Part One: The Cult Behind Josh Duggar

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that just got
introduced properly because I fucked up. Fuck. I wasn't supposed
to do it right, I was supposed to do it badly. Um.
I'm so sorry Sean. Sean is here today because Sean
donated a very generous amount to the recall effort for

(00:21):
the mayor of Portland, who sucks uh And and I
wanted to introduce the podcast well for Sean by doing
something incompetent shouting the name of a dictator. You know,
I was I all day, all day. I was gonna
I was gonna shout chow Chessco. Just just scream out
chow Chessco's name, but I forgot to at the last minute.
And I'm so sorry, Sean. That's okay, I mean it's

(00:42):
it's you know, it's no Punani. But you know, well,
we can talk about Poonani. We can talk about but
but we do have we do have a different bastard today.
Although all bastards lead one way or the other to
Steven Seagal, I do believe that strung and I'm fairly
certain you could connect today's bet Well, let me let
me double check here, let me do check here, because
we're talking about Josh Dougger today, and in a broader sense,

(01:04):
we're talking about aspects of the Quiverful movement. And I
kind of wonder, can we here with the production company
or something related to a movie made by Steven Seagal.
That's that's there. I think I know how I can
make this connection. Um, okay, yes, we can make this connection.
So Mike Huckabee went on the View in two thousand
and seventeen and denied that Joe R. Pio was a

(01:27):
racist and says that he knows Joe R. Pio their friends,
and he knows that Joe R. Piot was not a racist.
Joe R. Pio has shown up at campaign events and
campaigned with both Jim Bob and Josh Dugger. Joe R.
Pio was connected directly to Stephen Seagal. We did it,
We did it, hey, perfect, We should put it out there,
put out to the universe. Steven Seagal, the bastards, Kevin Bacon.

(01:49):
That's right, Yeah, we could. I mean, I bet if
we were to spend the time, we could draw a
connection between him and Hitler. Um, but I would probably
need to do a little bit more digging than I'm
going to do right now while we're recording an episode,
but for a depressingly less amount of there's just a
photo of him in an s S uniform. No, he

(02:12):
has an age nearly that. Well, Sean, you want to
tell the audience a little bit about yourself before we
before we get into this episode. As I was telling
you before we started up, I worked on the healthcare
front lines during the during the pandemic and kind of
sat on my hands while watching and paying attention to

(02:34):
Twitter and all that stuff of all the protests and
the tear gassing and all that stuff going on in
real time, being kind of like, oh, I'm at this,
I'm at this front uh of all the crazy stuff
going on. I don't want to bring COVID from one
to the other. Uh. So I was like, when this

(02:56):
auction came up, I was like, Oh, I am willing
to spend a real amount of money to to did
Wheeler fuck Ted Wheeler? Yeah, I'm I'm I'm glad that
you did. And for those of you listening who live
in the city of Portland, if you go to Total
Recall PDX dot com, you can print off the sheet
that you can then sign and and and scan back in.

(03:16):
You can also print off sheets that will allow you
to sign up multiple people. It will explain everything. There's
like a whole process. It's more complicated than it should
be and more of pain in the ass, and it
should be because they don't want Mary's to get recall UM.
But if you go to Total Recall pd X, they
will explain the whole thing. If you're not in Portland
and you want to support the recall effort against Ted Wheeler,
who is trash like Shan did very generously, you can

(03:40):
also go to Total Recall PDX and you can donate.
They have paid people going out and who are helping
to um, who are helping to fund this. Timber is
a thorn's game. They're usually out there and it's you
know what, I there's there's a lesson I learned from
all this, and that is you know, there's a phrase
that comes up a lot and on this podcast too.
It's called fuck you money, and it kind of it's

(04:01):
usually people that are so super rich, you know they
have It's like, fuck you, I have money. Fuck you
I have enough money to change your life if I
want to. If you've annoy me. Yeah, and it's it's
something most of us will never have, never ever, nor
should we ever have, because it really kind of gollums
up your Sniegele, you know what I mean. That's a
good way to put it. So, but hey, I just

(04:21):
want everyone to know if I've learned nothing else from this,
It's said, if you have hope in your heart and
even but a penny in your pocket, you have fuck
Ted Wheeler money. Yeah, and that's that's together we can have.
We can have fuck Ted Wheeler a variety of things,
because it's not just money that fuck Ted Wheeler. It's
getting out on the ground and signing people up. It's
adding just your name or your name and people in

(04:43):
your household to the sheet. All of that is in
an ephemeral sense, Ted Wheeler money. Yeah. You don't even
have to spend a time. You could be sitting broke
in a little uh in a little cafe in Louisiana. Again,
just that little pen in your pocket. It just know
that you do have fun Ted Wheeler money. Or if
you're living in Portland, you've got a good relationship with

(05:04):
some neighbors, go out and signed some people up. There's
a lot of ways to fuck Ted Wheeler. Um, we
could make a joke about the fact that you just
got broken up with, but we won't because that's not classy.
Um the very little known rule thirty five. So Sean,
you I asked you when you when you won the auction,
who do you want to hear about? And you gave

(05:25):
me a couple of different names, And the name that
I decided to go with because I've been wanting to
cover this motherfucker for a while was Josh Dugger. And
I'm curious before we get into the episode, Um, what
do you know about Josh and why did you want
to learn more about him? So Josh Dougger. So what
I know about him was the uh, the or j Dougs,
you know, the dig dugger. Good God, I hope no

(05:47):
one calls him that. Not interested if she's nineteen and counting? Uh,
I know, you know obviously there's the uh, the violent
child porn that came up, the being on the kind
of pushing that quiverful life through tlcs um reality show

(06:09):
of nineteen accounting, and uh, he just seemed to be
a kind of like a celebrity spokesperson might not be
the right way, but but like a represented like he
mainstreamed stuff that was not that it wasn't like not
that there wasn't a significant amount of it going around
in the country. Like I grew up in it was

(06:30):
it was real conservative Catholic, not not quiverful necessarily, but
kind of towards that lines. And then like terms of
politics and stuff, um, so I kind of knew we
had a thing with that. And for me, part of
kind of growing up and and paying more attention to
things and looking back on stuff what got me interested

(06:53):
in him was because this is this is something that
is what he represents. I think is kind of not
always mainstream talked about as as a danger. A lot
of like they cause some sometimes they're ex evangelicals or
they'll call themselves ex evangelicals, Like I know people that
have struggled with like coming out of that and trying

(07:18):
and so there's a lot of talk in those communities
about it. Um. But I think maybe the best way
to think about it for people who aren't familiar with
it is you kind of you know, you have your
kind of maybe like your sovereign citizen type libertarians where
it's like the government should just have defense and have this,
So the kind of people he represents, I would say,

(07:40):
the best way to put it is they say that
and and the follow up to the government should just
do like defense and like a couple of civil things
is and the rest belongs to Jesus. And so when
you talk about separate, it's it's one of those vocabulary
things that's also purposely deceptive. I think, where like when
you talk about separation of church and state, they can

(08:01):
say yes because they're defining the state in a completely
different way. And I think that really kind of can
hook people into it or have people not realize what
it is. And I think there's from a little bit
of of dabbling in some of the history of like
um apocalyptic groups are knowing people that got out of

(08:21):
like doom colts Um. They're the vein of kind of
fundamental fundamentalism that he's in is one of those that's like, oh,
Israel becoming a state is the sign of the end time.
I'm not exactly sure if he personally is is within that. Oh,
I mean, yeah, I'm pretty sure we're gonna go into
detail about the exact chunk of evangelical Christians. Yeah, you

