from which the Laredo church is a plant)

So since those are Jer's church connections -- and thus his faith past, present and future, as far as I can tell -- he should say that he's an evangelical Christian who follows a Calvinist theology and say a bit about what that means, it seems to me. 

It's not some out-there thing. (Although not too many years ago, combining "Baptist" and "Reformed" would have been the Jabberwock.)  Over the past 30 years or so, growing numbers of people even in the Southern Baptist Convention -- including seminary heads -- have embraced Calvinist theology fully and openly. 

So in fact Jer's part of a very large and possibly even, by now, dominant strain of evangelical Christianity -- across some denominations and many independent churches alike.

And so when somebody asks a person who claims to already have been a professional leader in that kind of church for years, that person should be prepared to give a little explanation of what it means to be an evangelical and a Calvinist, if you ask me. 

To fumble around and not do that raises the exact same issue as he had early on in this ask-me-questions-I'm-a-star phase regarding Jake the Cat. Not doing it raises way more questions than an answer would raise. And it makes people wonder whether something nefarious is going on or whether J&J are just some kind of idiots. Or what. 

Jer's doing himself no favors by appearing both unwilling and unable to give immediate clear answers to perfectly ordinary and straightforward questions. 

I doubt even his current suck-up-ees would be thrilled to know that their future star preacher and favorite golfing buddy can't immediately state that he follows a Reformed theology and tell people what that means. (Don't know that it would thrill Chuck to learn that, either. He raised Jeremy fully in that tradition and spends his own life talking about it.)

[Just to clarify (or complicate) (and despite what I said about the Jabberwock) there is a fairly long history of minglings of Baptist or Baptist-related evangelicals and Reformed churches in the U.S.

That's largely because the Baptist revival tradition caught hold from time to time with the large number of both English-descended inheritors of the Calvinist/Reformed Puritan early Americans and many German-Americans, many of whom had Reformed churches in the U.S., offshoots of Germany's Calvinist churches. So you got various churches over the years that combined Baptist traditions seen in revival movements with Calvinist theology.

When I was a kid, we went to an Evangelical and Reformed Church (a denomination formed in the early 20th century by German-Americans out of the Calvinist tradition but influenced by Baptist-type revivalism). And then when I was a slightly older kid that denomination joined with the Congregational Christian Churches, one of the heirs of the Puritan/Calvinist tradition, to form the United Church of Christ.

That history is living proof that neither Calvinism nor Baptist theology only gives rise to close-minded ultra-conservative misogynists. In this case an English Calvin-influenced denomination came together with a German Calvinist denomination to form what was then and is still the most liberal of the mainline churches by a long shot...............

So, I say again, these people's close-mindedness and bigotry really are not the result of their faith and theology. They're what result when fearful, close-minded, pissy, bigoted people take up any faith and theology, in my opinion.]

This was very helpful--thank you! And yes, I imagine Chuck is not thrilled, but if I were MacDonald and company, I'd be super pissed at him, especially if--as we have speculated--he was brought in as a PR move to boost the social media profile and general reputation of the organization. 

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4 minutes ago, BitterApple said:

I'm starting to feel like Jeremy and MacArthur is another Lori Loughlin/Olivia Jade situation where Jeremy is at the school strictly as a PR move and he's gonna walk out of there with a degree he didn't earn. I just don't get a vibe that he's studying for hours on end. I remember being in grad school and it was like a perpetual state of stress. 

My graduate program was not as rigorous as my undergraduate program.  It was designed for working students to get their MLIS, with classes that only met 1 or 2 days a week for 8-10 weeks instead of a whole semester.  I did a practicum (fancy word for internship) instead of a thesis, I had weeks where I didn't have to attend any classes before the end of the semester.  Jeremy could easily be in a period where his workload is lighter than later in the semester.  

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1 hour ago, BitterApple said:

I'm starting to feel like Jeremy and MacArthur is another Lori Loughlin/Olivia Jade situation where Jeremy is at the school strictly as a PR move and he's gonna walk out of there with a degree he didn't earn. I just don't get a vibe that he's studying for hours on end. I remember being in grad school and it was like a perpetual state of stress. 

Well, given some of the complaints people make about how the place is run it wouldn't be surprising if someone was allowed to skate if MacArthur buddied up to the person and appreciated his contributions otherwise -- i.e., in this case the PR. 

He is supposed to master both Hebrew and New Testament Greek to the point of being able to use this language knowledge to interpret for his congregation the deep meaning of both Old Testament and New Testament texts by graduation time. 

Based on the course listing for what I'm pretty sure is the program he's in, the language mastery - no surprise -- seems to be the biggest single task they set. But I guess someone can always fudge the grading on the final proficiency tests! 

Here's what they study-- 

"The M.Div. curriculum provides a broad biblical, theological, and practical foundation for ministry. Electives allow you to go beyond the core curriculum and prepare you specifically for your future ministry goals. Whether you want to preach more effectively, pursue further academic training, serve overseas on the mission field, become a Bible translator, or hone your skills in biblical counseling, the M.Div. will fully equip you for ministry.

10 LANGUAGE COURSES

7 BIBLE COURSES

6 THEOLOGY COURSES

6 MINISTRY SKILLS COURSES

5 PREACHING COURSES

5 ELECTIVE COURSES"

I had the same grad-school experience you did. I didn't do anything but attend class, study, work my student job teaching and assistant teaching, and run back and forth to my house to grab a few hours of sleep and some scrambled eggs for dinner. And that was true throughout every semester. 