(08:44):
can't really, you can't really explain the Duggers unless you
explain the quiver full movement. Um. And so we have
we have a bunch of that talk and we're not
going to go We'll go deeper into the quiver Fule
movement in another episode. I have a friend who grew
up in that particular cult and I R l uh No,
he has a friend of mine though, um as I said, yeah,
I went to a traditional conservative Catholic college with Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(09:09):
I remember. I was like Eve, I Eve has been
a friend of mine for years and years and years.
Who's how I met R. L. Stoler. Yeah? Okay, so
we actually know some of the same people who grew
up in this cult. Well, some of this is going
to be old news to you, but it'll be new
to a lot of people listening, and it's important. So
I'm gonna I'm gonna get into it. From nine to
two thousand to Jim Bob Dugger was a state legislator

(09:31):
in the Arkansas House of Representatives. He made a couple
of failed bids at seeking national election, and during one
of these campaigns, he took his wife and his family,
which at that point numbered fourteen kids, out to support
him on election day, he and his wife voted and
then marched off with their sizeable brood, and ap photographer
spotted them and took a picture. The picture was purchased
by the New York Times, and it went the early

(09:53):
odds version of viral. Now. At the time, it was
obvious that Jim Bob was a conservative Christian, but the
enormous size of his family was seen as more of
like a quirky personal choice than anything. That's how it
really got portrayed a lot in the media. In the
mainstream media, parenting magazines reached out to Michelle Dugger, his wife,
and asked her to write an article about child rearing.

(10:14):
Somewhere along the line, a savvy producer at Discovery Health
decided the Duggers would make fascinating reality TV fodder. They
put out several hour long specials featuring the family, whose
fame rose consistently until in two thousand eight they got
their own TV show, Seventeen Kids in Counting Yeah, I
would like to interject real quick, something that uh uh

(10:35):
an analogy or not analogy, but a comparison that came
up is because I grew up with that was one
of six kids. So and there's always like the oh,
it's such a big family, like it's kind of a
there's kind of that like remember from I remember from
the Rush Limbaugh Show, you Rush Limbaugh episodes, you talked
about how he was fitted by the media. It's one
of those things like, oh, this is interesting, this is fun.
They don't dig and so then it gets spotlighted. We're

(10:59):
gonna we're gonna cover We're actually going to go deep
into one of the earliest article I've been able to
find on the family. Um so for about seven years
after two thousand eight, which is you know, kind of
when they really hit the mainstream. The Dugger family grows
steadily in fame. They become millionaires. UM. I don't know exactly.
It's it's hard to tell, right because those what are
your net worth or what is his person's networth is

(11:19):
always kind of shitty. But it seems like what I've
heard is like three and a half million for Jim Bob,
which doesn't seem impossible. Like he's been on TV a while,
it's been a successful show. Um And as a result
of their growing fame, they became increasingly plugged into Republican
Party politics. Jim Bob and his oldest son Josh, did
photo ops with Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who we now

(11:40):
know is connected to Stevenology just one degree of separation,
and Florida Senator Marco Ruby, oh, I guess is connected
to Stevens well, probably actually has direct connections to both,
probably one step away. Um. Now, it was hardly a
secret that the Duggers were right wing, but most casual observers,
including most people who watched their shows, were unaware of
the sinister reality behind why the Dugger family had so

(12:03):
very many children. On July eleven, one, the Washington Post
published an article titled an American Kingdom. The logline was
this and this this showed up all over my Twitter
because of the fiction book that I just read about
this sort of thing. The logline was a new and
rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, once a nation
under God's authority, and is central to Donald Trump's GOP. Now,

(12:26):
the article is this is what you were talking about?
Is broadly accurate in a way that it sketches out
the dimensions of the dominionist movement, which quote holds that
God commands Christians to assert authority over the seven mountains
of life, family, religion, education, economy, arts, media, and government,
and which after which time Jesus Christ will return and
reign for eternity. Now where that article gets things wrong

(12:48):
is it classifies this movement as new. It's not. Now.
You could argue that it's new that because these are
you know, there's two broad in kind of this chunk
of evangelical culture. There's pre millennial and post millennia old
dispensationalist right, and Premillennials were the guys who were like, um,
it's going to like the the God is going to

(13:09):
like come soon and we're gonna have us a rapture
and ship. And the post millennials are like, we'll talk
about this more a little bit later, like, well, no,
we have two ready the world for God to come back, right,
and one of those was dominant, like the left behind
books are kind of the old the older way, and
that's less dominant now because it didn't. I don't know
if you're aware of this, but the the Changing of

(13:29):
the Millennium didn't really do much. And there was a
movie with Nick Cage. He kind of was a movie
with Nick At that point, God, I want to know
more about how they managed to make that because remember
he uh, he was so deep in text for what
he had to sell his dinosaur bones and take any
movie too many dinosaurs and he had to be in
a weird Christian propaganda movie. Nicolas Cage is about the

(13:52):
only actor I could never be angry at for doing that,
because it's like, well, yeah, you gotta you gotta keep
your dinosaur bone addiction going. Man, I don't blame you
for that. Any movie Nicolas Cage is in, just keep
the bones flowing. That that should have been the tagline
Nicolas Cage has to bone left behind. So yeah, um yeah.

(14:15):
So again, not a super new movement, although it is
kind of new and being as dominant with an it
like that that has changed over time. The election of
Donald Trump was which was you know, partly fueled by
evangelical support. Um, and so sorry I framed that badly. Again,
this is not a new movement, and it's tied into
everything that's been happening over the last five six years

(14:36):
that have really freaked out a lot of kind of
liberals who maybe weren't paying as much attention or who
wrote off the Christian Right as kind of just like
they're just they're just nuts, right, like they all together.
It's the same thing. It's the same. It was easy
during the Obama era. It seemed like you you could
make fun of these people in the silly things they'd
say online and like movies like Jesus Camp and stuff,
and it didn't seem like as much of a it

(14:57):
didn't seem like they were gaining as much power as
they were. And every we're seeing today both the rise
of Donald Trump, the current assault on trans rights, and
states like Tennessee and Arkansas, the present groundswell of right
wing Christian support for crackdowns on voting rights. All of
these things have their origins in the same, very specific
Christian subculture, and for more than half a decade, the
Dugger family was the trojan horse for bringing that subculture

(15:18):
into the American mainstream. To understand the Duggers, we have
to talk about the Quiverful movement. The name comes from
Psalm one seven, like arrows in the hands of a warrior,
Our sons born in one's youth, blessed as the man
whose quiver is full of them, They will not be
put to shame when they contend with their enemies at
the gate and the gist of this idea is that
American society has become hopelessly godless and sinful, and if

(15:40):
you're going to bring the nation back to God, you
need a new generation of holy warriors to fight for Christianity.
So it's your responsibility as a true Christian to pop
out several basketball teams worth of babies in order to
fight it build the army of God. Right, that's the Again,
we both have friends who were who were raised to
be soldiers in God's army. Um. Now, the quiver full

(16:01):
movement evolved rather naturally out of several different strains of
right wing Christian culture. One of these was the homeschooling community. Obviously,
parents can choose to home school kids for a lot
of perfectly sane reasons. Uh. And in fact, one of
my old co workers, Christie Harrison at Cracked, who is
not at all a quiver full type you know, Christian,
home schools her family um and is a perfectly reasonable

(16:23):
person not shipping on the concept of home school. I
was homeschooled from first grade too through high school. Graduation
was yours, but yours was pretty reliou. I mean, it's
efet not to be so here's so here's the weird thing.
So the background on that is it was more there's
there's family dynamics, which I won't go into for the
sake of but basically it was kind of a more

(16:45):
of a it's a thing we should do, so it's
kind of weird, Like we did a lot of the
performative stuff without getting super into the CULTI stuff. It
was more of like viewed as an obligation to life
for the community or like grandparents or whatever. Um So
it worked for me. So I'm like on the low
end of the spectrum, and I can see like school

(17:08):
or what what used to be or maybe still is
called Asperger's um so, but uh, I can see going
to school given that, given how aware of my given
everything at home and family dynamics and issues and mental
health and all that stuff, I can see that being
a real bad time for me. So it's like it's
not a great time for most It's so I mean,

(17:31):
and my my dad had a restaurant, so I worked
at that, so I kind of had like one foot
in the secular, one ft in the like insular kind
of sheltered. Yeah, that seems like a pretty lucky and
it might very yeah, one of the things. But if
you're even if you're coming at it from a more
reasonable perspective, if you're in home schooling, you're gonna encounter
a lot of weird Christian propaganda because it's so dominant

(17:52):
in schooling, right, even if you're trying to be secular
with it, it's just everywhere in that community. Um, and yeah,
the practice. This leads to what I'm saying. The practice
of homeschooling has been heavily dominated by the evangelical Christian
community for decades. The U s Department of Education currently
estimates that more than one million school age kids are
homeschooled in the United States, and the real number could

(18:14):
be double or triple that because a lot of those
families do not participate in the census or get birth
certificates for their children. That is very common in the
Quiverful movement, if you like, especially in the fringes, not
even the fringes of it. A lot of people in
it like like maybe you get birth to maybe you
get a birth certificate for your sons, you don't get
them for your daughters because birth certificate she could leave

(18:35):
at some point a social Security number with a birth certificates,
security passport, do you leave, get get away from your
weird family, cut it off through So we really don't
know how many kids there are like this um and
that's I mean, there's a lot of other different subcultures.
Sovereign citizens get looped into some aspects of this, but

(18:57):
not all. Like once you're the once you're home setting
in the middle of nowhere and not getting birth certificates
for your children, you become you're getting the co into
contact with a lot of subcultures. It's it's like the
white version of avoiding immigration to by not doing the census. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
which you you do not have. Well, I don't know,
I'm not I can't say that you shouldn't worry about

(19:19):
the census if you're an undocumented immigrant because some sketchy
ship was tried to be done by the Trump administration.
I don't know. It's a bummer the census should it shouldn't. Yeah, yeah,
that's a whole other rand. So over the course of
the nineteen seventies and eighties, a backlash against feminism and
the civil rights movement helped lead to the birth of
the moral Majority. The first organized up swell of what

(19:41):
we now called the religious right. We did a two
parter on this. Jerry Folwell was the biggest man in
that movement, but there were a lot of of I
mean it's it was a huge movement, right, A lot
of people were involved. Another prominent member of the early
religious right in the Moral Majority was Howard Phillips, a
Russian Jewish Man who converted to evangelical Christianity. He broke
off from the Republican Party in nineteen seventy four and

(20:03):
founded the far right Constitution Party. Now. Howard and his
son Doug were two of the of the first prominent
advocates of a very specific way of looking at the
Culture War in the United States. Like many in the
religious right, they argued that the struggle between humanism and
Christianity was a war. They went on to argue that
this war could only be won by Christian women, and

(20:24):
the only way for Christian women to fight was for
them to die to themselves. This is the term they use,
I give up their personal ambitions and completely submit to
their husbands. The basic idea, as the Phillipses and others
preached it was that Jesus was the general of a
great heavenly Army. Soldiers in a real army are expected
to follow orders whether or not they agree with or

(20:47):
understand them, unless you're in the German Army. Now, ye,
women needed to submit totally to their husbands because that's
what Jesus asked. So if they accept to the utter
authority of men over their lives, they would actually be
taking agency and striking a powerful blow against the deevil.
But giving up your life, that's that's you exercising agency. Then,

(21:11):
to put it in context again for the more secular people, uh,
you think about war, you know, like war crimes that
the United States gets away with. If you're in a
heavenly army, what are war crimes? You know, it's it's
it's the same where it's like, yeah, you know what's
gonna happen, and it's gonna get covered up and it's
okay as long as you achieve the objective. It's that yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's a lot of crimes that are fine with us.

(21:33):
But you know who doesn't do crimes unless they're rad
I was gonna say people who aren't elon Musk, but
then you said crimes. Yeah, I'd say crimes, not crimes
the products and services that support this podcast. Sean, have
never committed any crimes in the United States that have
been documented by journalists who have not been carboned. I

(21:54):
was gonna say, they have to be arrested for it
to be a crime. Have to be arrested for it
to be a crime. That's how I live my life,
and that's how our sponsors do too. Here's some AT's. Ah,
we're back, Sean. We're talking about Howard Phillips. Uh, and

(22:14):
we're talking about the birth of of the religious right.
So in speeches that Doug Phillips gives to packed his son,
Doug gives to packed audiences, he reads versus from the
Bible like Ephesians five one, Uh, wives submit to your
husband's as to the Lord. For the husband is the
head of the wife, as Christ as the head of

(22:36):
the church, his body of which he is the Savior.
Now is the church submits to Christ. So also wife
should submit to their husbands and everything. Now. Doug calls
this the quote best kept secret of modern Christian marriages.
And then he says stuff like this, you are a
help meet. The Bible says that man is not made
for women, but women is made for but the woman

(22:57):
is made for the man. If you have a problem
with that, take it up with the creator, not Phillips.
I'm just quoting. Until we get comfortable playing those roles
will never be at peace. But if we accept those roles,
who half the battle is diminished already just by the
fact that we accept God's creation order. This philosophy has
come to be known as complimentarianism, i e. Women were

(23:19):
created not as individual beings of their own with independent
desires and talents, but as a compliment to men. Right.
It's the little known fact that was actually the original
tagline for a g I. Joe. Submitting to your husband's
is half the battle. Now. Feminism in this cosmology moral

(23:40):
cosmology is evil because it encourage encourages women to seek
their own lives independent of men, which Rob's men, who
are again the only real people of the wifely support
God intended for them to have. In his speeches, Phillips
loves to quote Isaiah three twelve, which cites God's curse
upon us inful nation, children are your oppressors and women
rule over you. This is a God saying like this

(24:02):
is how I'm gonna curse you. If you if you
don't follow my claws, I'll make your children oppress you
and your the women will be in charge. Um. So
he's saying that like if if that's what God is, like,
feminism is a curse from God if we if we
don't obey his call, will curse us with feminism. Well,
going back even further again from my upgrading, upbringing and
a lot of some people in my upbringing, and then

(24:24):
just kind of a general Christian thing, it's the whole
Well Eve gave him the apple. So women has always
been men's downfall, and it's their place to be underfoot
because that's because that's you know, that's that was just
how it worked, because that's how the story started, how
the story started. Now, the nightmare for these people is
a world in which Christian men do not have total