In my leisure time, I've always been first and foremost a massive newspaper junkie. But while I was in grad school I once went an entire calendar year without even scanning the front page of a single day's newspaper except what I occasionally noticed in a newspaper box as I raced by on my way to and fro. 

But I know programs vary a lot in that respect, depending on many factors such as whether most people in the program will be working full-time outside the university.

Jer's school seems to expect this program to have both students attending who aren't currently working in a church and those who are. And they give a range of "how many semesters it'll take you" partly based on which of those categories you fall into, I think. 

A lot of the guys who are working in their home churches take the outside-LA version of the course. Jer did that last year, although whether he did one or two semesters that way we never heard.

He should be on a faster route to completion starting this year, though. I wonder whether he'll actually have to do the whole national job-search thing most pastors seem to go through or whether Grace Community LA or another MacArthur enterprise will just hire him and be done with it. 

Edited by Churchhoney
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For my MSW I did an advanced standing program with an option of doing it in one year or two years. I opted for the two year program because I was working full-time. I was required to attend 3 hour classes two nights a week, and do a 20 hour a week internship. The rest of the time I was reading, writing and studying (and working 40 hours a week, parenting & wifing). It was simultaneously the smartest thing and stupidest thing I ever did. 

Similar to @Churchhoney, I didn't read for pleasure during those two years and for almost a year after.

One would think Jeremy wouldn't have time to do anything, if this is a full-time program. Maybe he'll fade a bit from SM when classes are fully underway? If it is a quid pro quo degree, he best start faking it better.

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It’s bizarre to me that RFP is blatantly, repeatedly and publicly demonstrating the exact kind of favoritism the Seminary of the Hallowed Penis is in deep shit and might lose their accreditation over. You’d think MacArthur and his henchmen would have prepped him better.

Are they all that arrogant?

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19 minutes ago, Oldernowiser said:

It’s bizarre to me that RFP is blatantly, repeatedly and publicly demonstrating the exact kind of favoritism the Seminary of the Hallowed Penis is in deep shit and might lose their accreditation over. You’d think MacArthur and his henchmen would have prepped him better.

Are they all that arrogant?

That's what makes me wonder whether they've heard that their accreditation is really safe -- that some kind of vote will definitely go their way or that they've now made enough on-paper changes to put the accusations to rest or something...

It seems unlikely to me that they'd get that kind of advance reasurrances.  But without an explanation like that, the golf dates and so on just seem nuts. 

Maybe the church leaders and seminary administration are actually showing up on the instagrams of most of the students and we just don't know about it? 

Of course, to do that they might have to spend all their time being photographed....

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1 hour ago, Sew Sumi said:

You'd think that MacArthur would have prepped his henchmen better. They're the ones in deep doo doo here. Some sucking up to Jeremy (matching blazers guy) and the Dean for playing golf with a student.

You'd definitely think so. ....Maybe JM is just in denial?

As he said in his speech late last year, they've had their accreditation since the mid-70s. Maybe it just seems impossible to him that he's being seriously threatened with losing it. 

Some observers have noted that when he's talked about the situation, he's pretty much only mentioned the board independence (well, lack thereof....since they're apparently all on JM's payroll somewhere) as WASC's beef. Apparently he's seldom or never been heard publicly mentioning any of the other complaints, notably the nepotism, favoritism, bullying....

And he is going to step away from the presidency at the University -- becoming Chancellor instead (undetermined whether that means he'll have less say than he has now or not, of course...).....

But his role at the Seminary will apparently continue as is......I wonder whether he figures that the University is the only part that the accreditors really care about -- or have any business caring about? -- while the Seminary is small and so much his baby that he can't imagine they'll really treat it as a problem?....

Edited by Churchhoney
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I went to divinity school back in the day and it was no joke. I was not in the M.Div program, but most of my friends were and it was really tough. My area of interest was feminist theology but I switched to American religious history, specifically 20th century religious and social movements. At this point most of it  is a vague memory, but it was the beginning of my interest in Mormonism, especially the fundamentalist strain (not as a practitioner of course). At a minimum Jeremy should be able to articulate his theological beliefs in an intelligent and accessible way. I say he’s got quite a way to go on that front. Also, if there is a remedial preaching class, he should sign up.

After that I got my master’s in library science - hello fellow librarians! My experience was similar to @Ohiopirate02. After divinity school, library school was a walk in the park. 

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What I wonder is whether he'll stop his commercially driven "influencing" once he has a church job again?

Because, if not, at that point it'll pass tacky and at least mildly inappropriate and become very very unethical, in my opinion.  You don't use a position of such trust and influence as a commercial advertising platform from which you glean personal gifts, whether they be money or trifles like lullaby cds.

I really hope he knows this or figures it out soon. Or his father tells him while hitting him upside the head or something.  But in my opinion a lot of people who've already officially been in the ministry and are now seminarians would consider it as inappropriate as it seems to me. Whereas Jer is clearly full speed ahead.

And he was already doing it back when he proudly proclaims he was the young leader of the Laredo church. So no ethical qualms about whether his undue influence might spur people to spend money they shouldn't had occurred to him at that point, obviously. 

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9 minutes ago, Barb23 said:

Thanks, didn't notice them. But I can't imagine working out in a turtleneck either.  Maybe if you are biking in 60° weather a turtleneck would be OK  but doing a workout in one that's all up around my neck, just No. 

Good point. But I suspect he wears it because it makes him look all athleticky and they have the AC on 65 because global warming is a hoax.

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Closure Notice: This Thread is now closed due to the name (and much of the posting within it). Please be mindful going forward by naming topics in a way that invites a healthy community conversation. If you name something for a cheap laugh, this thread may be closed later because it encourages discrimination and harm. 

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