(24:45):
control over their families. While mainstream culture filled with movies
featuring strong female protagonists in the eighties and nineties, rock
stars like Madonna, political figures like Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher,
Phillips and his ilk preached that women's liberation would lead
to the collapse of civilization. He called the young Christians
he preached to in the nineteen nineties and early adds
the Rick reclamation generation, because their duty was to retake

(25:09):
society from liberal feminists. Um. One of the through lines
in this strain of the evangelical culture is they have
way more faith in the power of feminism than most feminists,
and I know they are really bullish on its ability
to to change society. Now, homeschooling was considered one of
the necessary tools of reclamation. By having enormous families and

(25:31):
teaching their children themselves outside of the sinful state education system,
Christian families could keep their children free from the sinful
secular world. One of the things I find most interesting
about these people is the sheer amount of weight they
give to feminism, and again they have a lot of
of They really think that it has a lot more
influence and government than I think it does. Here's Mary Pride,

(25:53):
editor of Practical Homeschooling magazine and one of the most
influential figures in the homeschooling movement. Quote. Christians have accepted
feminists moderate demands for family planning and careers while rejecting
the radical side of feminism, meaning lesbianism and abortion. What
most do not see is that one demand leads to
the other. Feminism is a totally self consistent system aimed
at rejecting God's role for women. Those who adopt any

(26:15):
part of its lifestyle can't help picking up its philosophy,
and those who pick up its philosophy are buying themselves
a one way ticket to social anarchy. Feminism is self consistent.
The Christianity of the fifties wasn't. Feminists had a plan
for women. Christians didn't. And this is our explanation for
why feminism was was winning and they were, you know,
Christianity is under siege and one. Not to be fair,

(26:36):
there's there's probably ah. I mean, obviously a lot of
people are like, no feminism, but there's probably a good
chunk that are that No. They have to pump it
up to get people to keep And what I say,
by the way, when I'm saying stuff like that, I
think these people have an outside idea of the impact
feminism has had. It's not an anti feminist thing. It's
just like there's still a lot of bias against women

(26:57):
in our culture. I think they're overestimate, um the power
that feminism has culturally. Um Now Pride's major contribution to
the evolution of what became the Quiverfule movement was to
provide a plan for women. She helped and again that's
her ideas, like Christianity hasn't had a plan for women.
Feminist did and that's why we're losing. They had a
vision for the future and we didn't. Um She helped

(27:19):
to create the whole integrated lifestyle of Biblical womanhood from
the book Quiverful by Katherine Joyce, which is a great
way to get up to speed on all this if
you're interested, very good book. The Biblical womanhood encompassing homework, motherhood,
and wifehood as they were lived not in the nineteen fifties,
but in a notion of pre industrial, pre household appliance
times is what Pride calls a total lifestyle as comprehensive

(27:43):
as the pervasive influence of feminism, which has reached every
part of women's work, lives, biology, and thinking. And this
time around, the anti feminists intend to be fiercely diligent,
rooting out the worldly feministic ideas and influences in their churches,
entertainment and owned thinking and making sure it doesn't come act. Now,
I'm leaving out a lot and again, Katherine Joyce, as

(28:03):
quiver Full is a great book from more complete understanding
of all this to other important contributors to this this
what becomes the ideologies of the Duggers. Follow are John
Piper and Wayne Grudom. These are both Reformed Baptist preachers
who headed up the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
or c BMW. In nineteen seven, the year of its founding,

(28:26):
the c BMW released something called the Danverse Statement, which
was both a mission statement for the Council and a
rallying cry to conservative Christian forces. The statement urged Christians
to fight egalitarian influences in the evangelical church, particularly the
scourge of Christian feminism. It argued that women should be
barred from positions of authority and churches. Now, the Danvers

(28:48):
Statement was signed by some people you might know. Beverly
La Hay, wife of the author of Left Behind, Tim Lay,
signed it. Pat Robertson also signed it. Dorothy Patterson and
Paige Patterson signed it. You probably don't know those last
two names, but Paige orchestrated the right wing takeover of
the Southern Baptist Convention, the organization behind the second largest
Christian denomination in the United States. We talked about this

(29:10):
in the Moral Majority episode. But a lot of Baptists
used to be completely fine with abortion up until like
the seventies. It was not a super controversion of the
Catholics have always had their going on about it. But
I got in trouble when I was in second grade
for leading a group of kids around to sing that
song on the playground because I just I couldn't watch

(29:32):
like Beats and butt Head or the Simpsons. But for
whatever reason, my family was like, well, Monty Python smart,
so whatever, you can watch as much of that as
you want. And I watched Meaning of Life in that
song and idn't really understand it, but I let them
march around the playground singing it. And it didn't go
over well in suburban Texas. Now was it because you
sang it or because you're sang it at the end
you went just hands? It didn't do that. But I

(29:56):
didn't get what just hands was. Must been third or
fourth grade, but so yeah, um so. In nineteen eleven,
years after the Danver statement, the SPC, the Southern Baptist
Convention released a statement of their own in which they
urged wives to graciously submit to their husband's Mike Huckabee
was one signatory to the statement. The SPC, by the way,

(30:19):
speaks for about sixteen million Americans. So by the end
of the twentieth century, many of the ideas that are
central to the quiver Full movement had started to become
mainstream on the right wing. You're not talking about a
fringe ideology when the SPC is endorsing some of this stuff, right,
that's um, well, this is was it there either the

(30:39):
Fallwell or the Reagan episode. I think I think it
was you that talked about it where it was like
the evangelical saw Reagan as an inn and then Reagan
used them and then didn't give them what they wanted.
So then they started going, oh, we need to start
taking over and making our stuff me. We need to
instead of just giving them our vote and expecting stuff
in return, we need to infiltrate and what our people

(31:00):
into is the stuff you're seeing Q and on guys
try to do right now. And Christians continue to extremist
Christians continuity where it's like, well, we got to get
people on the school boards, We've got to get people
in local elected positions. They've been doing this for a
while and it works, which is every time I see
people are left to be like no, the thing to
do is throw up a poster on Twitter and have

(31:21):
a march. It's like, well, that's good too. And I
get the frustration with electoralism, but they've gotten a lot
of crazy shit done because they've been voting for decades.
I don't know. We don't have the time anymore to
that's a longer. You can make radical changes democratically in
this society. Um. It just takes decades of generations of

(31:43):
people giving up their entire lives to the cause. Um.
But it worked for them now. Obviously, most Southern Baptists
are not out there having a dozen kids is shoeing alcohol,
forcing their daughters to wear sackcloth dresses, and refusing to
get birth certificates for their children. If you want to
view the struggle for Christian domination of the US as
a war, and these people do. The quiver full families
are like special forces. Their sons like Josh Dugger, are

(32:06):
supposed to be trained from childhood to seek positions of
influence in the government and culture. But I'm getting ahead
of myself here. We've covered most of the ideological underpinnings
of the quiver Fule movement. But the Dugger family are
also members of a very specific cult within this chunk
of the Christian right. They are followers of a guy
named Bill Gothard. It's spelled got Hard And that'll be

(32:27):
relevant and an unfortunate way later. Yeah, you know Bill,
you've familiar with Bill Gothard. I see how you erected
that joke. Um. Gothard founded the Institute in Basic Life
Principles in nineteen sixty one. So this is the religious
rights not a thing when he starts this right, not

(32:48):
in a political way, right. Um, So he's really on
the bleeding edge of all this. And it was originally
called Campus Teams, and its purpose was to recruit young
people obviously in campuses for christ. The ibl P was
fundamentalist from the get go, and it was also male supremacist.
Women were supposed to marry men chosen by their fathers
and submit entirely to first their father and then their husband.

(33:12):
Dating and flirting were forbidden, so much as winking at
a man as seen as lustful and morally equivalent to prostitution.
In the early nineteen eighties, the ib LP was racked
by a sex scandal when it was found that Bill
and his brother Steve were both having affairs with secretaries
at the institute. Yeah, um, weird how that keeps happening. Yeah,
we're now none of these guys practice although actually you

(33:34):
can say they are practicing what they preach, because, as
will continue to talk about, the fault in this case
was the women because they were being temptresses. Well you know,
and if they had gotten them pregnant, I mean, bonus,
he got an Next there's the extra soldiers. So Bill
never married or had kids. Again interesting, but his ib
LP became the center of education and philosophy for the

(33:54):
quiver Full movement. The ib LP, starting in the late
nineteen eighties, ran what was effective and when. So his
brother has to leave the organization and Bill steps down,
but for like two weeks. And if you want a
much more detailed UM podcast series on Bill Gothard, the
podcast Someplace Underneath UM, which is part of the last

(34:15):
podcast on the Left Left Network did like a four
or five partner on this. That's very very good. I
was gonna say too, there's one called Christian Right Cast,
so I haven't heard that, So that that's one UM
it's a couple ex evangelicals or I forge if that's
how they're for themselves. But it's it's on Apple. I

(34:35):
think it may have moved to flex or something like that,
but there it goes like it goes into guys and
like there's there's a thing on Bill Gotthard and thing
I don't know if you have it in there, but
like his his rules for how women should dress. Talk
a little bit about yeah, um yeah, check out both
of those if you want more. This is really important stuff.
In someplace underneath they go into less detail about the

(34:57):
stuff that I just covered, but they're going to a
lot more detail about Bill um so um. The ib
LP ran what was effectively a troubled teen facility that
started up in the late nineteen eighties, which is basically
a forced labor camp for kids, and they also operated
the Advanced Training Institute or a t I, which created
curriculum for homeschooled families. The Duggers were absolutely slavish devotees

(35:21):
of Gothardism, and all of their children were raised on
a TI curriculum. From a write up by former cult
member Delanere Bartlett, who grew up in the same community,
The a TI curriculum teaches that the Bible, as the literal,
infallible word of God, must be the center of every lesson,
leading to some shockingly inaccurate lessons, particularly in science and history.

(35:42):
The A TI curriculum also has a big focus on
teaching students how they should behave immediate, unquestioning obedience to
authorities is foremost, and a TI prescribes beatings to discipline
children for even the most trivial of infractions, like failing
to complete a chore on time or arguing with a sibling.
Even more disturbing, the uggers participate in blanket training, where

(36:02):
toddlers and small children are placed on a blanket and
a toy is placed judge just out of reach. When
the child reaches for the toy or moves off the blanket,
the parents will slap or hit them in order to
instill fear and obedience. And we're not going to talk
about to train up a child, but that's very big
in these cultures. Child abuses like massive in this community. Yeah, um, yeah,

(36:26):
I was gonna say that that sounds uh almost sounds
more like something you'd see on a Japanese game show.
Then yeah, it would be a fully grown man on
a blanket. Let's still still. I would watch that show.
They're adults. I don't like blanket training is fine. If
that's like your canker, whatever, more power to you now.
I found another interview with a survival of Gothard's cult

(36:48):
on Salon. This person went into a great deal more
to tail about what kids were taught about sex through
this curriculum. Quote. The so called wisdom booklets that form
the backbone of a t I children's educations contain more
Bible verses than they do information. Particularly lacking in a
religious sect so obsessed with reproduction is any kind of
sex education. This is especially true for young women, who

(37:11):
receive very little sex education because the church teaches us
that women do not have sex drives. However, the opposite
is believed of men. A TI teaches that men have
nearly uncontrollable sex drives, ready to erupt at the mere
sight of a pant leg or a perm. To illustrate
this point, A t I families are encouraged to maintain
a no computer rule for their sons, but not their daughters.
Gothard also encouraged men to turn towards the wall when

(37:33):
dining at restaurants so as to not be tempted by
a waitress or a stray attractive woman. You know, those
straight attractive women just kind of out there tempting you
by existing just wandering, wandering the streets, just just constantly.
I mean that is that is how they view with
those that are called like that. That's an attack on you.

(37:55):
With a woman's out there living her life, uh, and
you find her attractive, that like an assault on you.
Because if you're in an army, you're fighting another army,
so that means it's it's and they're also a unified
trained force of the devil, So they're the sexy taliban
out there trying to steal your virtue. Yeah, it's like
a Halloween costume, but as regular military gear. Now I'm

(38:17):
going to continue that quote. Not that our supposed lack
of a sex drive absolved as from sexual responsibility a
t I taught us that it is our job to
keep men's desires from erupting into lust or sexual activity.
We were taught that it was our sin if we
cause a man to lust. After us, I spent many
nights as an early developed teenager crying and begging God
to take away my large breasts because I noticed men's

(38:38):
eyes had begun to linger on me during church. Modesty
wasn't only about dress, It was also about behavior. Women
were taught from a very young age that they are
to be submissive in all things, allowing men to open
doors for us, even to get out of a car,
never initiating conversations with a man, and never correcting a
man when he was wrong. Essentially, a good a t
I woman is sweet, silent, and obedient. This combination of

(38:59):
zo uro sexual knowledge and deeply ingrained submissiveness left many
young girls in our church especially vulnerable to sexual abuse.
As a teenager, I became aware that several of my
friends were being molested by their older brothers or fathers.
They would start stilted conversations with me about it, but
none of us actually understood the concept of sex or
rape or molestation enough to actually discuss it, so would

(39:20):
stayed on the level of furtively whispered hints. And this
is I mean you can draw a line here between.
Like nineteen eighty four, The idea behind New Speaker is
that if you if you, if you limit the vocabulary
of a community, you limit their ability to express certain
things like that's what's going on here. If you limit
the ability of kids to understand sexuality in this way,
you limit their ability to know when they've been wrong. Well,

(39:42):
you take away communication exactly and to kind of to
draw to something recent more recent as well to kind
of go on the other side in terms of how
in terms of men blaming for women for stuff, there's
the uh, obviously don't know it's for effect, but the
um the Atlanta, the SPA shooter, who was they were

(40:04):
like I would not be surprised if it was just
like basically they were immodest and so that drove me
and my uncontrollable hormones too. That's that shooting from what
information we have so far, seems to be the logical
extent of this. This kind of thinking is like they
wouldn't stop tempting me, so yeah, I don't know, I mean,

(40:27):
we don't know about just like it's to get to
give people like this isn't to bring it a little
in from the abstract is like, yeah, this is this
is the recent stuff, and it can go a variety
of different ways. Because people are different, they're going to
react differally. Take it into some of those reactions are
going to be scary as hell. Yeah, so, but you
know what's not scary as hell? Uh, a bright summer day.

(40:53):
I was gonna say capitalism, but uh, I guess both
capitalism and a bright summer day can be scary because
capital is um is a part of the engine of
carbon release that is causing our summers to be hotter
and dryer. So darker direction than I wanted to um,
But a bright summer day. I mean, it won't pay

(41:13):
you to to say that it's that's not a problem,
So I mean catalism at least, you know, make a book.
At least I'll make a buck by denying that there's
any problem with it. Hey, here's okay, we're back. So
the Duggers didn't bring Bill Gothard or a t I

(41:36):
up often on the show in ways that would have
been immediately obvious. You could see books in the show, right,
There's always there's a lot of like it's visible if
you know what to look for, but they're not out
there like talking about how awesome Bill Gothard is. The
signs were there if you knew where to look. At
Dugger weddings, celebrants would dedicate an entire cake to Bill Gothard,
which is again cult ship. All the Dugger women had

(41:58):
distinctively permed hair because Bill believed that curly bangs brought
out a woman's natural beauty. Uh. The antiquated dress codes
that the Dugger family engaged in, particularly for women in
the family, were also a major part of like a
result of Bill Gothard's influence. Over the years they were
on TV, the Dugger family, particularly Jim Bob, were extremely

(42:18):
open about the fact that their show His Career, was
a ministry. They saw it as a way to recruit.
With the help of the Discovery camera crew, selective editing
and scripting, they were able to portray what was really
in reality and abusive cult as a quirky lifestyle choice,
perhaps even one viewers would want to emulate. Jim Bob
liked to say that they were just trying to convince
people not to get abortions because by seeing that, like, oh, well,

(42:39):
this family can handle fourteen fifteen sixteen kids, so obviously
I should keep this one kid, right. Um. It was
a big part of like why he said they were
doing it. But of course, the real purpose behind all
this was to build a larger cultural space for Gothardi
is m the quiver Full movement, and male supremacist fundamentalist
Christianity and American culture. This is also part of a

(43:00):
broader fundamentalist strategy. It came about as part of a
split between premillennial and post millennial dispensationalists. The former believed
that the Rapture was coming in any day and soon
the faith will be brought up to Heaven the world
would end. The latter belief that God wouldn't let Christ
return until they established a godly world. In order to
do that, they had to recruit, and it wasn't enough
to get people to accept Christ. They had to convince

(43:22):
folks to follow the rules their rules, otherwise the world
wouldn't be godly enough. Since those rules are very unpleasant
and extreme. You have to lure people in gradually by
reaching them with something less extreme and drawing them in
like a fish on a lure from Quiverfull quote. Mark
Driscoll's Mars Hill Church, rated the eighth most influential church

(43:42):
in America, relies on the fixtures of emergent or seeker
oriented ministries, such as countercultural groups like bikers or skaters.
For Christ to attract to attract its young urban congregation,
but churches like Mars Hill, which espouses a deeply conservative ideology,
recognized that such outreach ministry are meant to be transitional,
introducing a person to Christ where they are then easing

(44:04):
them into more serious study and graduating them to a
traditionalist doctrine and DRIs School's case, to a doctrine that
places substantial weight on gender submission and a wife's role
in marriage. So again, these are all this is just
it's how colts work. It's out it's how cut non works.
Do you can see it? And in the fact that
like there's elements of Q that are about the JFK conspiracy,

(44:26):
the elements of Q that are about like aliens and
stuff that they're about vaccines, and it all leads back
to this er conspiracy and that's how people get pulled in.
And that's what makes it more. It's syncretism, you know,
It's it's how it all work. Wasn't that the Bill Cooper? Yeah,
that was the he was making a bread at that. Yeah,

(44:47):
Q and on Anonymous just did a episode on Bill Cooper.
I do love Bill. He really did everything right. Um,
one of these days one of these days. But oh yeah,
I did a two part I remember listening to it,
did a fever dream that like Bill, I hope to
go out a mountaintop assault by law enforcement. Um while

(45:08):
broadcasting nonsense on the radio. Um. Yeah. So the Duggers
TV ministry worked the same way as like these kind
of bikers and skaters for christ at the at the
mars holtrage were it's it's all the same idea. To
draw people in, you have to white wash a lot
of realities about their lifestyle, make it look good, and
once people start to get in, you can start laying

(45:29):
on some of the more heavy stuff. Um, here's one
issue with their lifestyle. He's one of the reasons why
what they're actually doing is objectively bad. This is not
just I'm not just saying it because I'm not religious.
I'm saying this because it's abusive. And one of the
reasons it's abusive is that nineteen kids is way the
funk too many for two parents to adequately care for

(45:49):
in most situations almost but I'm gonna say any situation.
The Duggers explain how they do this as using the
buddy system. Every kid has a buddy, an older sibling
who is supposed to help raise and take care of them.
Mom's buddy is the youngest baby, well she's nursing, but
once that's done, she hands the baby off to the
next youngest daughter in the cycle goes on. Most quiverful
families work this way. I've heard from my friend even

(46:11):
her family works that work this way. The daughters, as
a general rule, are the ones doing most of the
child rearing because there's too many kids for the parents
to do it all. And that's not great. Obviously, siblings
are supposed to your older siblings supposed to look at
for younger siblings. You definitely learn things from your siblings.
You're they're not supposed to be parents, that that robs

(46:33):
them of the chance to be a chief. Well, well
we'll wait a minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute,
So let me get this straight. You're saying the large
family basically does a capitalism on its straw and its instructure,
where the CEO make middle management and the workers do
all that. Wait, but you're saying that doesn't work. Yeah,

(46:54):
I mean the people I know who grew up in
it have complaints. I'm innocent for this. I don't know
I don't think so. Most Cuivolental families work this way,
and again it's usually the daughters who do most of
the sun is supposed to do some of it, but
it's generally the daughters who are handling an awful lot
of the child ring and this is a huge burden
on them. It stops them from having a childhood. It

(47:16):
also means that older siblings are often the only ones
watching out for their younger siblings. This becomes a problem
when one of those older siblings is a sexual abuser,
and that brings us to Josh Dugger. Joshua James Dugger
was born on March third night. He was born in Tauntatown, Arkansas,
to Jim Bob and Michelle Dugger. When Josh was a baby,

(47:38):
the family was much less extreme in their beliefs than
they would become. Michelle had taken birth control before getting pregnant,
and she started taking it again after Josh was born.
She suffered a miscarriage, though, which she and Jim Bob
blamed on the birth control. We obviously have no idea
what comes. Miscarriage has happened, you know, it's just a thing,
been real quick. That's that's that's another thing. I think
that can get people suck. Then, like my parents weren't

(48:02):
very religious, they kind of wandered away. And then it's
like you have a kid, and then all of a sudden,
like everything Like it's something about having that makes you
like kind of I don't know if it's just like
that insecurity of like am I doing things right or
what or not? But I think it makes you more
a pliable to get sucked into something. Yeah, I mean
that totally makes sense. Um. And it's it's all I

(48:25):
think a lot of it is just like you have
a kid. It's really scary because like there's no really
there's no map for how to have a kid and
raise it right. And like sometimes people do everything right
and your kid, I don't know, murder somebody or something like.
It's terrifying having a kid. Um. And I think a
lot of people are like, well, this group says they
have a perfect roadmap for everything. Even if I follow it,

(48:47):
my kids will will turn out perfectly. Um, So I'll
just do that because this is terrifying. Hi, I'm Dr
Reverend Priest. I have an answer. Would you like to
come worship with me? Yeah? All you have to do
is put these weird dresses on your kids and have
thirty of them, Um, and it'll be great. Here's a blanket,
you'll know what to do. So yeah, they blame that there.
Um they blame their miscarriage on on birth control, and

(49:09):
like that's the what causes them to like get much
more into the into the fundamentalist side of things. They
decided to let God choose the size of their family,
and this led them to have more than a dozen
children in a very short span of time. Now, the
Dugger family was not poor. Jim Bob Brandy used car lot,
but prior to discovery coming into the picture, they were
not wealthy, and by the early adds, the family of

(49:30):
sixteen lived in a square foot rented home. Most large
quiverful families live in fairly cramped environs. People who knew
the Duggers before fame said their home was not a
typical of the community. It was far too small. It
often smelled gross because there's a lot of babies and
a lot of diapers. It was dirty, filled with clutter
and the kind of refuse that again, all those kids create. Now,

(49:51):
during Jim Bob's brief time as an elected state representative,
he would bring Joshua with him to the state capital.
The goal was to groom josh for a political future,
and people who knew the family in this time tend
to think that many Gothard just saw him as the
future of the movement. He was nicknamed Governor by Republicans
who worked with his dad. The first major news coverage

(50:11):
I found of the Dugger family was a Dallas Morning
News article written in December two thousand five, two years
after that New York Times photo brought Discovery into the picture,
and the Duggers were the subject of their own TV specials.
The article is a fascinating piece of what I call
complicity journalism. Almost every detail of the quiver Full movement
and Bill Gothard that was was easily available when this

(50:31):
article was published. There was a lot of information that
the Dallas Morning News could have accessed about what these
people believed, but the author, Arnold Hamilton's, did zero work
to lay out anything about what the Duggers were actually into.
Here's a quote. As a couple, the Duggers approached to
family planning as simple. They are born again Christians who
view of the Bible as their life's manual, and the
Bible describes children as a blessing from God. They will

(50:53):
cheerfully accept as many blessings as God ordains. The reality,
of course, is that they don't. The Bible is not
their own manual. A t I. Bill Gothard is their manual,
and that manual says that women are not full autonomous people,
but merely an appendage to men and their rightful purposes
to serve without question. But pointing that out would make
this fun story about a big family sound more like
a story of child abuse, so they don't talk about that.

(51:16):
The author points out several times that the Duggers own
their own business and home debt free. This is a
big deal in that community. And there's a lot of
kind of less extreme elements of this that are still
wrapped up in this that what is that guy who
does those debt free seminars that's like weird and dead. Yeah,
the rich dead poor. I mean that's one of them.
There's a couple. I mean it's um and Yeah, it's

(51:39):
this whole idea that like you shouldn't have it's immoral
kind of to have debt, and a lot of which
I'm not in favor. I think it's like horribly fucked
up the way the system of debt and the credit
and stuff works in this country. I'm not You're not
as wrong. Yeah, it's the system. It's not you. Yeah. Um.
And if you're like it's kind of impossible in a

(51:59):
lot of way is to take advantag like, your life
will be a lot harder if, for example, you're never
able to build up enough credit that you can like
try to buy a home or something, because renting sucks,
ass um. And there's there's a lot of things avenues
that get closed off to you when you don't buy.
And that's that's not great. I wish it didn't work

(52:19):
that way. But this is a problem for a lot
of people in the quiver full movement, um, because it
leads to them not being able to access the kind
of resources they need to properly care for families that
are so large. Uh. Quote, the Duggers lived temporarily in
suare foot rented house along a busy street not far
from Interstate five forty in this town of about fifty.

(52:40):
They are building debt free a seven thousand square foot
house in nearby Taunta town. Now this is um, this
this gets to something that's kind of messed up here
because again, a lot of these families are in crushing
poverty because they can't have debts, so they're often building
their own homes in the middle of nowhere. They don't
have access to indoor plumbing in a lot of cases,

(53:01):
a lot of the again you have families that don't
have Social Security numbers. They are in the middle of nowhere.
There's fifteen kids living in what is essentially a shack.
Like that's that's a significant element of this. It's not
the way the Duggers live. Because the Duggers get a
shipload of money from Discovery to build a nice, very
large new house. And this is something they don't talk about.

(53:21):
They talk about how they're doing it debt free. They
talk about how and make it look like this, Well,
because we're just we're scrimping, we save, and we're we're
very consistent our beliefs, and so we've been able to
build this this very large house. Um, and if you,
if you have the kind of financial discipline and listen
to the teachers about financial discipline we do, you two
can build a house like we have and like have
a giant family like we've. It's just not possible for
most people. We did it with Kupin's Yeah, we did

(53:44):
it all with coupons and tens of thousands of dollars
from the Discovery Channel, which helps a lot um. It's
like all those it's like all those articles about like
how I bought my first home at like thirty two,
and it's like, oh, because your parents give you a a
d dollars for the down payment, that would help a
lot of people can afford a house with a hundred
fifty grand from their parents. But that great Twitter Twitter

(54:06):
mame going around where it's like on one on one
side it's it's one of those articles where they're talking
about it, and on the other side it's say the
line from The Simpsons where they're all around Bart waiting
for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it from my parents.
Yeah yeah, there we go. Yeah. Now, the Duggers don't
talk about any of like the money they got from
Discovery Channel. They talked about how their Christian financial counseling

(54:29):
helped them establish a business and buy a property and
build a seven thousand square halfwood house. Debt free in
their community came together to help them build it, and
it makes their lifestyle seem like not just a miracle,
but a miracle that you two can half if you
follow the same rules right, which again, most people who
do the kinds of things that duggers do live in
very very difficult circumstances in a lot of cases. And

(54:49):
it's it's a great going back to synchronicity because it
also reinforces the kind of UH Calvinists prosperity gospel. The
whole thing where we got it beca as we deserved it,
were blessed by God. If you didn't get it, it's
your fault. Yeah, if you were doing the right thing,
if you were doing bless you. With the Discovery TV
show Ye the Circle of Life. Now, I want to

(55:13):
quote again because I want to talk about it's important
to really lean into the fact that most quiverful families
do not enjoy this level of financial comfort. So I
want to quote again from that Salon column from a
former member of the quiver Fule movement titled I could
have been a Dugger wife. One key difference worth noting
between the reality show of nineteen Kids and Counting and

(55:35):
the reactual reality of a t I though, is the
relative affluence of the Duggers compared to most a TI families.
The Duggers live in a spacious, Discovery Networks funded home,
but it was not unusual in my church for two
parents and ten children to live packed into a single
wide trailer. These children usually wear threadbare hand me downs,
already passed through several rounds of siblings. Many of them
look malnourished due to the abundance of starchy meals necessary

(55:58):
on a lean one parent income. Women and mothers working
outside of the home is absolutely forbidden in a t I,
no matter what the financial situation of the family. Some
women are even required to get permission from their husbands
if they want to obtain a driver's license. That affluence
makes the constant growth of the Dugger family, their wildly
exaggerated version of a large family upon which their TV

(56:18):
fame is built, possible again in a lot of ways.
Not only is Discovery mainstreaming this, they're enabling the Duggers
to do this because they just couldn't afford to live
like this otherwise. Now that Dallas Morning News article does
note that the family isn't getting Christmas gifts that year
because the house they're building is their gift for everybody,
and Jim Bob gives some quaint advice about eating out

(56:39):
on the dollar menu to save money when the family
goes out, but no attention has ever paid to the
fact that this house they live in was made possible
thanks to Discovery Channel money. In general, that article and
all the early and media surrounding the Duggers made them
out to be a quirky, strange, but ultimately relatable family
living a different kind of lifestyle, but one that was
fundamentally healthy, perhaps even healthier than the lives many of

(57:00):
their viewers. This is as close as that article gets
to acknowledging the fundamentalist cult at the core of their beliefs.
The Duggers may be swimming against societies tied with such
a large family, but it's clear children, lots and lots
of children, are at the core of their social network.
They are members of a home church that numbers around
one hundred, They are active in a home schooling network.
Their friends all seem to have lots of children. One

(57:21):
family has nine, another six, and there and they're almost
seems to have evolved an unofficial, loose knit network of
large families that homeschool their children and attend in home churches.
Some even have volunteered time to help the Duggers complete
their home by mid January. An unofficial, loose knit network.
Not what I would describe this cult as UM. It's
pretty tightly net um and makes tens of millions of dollars.

(57:45):
Now the reality, of course, yeah, they're members of a cult. UM.
The success of their TV show and the thoughtlessly positive
media coverage of their unusually large brood disguised this for
a while. But from the beginning there was a dark
side to the Dugger story. And this brings me back
again to Joshua Dugger. I had to really go into
the weeds to do this one for you. UM. In
two thousand two, when Joshua was fourteen, he accosted his

(58:08):
sister in the night and fondled her breasts and genitals.
This sister eventually went to her father and told him
what had happened. It is unclear whether or not Jim
Bob acted on this information. At first, he claimed on
a two thousand six police report and again the abuse
started in two thousand two, that it was not and
this report was not released until recently, that he disciplined
josh when he learned about the abuse. If he did

(58:30):
it did not stop the behavior. Between two thousand two
and two thousand three, josh molested two of his sisters
on at least four to five occasions. This evidently prompted
Jim Bob Dugger to take more significant action, not going
to the cops, of course. Well yeah, kind of yeah,
I mean eventually we're getting there. Yeah, we're getting twists. Um.

(58:52):
He went to the church elders, who advised Jim Bob
to send his son to a Christian training program. In
an early report, Walker described this program as involving quote,
hard work and counseling, and most covers will be like
that's he went to a like a physical labor kind
of like treatment program. It sounds like I don't know,
I don't know what the solution is Like obviously, if

(59:13):
you're a parent, even the best parent, this is like
a nightmare, impossible situation to handle. Like there's no there's
no perfect way to deal with this kind of horrible thing. Um,
So I'm not gonna say there's no I'm sure there
are treatment programs that are helpful. Um. But Michelle Dugger
has since admitted that when he was going to this
treatment program, Joshua did not see a counselor, so what

(59:33):
did his treatment involve? Thankfully, a lot has been written
about how Bill Gothard's A t I counsels both victims
and perpetrators of sexual abuse. And that's who ran the camp.
It was an A t I camp. I want to
quote from an interview with one woman who was sexually
abused by staff at A t I for some context
of how the process of dealing with sexual abuse within
this cold works. From the New York Post quote, the

(59:55):
organization did have a protocol for counseling sex abuse. A
chart published in two thousand third teen by Recovering Grace,
a resource for ex followers of ib LP and A
t I that the site claims was distributed at A
t I counseling seminars for more than a decade. It
explains how group leaders should help those who have experienced
sexual assault. The onus for the attack is put on
the victim for defrauding the abuser. A modest dress, in

(01:00:17):
decent exposure, being out from protection of our parents are
all reasons that God let it happen, it reads. One
marriage guide for women even includes a portion on what
to do if your husband ever sexually handles your children.
Author Debbie Pearl, a minister whose books were sold by IBLP,
wrote in Created to Be His help Meet. Although wives
should testify and pray that their husbands get twenty years

(01:00:39):
in prison, they should also visit him. There be an
encouragement to him, let him see the children three to
four times a year, and girls Bible study. Smith said
she was told, you need to be very careful what
you do, what you say, what you wear, how you act,
because at any moment you could trigger a boy. Basically,
there's absolutely no personal responsibility for the boys now. A

(01:01:00):
source for that article, Ms Smith was molested while working
at a t I S training center by a twenty
one year old staff member. He had a key to
her room and would come in every night and force
himself on her. They did not have sex, but in
her words, we did everything else. I didn't have the
capacity to say, hey, I don't like it, which is
key to the Dugger case too, because one side effect

(01:01:20):
of the lack of sex set is that girls don't
grow up with any kind of vocabulary to describe what's
happening to them. The reality of a TI Bill Gothard
and the whole Quiverful movement is that it is a
cult not just dedicated to breeding up Christian soldiers, but
to providing the men at the top of it with
a constant stream of helpless victims, women they can molest
and then blame for it. Here's another quote from that article.

(01:01:40):
When she returned home from the center, she and her
father surprisingly received a call from Gothard, who's basically God,
said Smith. She assumes her friend had told one of
the leaders about the incidents, although she was expecting to
be reprimanded. Instead, Gothard wanted the dirty details. He started
asking the creepiest questions. He was like, what time did
he kiss you? What time did he put his hands here?

(01:02:01):
And did he do this to you? Smith remembered calling
it gross. So this is the guy who ran the
treatment program that Josh went to. This is how he
handles allegations of sexual abuse within his his thing. So
not an effective treatment program. I think it's fair to say, Sean,
we're going to talk more about Bill Gothor, Josh Dougger

(01:02:23):
and a lot of other very unpleasant people in part do.
But for right now, how are you feeling? Oh? You know,
he picked a heavy one. It's uh, yeah, it's heavy.
It's well, it was like, it's heavy, should be talked about.
It's it's nice, you know, it's it's one of a
few times I'm like, you know what, I'm glad I
can look across the room and see Saddam Hussein and

(01:02:44):
Saddam Hussein's best friend, and I feel a little better
about the world. They are right here. It does help
talking about horrible molestation cults. When there's cats sitting on
your legs and passed out, they've had a hard day
of mostly sleeping, so they need their rest. Show on. UM. Well, yeah,
that's gonna do it for part one. We'll come back
in part two and have more uncomfortable conversations. UM. Thank

(01:03:09):
you for donating and helping to fund the recall effort
against Mayor Ted Wheeler. UH, and those of you at home,
if you're in the Portland area, go to Total Recall
pd x. You can find out how you can sign
up to recall Ted Wheeler, how you can sign your
name on that, or even volunteer your time. UH. If
you might want to donate, also total recall pdx dot
com you can do it there. So UM, Ted Wheelers

(01:03:33):
not connected directly to any of this. But he does
suck and this sucks too, So I don't know. That's well,
you know, it's kind of it's it's hard to uh,
people that want to infiltrate and get into elected positions.
It's kind of hard to fight against that when the
mayor is someone like Ted Wheeler. Yeah, I mean, it
doesn't make it harder to deal with. It's all of

(01:03:54):
the problems we have where the elected leaders that aren't
weird cultists with dangerous male supremacist ideas are also incompetent. Yeah,
if you'd like to take a shot at someone that
is a successful politician and that he knows how to
get and keep power, but is incompetent in anything else,
you know, take it out on Ted Wheeler today. Take

(01:04:16):
it out on Ted Wheeler today. Uh, and take it
out on I don't know, I don't know what. Don't
take other things out on other people. Be nice to
the other people around you, be nice to everyone, but
Ted Wheeler and fucking Bill Gothard, And take it out
it being the trash for your friends, because that's nice,
Because that is nice. Yeah, take out the trash, and

(01:04:39):
then you know, once it's out of your house. You
can throw it anywhere. It doesn't matter. Yea, yeah, that's ethical,
I think. All right, that's the episode

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: The Cult Behind Josh Duggar